Update #13 - Upcoming Releases, Week-in-Review + Behind-the-Scenes work! (Patreon)

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Like last week, the past week's releases will be posted at the bottom of this post. For now, let's talk about some upcoming stuff.

First off, Mega Fearow will be next week's Mega release on Tuesday. Before that, Spearow/Fearow will have a much needed update coming for them on Monday.

This Thursday is a continuation of today's Lavender Tower event. As many can guess, we'll be seeing another 2-set Moemon on that day, as well as 2 trainers (notable ones, not basic ones).

After conquering Lavender Tower, and rescuing a certain Moemon, you'll be rewarded with a MoeFlute! It's.. it's a PokeFlute. And you know what a PokeFlute does?

Well, Saturday you'll be able to use the MoeFlute to awaken a very thicc Moemon!

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There's a few other things coming this week, but nothing to announce yet. Overall, this week is a bit lacking compared to other weeks, but that is because of a few unfortunate setbacks (computer breaking and having to reinstall windows, getting sick for a couple of days, and my phone breaking/having to waste time driving around going to 6 different stores looking for something decent as a replacement..), all in all we've been majorly pushed back on release.

That said, here are some positive things to note: First, I've laid out the release schedule for the next two months, so I can better plan releases, as well as organize things better on my end - not going to go into too much detail, but making these cards is more than just the end result, there's a lot of back end, and digging through tons of folders to get everything done takes a lot of time out of the day.

On average, a 3-set family of cards (plus their Shiny versions) takes about 3-4 hours to make. The card fronts are done first, which usually takes about 10 minutes for all 6 (3 regular, 3 shiny).

Let's take Fearow, as an example, as I am making her now. We start by opening Gimp, and opening the "000 Base.png" card front.

This is the recently updated card front, which features the Moemon logo in the upper right hand side, and the Pokeball has been lowered to overlap the text box. It looks better, and I plan to update all card fronts to this, but for now, only for newer cards.

Then we grab the Fearow sprite sheet. We drop it on top, add an alpha channel to the layer if necessary, then crop out the background and the unnecessary Shiny sprite.

We go ahead and merge that layer, then select -> cut -> paste -> and move the sprites (individually) to their box.

Sometimes, a sprite's front is too big (on the left), because sometimes it's bigger than 64x64. It shouldn't be, since that's the maximum size the FireRed rom can hold, and I deliberately made the box 64x64 to ensure all sprites fix.. I've just been too lazy to increase it to 65x65, because I'll have to move everything over, and screw that.

So if it's too big, I just make it fit, then erase any part sticking out. It usually only amounts to a few pixels, though, so it isn't noticeable.

After that, we put the name in.

I have a custom font, which I cannot remember where I got, but was just free online. I think it's Pokemon Black/White font, if you want to look it up.

I set the font size to 20, line up the # with the background grid so it's consistent with all other cards, and at this point it's basically done. Then I save it all as a .png, and we're good to go.

Usually.

Sometimes, I make a mistake and put the wrong # in, or I'll put #22 instead of #022, or spell the name wrong (Ninetails vs Ninetales), and fixing it is not as easy as opening it up and changing the text. I overlay the base card over it again, on a separate layer, and "erase" the bad text, and put the new text on. Then it's done.

Then I do the Shiny, which is basically the same process, but easier since all I have to do is drop the sprite sheet on top of the already existing card, edit out the non-Shiny version, and drag the shiny over the top of the box, matching it up exactly so that it's consistent.

Then I drag this little star over the top, and put it in the right-hand corner of the left-hand box:

This denotes a Shiny, so I don't have to put a new name. Maybe in the future I'll come up with something better, but for now I think this looks just fine.

SO, that's all just for the card fronts. Next week I'll go into more editing processes, but hopefully you get an idea how this all works - and hopefully you'll be inspired to do something similar!

Now for the week-in-review!

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Wednesday (10/2) - Shellder/Cloyster were released! Click here.

Thursday (10/3) - Erika was released! Click here.

Thursday (10/3) - Tangela/Tangrowth (+Shiny) were released! Click here.

Saturday (10/5) - Voltorb/Electrode (+Shiny) were released! Click here.

Sunday (10/6) - Grimer/Muk (+Shiny) were released! Click here.

And today...

Gastly, Haunter, Gengar, and Mega Gengar (+Shiny) were all released! Click here.

Hex Maniac Valerie was released! Click here.

And if you missed last week's update, click here!

That's all for today.

Card front's should be updated tomorrow - I'll post a notice when they are!

Have a great week!