i dub thee, SIR trainerthing (Patreon)

a couple nights ago i was thinking about how i was going to handle this new trainer class that i'll be having to add with E17, and if i was really going to have to sprite a full suit of armor. 

then i remembered i already had sprited a full suit of armor. 

those of you who were around before E16 might remember the sprite shop on the old site. it was basically a gaia-online sort of thing for pokemon trainer sprites, where you earned points from posting and then spent them on various outfit pieces for an auto-generated custom character sprite. it was pretty fresh tbh, and over time i sprited 1,000+ items for it (sounds like a lot-- but not quite). we decided to retire it because the site update didn't support that points system, and i never had time to add new items since i was always working on the game

anyway i remembered (!!!) that i probably had added armor items to the store at some point so i grabbed a model and started pecking through the files until i found them. boom. might clean it up a little at some point but it's not so bad this way.

the armor suit actually has a handful of different pieces. this was the base:

that pose should look familiar-- i made Kuro and Vero based off of this model and with other items from the sprite shop (Alice and Lucia were made the same way-- Ari and Deci were custom special tho). I'm shy to re-use the same pose, but I don't think it will be too noticeable to the average player.

This model looks pretty standard to Pokemon battle sprites, but I've actually mucked around with the whole thing quite a bit. I made a number of changes to proportions (especially around the face) to make room for more items, making the eyes bigger, waist slimmer, etcetc. Not that much of that matters when it's all under armor I guess.

here's a handful of pieces equipped:

Gloves, back arm, front leg, helmet

And the rest:

torso, front arm, back leg, boots

altogether:

then we just flip it to orient and give that arm something to do (the Ultra Ball was also a shop item so it already fit perfectly)

freest trainer sprite of my life tbh

it's an extra bonus that most of this armor was designed directly based on titania's anyway (people wanted her armor thing as an accessory, then later it was expanded). seems like it's come full  circle.

now rise.