Derp? On April Fool's?

     Meet Derpzee. This pony is very clumsy, but has great potential. Think of her as a mix between Derpy from MLP, and Slaking or Magikarp from Pokemon because that's what I thought of when designing her. There's nothing set in stone about Derpzee just yet, but I just had to share something silly for April Fool's Friday.

Hope you look forward to meeting her in the final game.  :p

Derpzee 

   

Example Moves: Twister | Derp | Thunderbolt | Chaotic Dance
Ability:  Clumsy |  Contact POW may double at the cost of recoil damage.

     Derpzee is a ditzy and bubbly little cupid pony that can't fully grasp her true power. Being an Air/Chaos class pony with an Air/Surge ultra form, she specializes in a variety of weather-based moves and tricky Status strategies. She's based off the MLP fandom lovechild Derpy, the cross-eyed, muffin loving mailmare of Ponyville. Now that I'm looking at her, I clearly had some subconcious influence from the design of Dinky, a character MLP fans believe is Derpy's daughter. The frizzy charred hair come from wanting her to look like she's played around with lightning bolts recently because this pony knows quite a few electrical moves.

     Her signature low level move Derp is a lot like Pokemon's Splash, but it has a rare chance of unleashing the strongest Surge Attack in the game doing massive damage. A risky, chaotic, joke move that suits her perfectly available right at the start.

I started by looking at the Filly Derpy Desktop Ponies sprite on the lower left.
Then I started mixing it with parts from existing ponies to make the pose I wanted.

     As for her design, I wanted a grey/gold color scheme but felt like the wings should be more noticeable than Simber's to make sure players can see she's an Air-class pony first and cute weirdo second. I wanted her smaller than the other ponies to play up her cuteness, so I looked up Derpy Filly stuff until I came across a sprite that looked like a good reference point. From there I mashed other Battle Gem Pony parts together until I got the basic pose, hairdo, and colors I wanted. I ran into the same problem I had with Orscina's early sprite in deciding what colors to do.

Choosing the eye color was pretty tricky, but anything aside from gold broke the viewer's eyeflow.
Eyes with separate colors ended up being the best choice. It adds some personality and really sells her chaotic look.

     It's also really hard to show crossed-eyes with so few pixels. I found any eyes that didn't match her gem and hair color was too distracting but making the irises different colors worked nicely. To have it make sense in-game, observant players will see that she swaps her iris colors when she blinks. The gold and desaturated purple colors just felt right for her but normal wings would look too plain. In the end, I decided her personality should come through her animations.

Color test against background. Making the colors flip gives a lore excuse for
simply flipping the combat sprites instead of drawing each side.

     Derpzee will have a thousand yard stare, wandering mismatched eyes, and goofy little wings that flap faster than most. She'll also make a cute, dopey face and have little bubbles appear around her during a blinking animation. I'm even considering having her ultra form flying upside down to emphasize the craziness. Like everything else, she's still a work-in-progress. Look forward to seeing her in an upcoming build.