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Member of the Month ~ April 2018 ~ With the god of the foregrounds

Watch as two men blatantly presume of wealth by showing his Nitro off in this interview. Absolutely disgusting.
Erik: Joining me today, we have PercentN, talented graphics person who was a participant on the 2017 ExGFX contest, where he placed 3rd in the Background category and won in the Foreground category; and he's also a pretty skilled hacker, working with Team Välfärd in Extra Mario World. How are you today?
PercentN: I'm doing well!
PercentN: I have a couple days off of school right now to relax and get back to some personal projects, so todays a good day so far
Erik: That's great.

Erik: Let's get into our main topic, graphics. What got you into drawing and pixel art?
PercentN: Honestly, it was probably when I first started getting into SMW hacking that i figured I wanted to draw stuff. This was between 2008 (before I officially made an account) and 2009. Back then there wasn't really that many custom graphics on the site as we didn't have that many graphics artists or spriters, so i took it upon myself to try and teach myself how to make custom graphics for SMW
PercentN: Obviously my stuff wasn't any good at first.
PercentN: I was about 13-14 at that time and have never really drawn that much, aside from art class
PercentN: But luckily there was a guy named LunarDrake on the site who was one of the better pixel artists at the time, and he took the time to give me some tips on doing pixel art
PercentN: that was around 2010, but it really helped me figure out my own techniques and inspired me to look up more on how to draw
PercentN: I still browse around looking for any other resources that could help me improve, which i think is key along with practice to getting better at drawing
Erik: It's always good having a mentor.
Erik: What's the style you prefer to draw your stuff in? Say, cartoonish, realistic...
PercentN: Hmm good question.
PercentN: Before I would definitely lean towards realistic, but it's honestly a lot of work trying to do that
PercentN: After joining Team Välfärd, I practiced drawing "simpler" graphics since that's what we needed for our hack
PercentN: and by simpler i mean I use a lot less colors than i did before, as i practiced more hue shifting and contrast to provide better color depth rather than using say 5 shades of green, or brown
PercentN: And honestly, I feel a lot more comfortable drawing now than before
PercentN: it's also easier for my team to work with less complicated graphics since they don't have to struggle trying to figure out what goes where haha
PercentN: And since most of the stuff I draw goes to this hack or one of my other personal projects, I'd say my style at the moment is a little blend of both depending on the situation, but leans more towards cartoonish i guess you could say
Erik: Good to hear you can adapt styles that easily.
Erik: When it comes to backgrounds vs foregrounds, which resource is the easier one to draw in your opinion?
PercentN: To me, foregrounds are easier to draw. They're always the first thing i do
PercentN: and that's also due mostly to having to reuse foregrounds in different ways
PercentN: so i just draw backgrounds when i need them
PercentN: I also draw foregrounds faster than i do backgrounds
PercentN: the last background i drew took a whole week to make, having to adjust it, take references and whatnot.
PercentN: But I definitely am happy with the way it turned out
Erik: Yeah backgrounds sound like a ton of effort.
Erik: What advice or reccomendation would you give to any starting pixel artist?
PercentN: I have a couple pieces of advice.
PercentN: 1. Honestly, just keep practicing. What worked for me when I first started out was finding some pixel art that I liked, and try to replicate their style and try to figure out why the colors are placed where they are. Obviously, don't claim that stuff as your own. Do not steal other people's work. Doing this is really just for learning purposes. It won't help you get better if you just copy something without studying it. (Just like in school Kappa)
PercentN: Though, that alone probably won't be enough if you have no experience with drawing. So probably a lot of things like terminology and techniques won't make sense to you. It didnt to me, so I would also say:
PercentN: 2. show off your art no matter what, take criticism and ask questions to those more experienced.
PercentN: Over the years SMWC has attracted a lot of talented artists, as well as having artists that have learned and grown right here. So use us as a resource, don't be afraid to ask for help.
PercentN: If you don't feel comfortable with the first point, the first part of practicing still applies, as well as point 2
PercentN: You can't get better at something if you just give up after one try or don't keep doing reps
PercentN: So try your best not to lose motivation. Make what you like, but don't be stubborn when it comes to constructive criticism
PercentN: If you require additional help, you could honestly also google a question and it could point you to a forum like Pixel Joint that has tons of great info on many things that beginners struggle with like palettes
PercentN: just always remain curious, there's always more room for improvement

Erik: You've participated a bunch of times in the ExGFX contests we have. What has been your experience in them?
PercentN: In the past, there werent that many participants.
PercentN: Actually wait
PercentN: I think my first contest was actually only 3 years ago in 2015
PercentN: There werent any contests back when i started, just mosts and C3
PercentN: But I definitely did have a good time my first few times
PercentN: Its good to see more and more people join these contests each year!
PercentN: Its a small contest relative to the amount of participants in say vldc or cldc
PercentN: But its honestly inspiring to see thr number of participants grow
PercentN: I like that the contests are themed. Its easier both for participants and judges by giving participants a defined goal and giving the judges a way to uniformly score everyones graphics
PercentN: I hope to see the contest grow more. I hope some of the readers are inspired to join, its a lot of fun doing these things
PercentN: You can remove the first part if you want haha
Erik: im leaving it
PercentN:
Erik: In the future, do you see yourself helping in the judging of one of those contests?
PercentN: Yea i could see myself judging a contest one day.
PercentN: They are a lot of fun to participate in tho
PercentN: I guess it would depend on whether or not i know the theme ahead of time
PercentN: It would also depend on when it takes place and if i have classes or an internship. So who knows
Erik: Do you also enjoy participating in our other contests, or do you just enter the graphics one?
PercentN: I have entered other contests in the past, but I find myself only having time to do the graphics one as Im not always available to make
PercentN: I do hope to enter maybe cldc one day
PercentN: maybe ill learn some asm before the next one, who knows
PercentN:
Erik: Do it. Learn the ASMs.

Erik: I'll move on to hacks in general. You mentioned you're a member of Team Välfärd, which makes Extra Mario World and probably some other thingies too. What got you in there?
PercentN: Von Fahrenheit was looking for a graphics artist
PercentN: i dont exactly remember which thread it was, but he had some really cool stuff he made
PercentN: He had the giant mech suit from MMX and a few other things, so maybe it was a C3 thread
PercentN: and i remember people commenting on how great the ASM work was, but the graphics needed some help
PercentN: so i reached out to him in the thread and offered the help him out
PercentN: It turned out that we had a lot of the same goals for what we wanted to do in smw hacking
PercentN: we actually had a lot of the same exact ideas, which was a little scary haha
PercentN: I made a couple things for him to show my skillz and here we are!
PercentN: I'm currently the background artist for Team Välfärd
PercentN: I used to do both sprites and backgrounds, but we decided we could get a lot more work done if we brought on someone to do sprites
PercentN: so we recruited Eminus and had him make a couple things as well
PercentN: It's been a blast working with these guys. Usually you see collabs fall apart but we've made sure to keep this thing together and we've been making progress the past few years
PercentN: and dont worry, we have a schedule and tons of things planned out for you guys, so stay tuned
Erik: Great to hear you guys have everything sorted out. Organization is key.
Erik: Regarding Extra Mario World, what are you guys' plan with this hack, and can you show us some stuff you have contributed with?
PercentN: As Von Fahrenheit said, we are aiming to make the best ROM hack of all time! At the moment, we're really just making the assets for the game. One of the coolest things i think we have is working Co-op. We plan on having about 6 playable characters. We currently have 3/6, them being: Mario (nothing to say that you don't already know), Kadaal a koopa whose home and tribe have pretty much been wiped out, and Leeway the golden rex who as his name suggests is different from all the other rexes.
PercentN: The player could also choose what difficulty they would like to play on
PercentN: enemy health and boss mechanics also do change depending on what difficulty you play on
PercentN: We also have everyone's favorite thing: Custom bosses!
PercentN: we just put some gifs of a revamped version of one of the bosses in our thread if you haven't checked it out yet!
PercentN: and as for some stuff i have contributed:
PercentN: this is the latest bg i made
PercentN: this is the one that I mentioned earlier that took me about a week to make
PercentN: I believe we showed this off before, but I also made the level for this bg https://i.imgur.com/KhuB2LF.gif
PercentN: I've made quite a few changes to it, but it is definitely one of the better levels that I've made
PercentN: theres also this which i don't think we've used just yet
PercentN: this should be the most recent stuff that I've made for now
Erik: That all looks pretty great! Good luck with the project.
Erik: A bit further into personal projects, do you have any individual hacks?
PercentN: At the moment I do not have any personal hacks just some stuff i do here and there to practice level design.
PercentN: I did have something planned to try and make when I get better at asm
PercentN: but one of my classes provided a good opportunity to make a game and get a grade for it
PercentN: and i had a bunch of assets that I could use for it
PercentN: so I decided to go and do that instead. Ill probably go back and make that hack I was planning on making, but as for now the only thing im working on is that project for my class
Erik: Well, good luck with that!
PercentN: thanks!

Erik: I'll now move into the site in general. How did you find out about SMW Hacking and SMWCentral?
PercentN: I think i found out about smw hacking through a kaizo mario video on youtube tbh
PercentN: and that led me to smwc through a bunch of google searching, where I lurked for a couple years before actually making an account
PercentN: dumb fact about my name: PercentN comes from a code in AOL instant messenger (AIM) where putting %n in your profile puts the viewers handle in the text. i dont know why i did that, it was 9 years ago when i did that haha
Erik: Being in this site for that long of a time, what are your thoughts on it, and on the community?
PercentN: The site has definitely come a long way. I may not always be super active on the site but i always finding myself check in to the site even during class haha
PercentN: Even though I was gone for a long time, after coming back it felt like i didnt miss a beat. I was welcomed back with familiar faces. Everyone on this site is great
PercentN: Its also nice that we moved to Discord
PercentN: i use it so much to talk and play games with my friends and also to join servers for games that I play. I havent touched IRC in like 5 years so i definitely approved of the move
PercentN:
Erik: Alright, that should do for the main portion of the interview. Any words you want to add before getting into the random questions?
PercentN: Do art.
PercentN: art is fun
PercentN: music, drawing, whatever. do you boo
Erik: lol i disagree

Erik: Anyway into them random questions! Favorite videogame?
PercentN: hmm thats a hard one
PercentN: id probably say pokemon
PercentN: Ive been playing all the games ever since i borrowed my sisters Red version
PercentN: too many good games to choose from tho tbh
Erik: Show us a random emoji from your seemingly giant collection, Mr discord nitro
PercentN:
Erik:
Erik: Favorite staff member?
PercentN: hmmmm
PercentN: the staff has changed so much since ive been here. lets see
PercentN: id probably say imamelia. They're also probably one of the staff members i interact with most
PercentN: and they also give good feedback on our hack
PercentN: #smw{:TUP:}
Erik: Favorite artist? Can be a music, painter, anything.
PercentN: jake kaufman. i love shovel knights sound track
Erik: Alright. Any finishing words?
PercentN: nope but here's an emoji instead
PercentN:
Erik:
Erik: Well, that concludes the interview. Many thanks to you for allowing me your time, and to the audience, thanks for reading through this. Until the next one, goodbye!
PercentN:
PercentN: Thanks for the interview! It was fun going back in time.
Extra Mario lowkey the next Brutal Mario btw
Your layout has been removed.
Glad to see you're still rocking with those graphics. and you'd think the rock puns would end there LOL

Congrats!
Very nice interview.

Congrats for becoming MotM, PercentN.








Being honest, I didn't know much about you and your team before the C3 where you show the progress of your team hack, which I instantly liked because it's noticeable that you are putting a lot of offort into it. I really liked this sprite (it's funny and very polished at the same time) Then I looked into your ExGFX Contest submission and was very impressed because they're really good.

Good luck for you and your team hack, and congrats!
Layout made by MaxodeX
2021 TRENO vibe check thread
Beautiful interview with a beautiful boi many thumbs up #smrpg{:O}

allow shy guy emojis in post footers you cowards!
Quote
Erik: Favorite staff member?
PercentN: id probably say imamelia.

Awww...

Congratulations on getting Member of the Month. I've always liked your graphics, and you seem like a nice person. And Extra Mario World looks really cool so far, so props for contributing to that.

(Also, I try to do art in the form of music, but I'm not always very productive with it.)

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.
That was a delightful interview.
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Aya Shameimaru, Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery
congrats percentN!! you're definitely one of the stronger pixel artists on the site and its always nice to see ur work. Well deserved!!
ask me if i give a f*ck...