It's a new arteview! And this time, we're featuring the mystical, fantastical, bird of the land,
Albatross! And she had a lot to say
Albatross! I'm a big fan, but for those who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself?
I'm a big fan of your work too :) Hiya, I'm Albatross, alternatively referred to as Alba by my friends or "The Tross" by no one. I'm an artist, as might be expected, and frequenter of Smogoff' shitposting quarters and formerly the Pet Mods community. Irl I'm currently engrossed in a computer science course, Dungeons and Dragons has taken over my life, and I've also recently been getting into spriting. I've been drawing for roughly 6 1/2 years now and spriting for.. 2 years? Haven't been as active as I used to be on Smogon, so a few users might not recognise me, but I'm thinking about getting more into the art scene again, which is why I decided to go through with this interview after uhh..... Probably a year of being top of the waiting list lol
Glad to see that you're getting back into the art scene. Six and a half years is quite a long time, and definitely quite a lot of effort and thought has been poured into the process over time. I'm also very interested in what you have to say about spriting, but first... I want to ask about the other things! Computer science is really cool. What have you been learning and what are you planning to pursue with it?
Way too much effort and thought put into art lol, but it's paid off over the years. I've only been taking this course since September, so it's still pretty early, but most of our work atm is heavily tied to Business Studies. Because of the size of both the Computer Science and Business Studies classes, and the fact that we share a few units (specifically Business IT, IT in Organisations and Spreadsheet Modelling, our current unit, as well as a few miscellaneous units about academic writing and such) our classes were combined to save time. We've mostly been covering the uses of IT in organisations, IT-related legislation such as the GDPR and making professional Excel spreadsheets. The course itself is designed to act as a gateway for students over 19 who don't have the qualifications needed to get into University, so it's very self-study oriented - which mostly feels like an excuse to just set us a load of coursework and leave us to deal with it ourselves, but oh well lol I'm hoping to get into the IT/Computing industry, but what specifically I'd like to do I'm still exploring. That's partially why I'm taking this course; to see what parts of Computer Science I do and don't enjoy. I already know I have an interest in programming, as I used to program a lot for both the Pet Mods community and as a hobby (specifically game development), and I know the cybersecurity industry is absolutely booming rn, but I don't wan to jump into either as a career path without any qualifications nor concrete experience. Overall just hoping to get a decent job in a field I enjoy with it I suppose, simple as that
Ooo business studies. It wouldn't be the same as where you are, but I'm studying it in school. Also hoping you find a good interest in a strong part of computer science that will allow you to get a satisfactory job. I'm not familiar with Pet Mods but getting an idea from your sprites, it seems like it takes a lot of artistic work. Really big fan of those sprites, which anyone reading can see here: (Will link). I'm sure you've been working for this project for a long time. Could you tell me a little bit about the process behind it why and how you made them?
Ah nice! I actually took Business Studies too in secondary school as well as Computer Science and really enjoyed it, just think I'd enjoy Computer Science more at a higher level :) And thank you! Pet Mods don't really require sprites in order to function, but having them as a visual element really elevates each project! There are a lot of really good spriters in community though (Aquatic Panic, off the top of my head, does some outstanding fusion sprites!) Starting with how, the process is different depending on what I'm doing. Recolours are generally the simplest, it's only a matter of finding an appealing palette that suits what I'm going for. A lot of the times it's easy to make, for example, a Dragon/Fire variant of Goodra red and orange and leave it as that. But for the purposes of Pet Mods (which is what most of my recolours were for), you're using a recoloured sprite as a placeholder of sorts for an individual, unique Pokemon, so I like to draw inspiration from the specific flavour of each Fakemon - the example Dragon/Fire Goodra came from the desert and was supposed to be dried up, so I made its palette more sandy, with blue highlights because complementary colours are very good, and shiny a more clay colour (Goodra Sprite) Specifically for the Pridemon recolours, it's a matter of representing the pride flags on the Pokemon itself. Again it's easy to just slap the colours on and call it a day, but personally I find recolouring an entire Pokemon to be rainbow coloured looks a bit garish sometimes. So I like to leave a kind of "base colour", like Primarina's white body or Luxray's blue fur, and then recolour the rest of the body to resemble the flag. Occasionally, though, it's fine to completely recolour an entire Pokemon, like I did for rainbow Kyurem - it's all subjective, really lol (Primarina & Kyurem sprite)
For spriting from scratch, it's relatively simple. Sketch out the basic shapes, refine them to remove stuff like doubling for use as lineart, add details. I like to have the lineart finished before I go onto colouring, but a lot of the time I'll find minor errors or things I want to change as I go into shading lol. From there it's colour, shading, then "rendering" (for Gen 1 sprites, which seems to be my specialty atm lol, that's mostly adding anti-aliasing, but otherwise it's just colouring lineart and going over everything one final time - artist brain just likes to call it rendering). (Raging Bolt sprites) My example here is actually an in-progress gen 2 Raging Bolt sprite that I haven't animated yet; starts with the basic shapes to get the pose and proportions right, then adds details like the face, frills/spikes, and black markings, then goes to colour, shading & rendering - not a lot of shading with a gen 2 sprite, though, especially considering the amount of small details on Raging Bolt. Adding intricate highlights and shadows to a Pokemon like this, with such a small canvas and limited amount of colours to work with, will only end up muddying the whole sprite. So it's best to leave it minimal And as for why, really it's just because I enjoy spriting a lot. Originally I started recolouring sprites for the Pet Mods I was involved with, to make battling with the added Fakemon & adjusted Pokemon more appealing. From there I took on Pridemons for a year, both as thanks to the LGBTQ+ community and wanting a new kinda challenge - some of the recolours for Pridemons took a good hour or so to complete purely due to the level of complexity involved, such as the Kyurem sprite I shared above . From there my interest in spriting blossomed into spriting entirely from scratch, leading to the. frankly absurd amount of gen 1 sprites I've made since lol
This is fantastic! I know a couple of artists who are interested in making Gen 1 or 2-like sprites but have struggled to do so. It's shocking to see how simple you've made it. Usually spriting seems like it'll be really difficult because you feel like every single pixel needs to be perfect and detailed when trying to replicate Pokémon styles, but really you can just simplify the process. Of course though, I have no doubt that it'd take TIME. Worth it though, since you enjoy it a lot, which is what ends up making good art in the long-term. After all, there's no reason to draw unless you're enjoying it imo.
Other than sprite art, what kinds of art, mediums and things have you been into drawing? I remember looking at a couple of your pieces when I was a beginner and thinking of the manga Bleach (Dunno why), but it's always been prominent in my memory lol. I'm now deviating from the question... so I'll just link back to that
Gen 1/2 sprites use an entirely different style due to the limitations of the hardware they're on, and a much smaller canvas. Honestly, after spending so much time using Gen 1's 56x56px. canvas, using modern gen's 90x90px or a trainer's 80x80px feels wrong lol. Thankfully there are a lot of good tutorials out there about the basics of spriting, a single pixel out of whack can make an entire section feel icky and you have to make some sacrifices when you're working with such a limited space, but learning how to deal with that and make a coherent sprite from tight constraints is something you pick up with time and practice I've always been big into drawing people as an artist. It was how I started out, and nowadays I really enjoy drawing the characters I've made for my Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Obviously I also enjoy drawing Pokemon a lot too, and I've also been drawing anthropomorphic animals (furries, in laymans terms) over the past year or so for variety. I mostly practice traditional and digital drawing, spriting and the occasionally black-and-white screentone. Painting is something I'd like to explore one day when I can afford paints and such, and 3D modelling I used to be very interested in, but with my more limited free time nowadays I don't have much time to learn any new mediums unfortunately. Funnily enough I've never actually read Bleach? The only artwork I've made where I've explicitly used manga as reference material would be my screentone pieces
Ooo Gen 1 sprites are tiny. Had no clue they were 56x56. It definitely makes sense though. As the hardware progressed and developed there would have been much more access to larger sprites. I'll definitely be trying out making some, and hopefully not forgetting how to do the 80x80 and 90x90 lol Really glad to see a fellow artist that started with drawing people. Super difficult but it's really fun to draw ocs (or others ocs you could say, with Dungeons and Dragons). I also remember discussing traditional art with you, as a quick and relaxing way to draw and interact with nature. I hope you've been having fun doing that. With regards to paint... if you remove the t you can get a good word for the cost of it. Cost of time and money you could say. And considering I was probably hallucinating about Bleach, it'd make sense to ask what things have inspired your art. Nature, media, whatever goes
Funnily enough a lot of spriting tutorials will recommend starting on a smaller canvas and working your way up! It's definitely a challenge if you're used to 80x80 and 90x90 but I look forward to seeing what you make :) Drawing ocs was my primary motivation to get into art, it was difficult like you said but I think it helped put me in the right mindset for starting out with art; not focussing too hard on how good my art looked, but rather getting the funky sketches on my paper to look like the funky characters in my head Lol cost of time and money certainly, it especially hurts knowing it'll take a while for me to get anywhere close to good at it which my funky wunky little bird brain just sees as a waste of paint. Maybe one day, though :) Honestly though I find inspiration in a lot of things. Probably my biggest source of inspiration is through other artists; seeing an interesting style or a unique concept or idea for a character/creature often gets me thinking a lot myself. For example, a while ago I found an interesting guide to creating new creatures based off existing animals, which inspired me to take what I learned there and make a literal rhino beetle lol. Seeing and experiencing things irl is also a big source of inspiration, though - recently I picked up a second-hand book about tropical fish and caring for them in tanks, and that's gotten me in the mood to draw mermaids. I'm also a big believer in the idea of going out and sketching from real life - not from photographs, but from observations made irl. Hell, sketching irl was how I first recognised that light will actually bounce off flat objects and that shadows tend to pick up the ambient lighting of the area around them. But a lot of my smaller sketches are based off whatever I happen to be doing or thinking about at the time; I've been watching a lot of videos about Animal Crossing recently, so I've been sketching the different characters from it while I watch these videos :)
Strong agreement on drawing from life and nature. Everything in art is based on reality in some way, so sketching from that reality is the best way to learn art fundamentals. And taking care of tropical fish would be difficult but so pretty... but instead maybe you can stick up a couple of mermaids on the wall and that makes it a little bit easier hehe Speaking of life and nature, what inspired the name Albatross? The animal obviously, but how'd you get to picking it?
Yeah agreed, doesn't matter if your style is realistic or cartoonish or anime-inspired or what, your art's probably gonna end up looking funky (negative) if you just ignore how things work in real life. My main interest with tropical fish is honestly the tanks themselves, vivariums have always scratched a very particular itch in my brain so seeing all the cool aquariums that experts use is very, very nifty :) The name Albatross does indeed come from the animal lol. It was really just a matter of coincidence, I happened to be drawing an albatross/raptor Fakemon while I was trying to sign up for.. some kind of service, I forget what, might've been for a Sketchbook account...? But I just chose the username based off that - could've just as easily been Raptor I guess lol - and have been using it since
Omg vivariums are so cool. We're speaking about nature and that there is nature sustaining itself in such a tiny tiny ecosystem. We all totally need to appreciate nature more Also glad it ended up being albatross, it suits you much more than a raptor lol (And because it's part of the bird gang). Now I want to get onto some 'miscellaneous' questions to get to know you better. I'll start by asking - what movies and games have you been into recently?
Hell yeah! I actually used to live very, very rural (nearest town was a 20 minute drive) with a shit ton of fields, hills and forests to roam. I'm currently living in the middle of a town centre though, so not as much nature appreciation being done atm, but once Summer hits I'll be going to more parks n such for irl sketching :)
Bird gang bird gang :handshake: Recently I've been very much into Rain World and Stardew Valley - both pixel games, which seems fitting. Stardew Valley I mostly play in the evenings after college to unwind, while Rain World I actually play at college during lunch breaks because each gameplay loop is shorter than Stardew Valley's. My sister picked up a copy of Pokemon Legends: Arceus yesterday as well, so I've been playing that while she's at school lol. Knew I'd enjoy the game because, well, it's Pokemon. But I've been pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy the gameplay loop once I was out of the tutorial, so I'm looking forward to hopefully completing it! That's it for games really - with the amount of time I spent at college, doing coursework, hanging out with friends, etc. I don't really have time to sink hours into games anymore. I also don't really watch movies that often, though I was semi-recently forced to sit down and watch the entire Lord of the Rings franchise almost back-to-back so that was. fun? lol
Games are epic but college will get in the way :( but it's fine! You've just gotta optimise your enjoyment of the games. I remember you speaking about Rain World in the Discord, I think you did some drawings. I also remember you mentioning Stardew Valley on a Smogon thread, but I don't remember what it was for! PLA is great btw. There's a couple of people who criticise it for being nothing special, but I honestly think it didn't need the best of stories to be a fun and relaxing game. I'd totally faint if I had to watch the entire Lord of the Rings franchise back-to-back... it's long afaik. There's another question I want to ask, and that's what is your favourite part of Dungeons and Dragons?
Ah yeah, I used to talk a fair bit about Rain World on the Smeargles server, and Stardew Valley was probably the one sprite I posted that wasn't Pokemon related lol. Really I don't think a game needs to be outstanding in every aspect in order to be worthwhile as an experience. I find the gameplay loop fun, I've never really cared about the story in any Pokemon game, and honestly I'm burnt out on the usual Pokemon formula so experiencing a game like this that remixes the core elements while keeping just enough of the base game to make it recognisably Pokemon is really fun for me :) It's very long, thankfully I'd already seen the first movie prior so that cut down on watch time immensely but still. As for Dungeons and Dragons though, there are a lot of parts I really enjoy! The social aspect is a big part for me; it's fun talking to people about different parts of the game and sharing stupid moments from your campaigns, especially since different people come to D&D for different things. My main reason for starting it as a hobby was the roleplaying and character aspect - and I have a frankly absurd amount of backup characters I am never going to get through - but I enjoy.. basically all of it? The combat, the roleplaying, the exploration, the dungeon diving. Only part I hate is when the DM decides to pull out a puzzle lol. Think a lot of my enjoyment is due to my current DM, who is incredibly experienced and good at their job, but I also get a lot out of stuff not relating to my own campaigns like the lore of certain races/creatures :) Which is probably my absolute favourite part, since there's a lot of neat lore for just the core races and monsters of D&D (elves, dwarves, beholders, mindflayers, etc.) without getting into further expansions nor accounting for lore that DMs themselves can add
Very interesting. Pretty sure there's a lot of people in Smeargles that are very interested in Dungeons and Dragons so I hope they can relate Also seems like there's lots of pressure on the DM to ensure that the game goes smoothly and that you really get to explore things well. But hopefully you've played some fantastic sittings of the game. Now, before finishing off, do you have anything you want to add or ask?
Oh yeah there's a lot of pressure, but thankfully I've stumbled my way into a very good DM. Unfortunately a lot of your enjoyment of D&D is probably gonna come down to how well your DM can do their job - I've had mediocre DMs make the entire game feel like a slow, boring crawl. Have definitely had some amazing sittings though :) Final words are uhh shoutout to Todd Bonzalez and if you, The Reader, don't like share and comment every post I make, a Creature will appear outside your home :thumbsup:
Thank you very much for having me on, sorry for going on about sprite art so much lol. Hope you (and The Reader) have a good day, and good luck with the remaining interviews!
Glad having you and excited for the questions! (From Todd Bonzalez hopefully)
~ Please feel free to ask Albatross any questions by replying in this thread! ~