Designing Artemis: a thread

(1/??) For those of you who’ve been following me for a while now, you’re probably familiar with this guy right here. I created him around April 10th of 2019 (possibly earlier), but I’ve never explained the process behind actually designing him.

(2/??) LATE 2018
Unfortunately I don’t have any surviving art of his original design, as around March of 2019 I threw out all my previous art. However, I do have two mock up sketches of this design; One from July of last year, and one seen in the first tweet of this thread.

(3/??) This design I don’t really consider to be Artemis, but this character was definitely a precursor to what I’d eventually make.

(4/??) MARCH-APRIL 2019
In February(ish) of 2019, I found out about a software called NESmaker, which is a game engine designed for making homebrew NES games easier. I had an idea for a game I wanted to make using it, and in March or April I designed a character for it.

(5/??) The original drawing is lost, but thankfully I managed to find a pic of it on my old DeviantArt account. It was posted on April 10th, 2019, but the drawing itself could predate it by a week or two. I hosted a poll on Amino, asking what I should name him. Most of the names-

(6/??) were run of the mill cool/edgy names like Razor or Flare or stuff like that, but someone suggested one name in particular that stuck out to me, that being Artemis. That name’s stuck around ever since. The design itself was made with the NES’s limitations in mind, and uses-

(7/??) only three colors. I also wanted it to be simple enough to be easily recognizable from a small 8x8 pixel sprite, which was the smallest sprite size possible on the NES. This way I could have a wider variety of sprites while not taking up too much graphics space.

(8/??) APRIL-MAY 2019
I iterated on this design further, and also toyed around with the idea of him having floating hands and feet like Rayman or some Kirby enemies. The jacket he had was also replaced with a cloak, allowing his torso to be seen.

(9/??) JUNE 2019
(Note: Many of these drawings don’t have dates, so I’m having to guess when they were made.)
His torso was designed to resemble the front of the NES, with a cartridge slot and controller ports.

(10/??) I had a very vague idea as to what the story of this game would be. Basically, Artemis wakes up in the basement of a dilapidated house, presumably the place he was built. The world he inhabits has been overrun by robots, and he sets out to put an end to their reign.

(11/??) JUNE-JULY 2019
I continued to mess around with different designs, and around this time I also ditched his sword in favor of him using projectile based attacks.

(12/??) Around this time his limbs just sorta phased in and out of existence, as I wasn’t sure what exactly to do with him. In the meantime I also fleshed out his story, and created a bunch of characters that I won’t get into in this thread because this is only about Artemis.

(13/??) JULY-OCTOBER 2019
I was quite happy with how he looked, but at this point I had realized that this project of mine was far too ambitious, especially for something on the NES. While his game was dead in the water, he had also been freed from the limitations of the console-

(14/??) I planned to develop for, meaning I had free range to do whatever I wanted with him.

(15/??) NOVEMBER 2019-APRIL 2020
During this period i began to experiment heavily, and gave him a more humanlike appearance. I also toyed around with the idea of him having extendable arms, which carried over into all future designs.

(16/??) MAY 2020
Around this time I had the idea of him having some kind of time stopping ability, and I wanted to have it be part of his design. I did it by giving him this hat + cape combo, the silhouette of which resembling an hourglass.

(17/??) This is kinda unrelated but I wanted to share it anyway. This is a sketch @margomundo on Instagram did of him around this time.

(18/??) JUNE 2020
His outfit didn’t change much from his previous design, however I shifted the focus of his abilities towards electricity. With this, I also changed his arms from extendable ones to being segmented, with each of these segments resembling those lithium batteries-

(19/??) that are found in some remotes. In addition, the brim of his hat also kinda doubles as a unibrow. Slightly cursed, but I thought it was an interesting thing to do nonetheless.

(20/??) JULY 2020
Throughout July I started testing out different looks again, and gave him a hood again after nearly 8 months. I also had the idea of giving him segmented legs as well, but this didn’t last very long. However around this time I gave him this metal plating on his-

(21/??) cheeks, which also carried over into future redesigns.

(22/??) JULY 2020
He’s a furry now. I don’t quite remember exactly why I did this, but he’s been this way ever since.

(23/??) AUGUST 2020
Revisited the hat idea from June, except this time I made it look like an electrical plug, with pins hanging down from either side. His arms also have + and - signs on them, however this isn’t present in any future designs.

(24/??) OCTOBER 2020
I replaced his cape with a scarf. Around this time I also had the idea of giving him long, rabbit-like ears.

(25/??) NOVEMBER 2020
I made this short “comic” (idk if you can really call it that) poking fun at people who complain about people who talk about Christmas in November, but in doing so I unintentionally laid the groundwork for his current design.

(26/??) NOVEMBER 2020 - NOW
At long last, here we are. This is how he looks now, and I intend on keeping him like this from now on. I have an idea for what I want to do with him, but that won’t be for a while.

(27/27) ok this is the end of the thread sorry for making y’all suffer through reading this ok bye