[E19 Spoilers] in which ame says all the stuff she accidentally said on the server earlier again (Patreon)

so, one thing that i have promised folks since the literal beginning of time is that the champions of our online league back in the day would become the trainers of in-game victory road. ...to be honest when i said that, i didn't actually think that the project would get anywhere close to this point, but... here we are!

so we've been talking in the discord server about this evening and to answer a couple questions pre-emptively: yes, they will retain their league completion quotes from the old site (god bless wayback machine), although they will be altered to be world-appropriate. and... 

sprites?? all of the old champions had unique sprites thanks to our site shop system that paired with the trainer cards back in the day. so would they retain those?
unfortunately, no.
a small part of that is for practicality, part of it is for context, but most of it is because of what those old sprites looked like.

let's explore.

this was our very first league champion and former site mod, saya. incidentally, she beat the league before the site shop existed so her card just had dahlia from the 4th gen battle frontier on it instead, which we obviously cannot just use. this was her most recent custom sprite instead, and unfortunately she has angel wings and a halo, which is not exactly world-appropriate. ...a solid handful of folks have wings in fact. it doesn't work.

this one is former mod dark desire. and because of the black background, and everything in it except the cat being black, i have no idea what is going on in this sprite. and i was the one who made all these pieces. he appears to have two swords. why does anyone need two swords in a pokemon world? he also has magical fire powers. that's a nope.

here we have former mod fezzdog since i guess only former mods beat the league ?? fezzdog may or may not have the same magical fire powers as dark desire, but at the very least his hand is on fire and possibly also his body. so he should probably work on that. also, he is wearing vash the stampede's coat. this is a copyright disaster.
also the fez looks stupid. don't @ me.

now in comparison to the last few sprites which have entirely too much going on, here we have a man who was determined to run through the entire league and world wearing nothing but his underwear, not even hair:

thank you not-former-mod cloud for the start contrast. now please put on pants. 

finally, for further contrast, i present the one sprite that i would actually love to use:

this is also-not-former-mod duster. he has a saxophone. personally i think an epic sax man infiltrating victory road would be hilarious. the sprite is even down to earth enough to use conceptually. i didn't think much of it at the time, but in retrospect, i appreciate duster.

anyway the point is.... yeah it's not gonna work. there are additional issues too. all of those poses should seem familiar, because it's the same poses as the protagonists... i guess the female pose doesn't show but that's the same too. the original protag characters were just based off of popular sprite shop designs, so it was all the same template. but for encountering them in the game, it'd be a mite awkward to run into someone with the exact same body and pose.

...and then there's the context i mentioned. 

in order to make up for several logistical issues with incorporating the former champions into the game, such as why are they there and not actually helping anything, and how are there all these champions around if the protag is supposed to be the first of the rebuilt reborn league, i have taken what seemed like the only logical option available to me,
and killed everyone.

...well, whether or not they're actually dead, the version of them that will be fought in victory road will just be spirits of their former selves. your job, per a sidequest, is to find them, fight them, and free them from the mortal plane. gotta exorcise 'em all.

so, i spent some time in the last day or two making their trainer graphics since i suddenly realized that was a thing i would need to do.

here is for the guys:

the spirits are from a somewhat older time so they look like typical rpg travelers. you might never guess it but this is just an edit of the armor knight set that's appeared in titania's gym. i basically redid everything except? the legs? and the shoulder piece... to the point i'm not really sure why i even used that as a base. but i did. so there.

and for the girls:

...there were only three female champions in the reborn league and frankly i'm not even sure if one of them still identifies that way so i'll need to check on that. but for the girls of the group i actually edited one of their existing custom sprites after all... although it wasn't a sprite shop sprite like the others. it was this:

this was a sprite that former mod sapphire commissioned me for a long time ago, and so it replaced the custom one on her card. but, since she's one of the wandering spirit champions anyway, i figured it wouldn't hurt to make it more applicable for the game given that it was my work in the first place.

and thus, we finish.
...well i still gotta make the overworlds for them but let's be real, who cares about that.
not this girl.