Fat Zed NES first drafts

Even though I said I'm gonna focus less on pixel art this month it surely didn't mean I'm not gonna do it at all. While working on a very exhausting and time consuming Lupo Alberto artwork I felt a need to do some short breaks to create something simpler and just fun in-between and so I tested my skills with NES graphics once again.

Besides of just attempting NES pixel art I also wanted to do something new with my characters. I thought it's kinda unfair that Mark got quite a lot of fat art while Zed got nothing so I decided to fix it and since I'm currently in a NES mood I decided to do it within NES limitations.

It was actually pretty tough to fit everything into 256 unique tile limit, if only I didn't have a goal to make it look like a cutscene where a lot of space must be freed for entire English alphabet with symbols and dialogue box design. And with Zed's body being so massive I really didn't have much field to maneuver. The couch graphics were much more detailed initially and I had to sacrifice a lot of tiles so now it looks much more vague and immersed into darkness but, well, it's not that important unlike the body.
Also Zed had a fupa and I had to remove it as well to free 8 tiles. Of course I still saved fupa version because hey, it's just a horny art and fupas are hot.

I didn't recreate it in NAW yet so I can't show it with all the authentic TV filters of Mesen emulator for now but I already turned it into a tile set because it's just a matter of two clicks so I can show you how tight it is, all I got left is only 2 free spots out of 256.

As you can see it also has a simple animated dialogue icon for Mark, didn't come up with any text for now but they should have a small dialogue about Zed's weight gain. In theory, the icon should be made of sprite graphics so it doesn't affect the 256 BG tile limit.

And as always, my wild imagination went out of control and now I want to turn this random idea into another sequence, urges like this are just impossible to resist when I'm working with weight gain or inflation concepts, so I guess I'm loading myself with another WIP again. But the good thing is I'm not gonna overcomplicate it with animations so it will be just a set of 5-6 still pictures which is much easier to do. Besides, I want to make it a properly interactive game ROM by using NES Maker instead of just a still image NES file but for this I need to study some tutorials which will happen only when I have enough time for this, so I might focus on finishing older WIPs instead for now.
I actually really need to get the hang of NES Maker because I want to recreate my first NES concepts as proper NES files with animation and sound as well before posting them publicly, I already know it's possible, I just need to spend some time on it.

Another thing I practiced here is classic NES fade-in/fade-out effect achieved through palette swapping since NES has only 56 colors and such effects can be only as smooth as this palette can allow. Looks pretty cool! Just in general I feel proud of how Zed's body shading turned out here, the shadow below his belly is a bit questionable and I might fix it later but overall it looks good.