Gauntlet's Guide to Gauntlet Himself and Sprite Judging!

Well, I have decided to write a small editorial about....MYSELF! Why? Well I was remembering back to my sprite judging days and got nostalgic and in a self-bio sort of mood. This is more about frustrations in Lysekoid's sprite judging than anything else.

Well, I guess I'll start with the very first thing I did on the net. I made a huge poster with sprites of all the MM RMs (as can be seen in the image gallery) and sent that to Death Angel. I even made the first MMX2 sprites on the net! Not that they were anything spectacular....just scans outta the Nintendo Power magazine. But Hell, their better than nothing at all! Death Angel seemed pretty impressed so, I gave him quite a few "sprites".

Then I went to Megaman Masters. Death Angel was ok, but he didn't update alot, so out I was. Basically my job at Megaman Masters was (and sometimes still is) to find rare roms and come up for things to do on the site. Nightmare Zero is a pretty cool guy and I still help him out every once and a while by feeding him rare roms I find or giving him suggestions.

Then I worked on Lysekoid and sprite judging. I originally went to put up some rare sprites I made (I figured I wanted to share stuff, my greed finally subsiding), but I made so much stuff that, when Lysekoid's site changed focus, I became his right-hand man! I still dunno how I managed to do so much, but now I can finally talk about the sprite judging thing.

Personally, I dunno if Lysekoid's site is commin back.......it's been quite a while. But the gimmick was you send up a sprite and we (including myself) judge the sprite (bronze, silver, and gold at the beginning, later to include more trophies). The thing was insane. Some people question my ability to judge sprites (after all, spriting is not totally what I do), but out of all of us, only I and Lyse actually judged the damn things on time! Months went by while we waited for the others to judge a sprite. And then they gave out stupidly high awards (if only you could see those sprites....). Lyse decided to make it only me and him judging the sprites. He said I made good points (I am an artist after all) and that I was the only one he could count on to actually submit a report.

I don't think many people liked me after my judgments. I'm pretty frickin' harsh. But, perhaps, they should have read some of my other remarks before sending stuff to me. I only bash sprites I don't feel worthy of submission (generally the 20 remakes of Zero we got per month) except once when there was a misunderstanding on my part and Doctor Valisio felt really insulted. I amended my judgment after he wrote me.

I don't think people quite get the sprite judging concept. It's not "show off your sprites and get pointers". It's "get an award based on quality". If I don't feel your sprite is up to par, then it doesn't get an award at all and it furthermore gets thrashed by me! And I don't feel bad for dissin sprites that people make if they don't read what I said about other sprites before them. I can't even remember how many people sent me a remade Zero.......what the hell do they expect? "Nice colors - here's a gold!" Morons! I went easy on the few earlier ones thinking people'd learn from the mistakes of others, but BOY WAS I WRONG! And it's not like it's personal. I don't get the names of the sprites I judge.

"It's a fool who doesn't learn from his mistakes, but it is a damn idiot who doesn't learn from the mistakes of others!" From Third Rock. THAT'S how I feel when I see a recolour someone sends to us for judging. It's not like I didn't say before that "recolours will not get high - ever". It shouldn't be a surprise when I diss a recolour A damn recolour is not worthy of even being considered for any award! And when you get another recolour of Zero or Bass.......you hold nothing back. Hell, Zephrioth X is STILL, after a year or two, mad at me for not giving him higher than a silver. Apparently he thinks I actually know what sprites were made by him! He also got pissed when I slipped and called a Zero remake a Bass remake. Well, excuse me, mister perfect! Like a remake even deserves ANY award AT ALL! Sue me for a Freudian slip. 96% of the time, I was bang-on on who the reconstructions were, and when I wasn't I amended my judgments. If yer mad at me because you felt you got misjudged, remember Lysekoid has the last call. He can disregard any judgment if he feels I'm totally wrong (which he has once or twice, he usually doesn't feel I'm wrong all the time). Our judgments usually are the same even if I am rude in my critiques.

Apparently there is some rumors to how great a spriter I actually am because of these awards. I haven't exactly exercised my spriting muscles on anything really challenging. All I am really interested in doin are some game-sized Gauntlet sprites and some Gauntlet CDs and Gauntlet's costume is not hard to do. Perhaps one day I WILL feel like challenging myself. I am the judge mostly because I actually get the job done. Lysekoid hasn't fired me which means he still thinks I'm an, at the least, competent judge. Maybe people should consider that before they start claiming the awards are invalid because I am not famous for my sprites.

If you want tips for getting high awards for your sprites here's a few. Make it totally original, drawn by yourself. Make it big. Make it have a good coloring job. Follow these steps and you will get a good award. DO NOT send re-colors or remakes They are good practice, but not good for awards. DO NOT make your sprites tiny, size them to be at least as tall as a 64-bit X. DO NOT send sprites of lower quality than 64-bit. It is a 64-bit sprite contest. DO NOT send an overload of non-Megaman characters, this is a MEGAMAN sprite contest. DO NOT name your sprite Zero_something_X. There are too many Zero_something_X's out there. Although it doesn't effect the actual award you get, it does effect my personal respect for your naming abilities and the type of review you'll get. And please, GOD, read some of the reviews I gave out to previous entries. I try to give out fair reviews to help people spot problems that may occur in a custom sprite, but many people don't bother with reading. Problems often include, shading, awkward poses, sprites being stilff-as-a-board, and bad color combos. Please, to high heaven, read the reviews! You'll know what to look for! You'll know what we judge on! You, yourself, can do some of the guesswork. See the sprite on the top of the award? THAT is what your sprite is compared to! A very simple system. An effective system. Work with the damn system!

Well, getting back to my net-history, I joined this team when Skullman started. I didn't want to be webmaster at first, but was forced into it to get my epilogues on the page. Our team marks when the MM team trend got out of hand. And now we sometimes get the "it's just another Megaman team" treatment because of the sheer abundance of teams. Hopefully, I can get this page out of the team circle of links and make it famous. I have great hopes for that.

I am Gauntlet and this has been Gauntlet's guides.