dW

16 Bit Ninja

This one was probably the most fun of the designs to do for me, and yet probably the hardest. Before I did any designs this was the first one that came to my mind. I wanted to do a video game based one, perhaps an old school 8 bit or 16 bit game, but using the Opera Ninja as the main character. The design started simply with the illustration used as the header image. I decided to make some sort of pixellated matrix for the background and then make all images used within the design a reflection of what it might look like if displayed in a SNES game. It is also the most conformant to what Fred had done before, mainly just replacing images rather than doing many structure alterations. Out of the three I’m probably most pleased with the first one (“Early Bird”), but this one like I said was the most fun to produce.

It was the hardest to produce because after I finished it and it was approved by Fred he privately messaged me stating that there was some sort of copyright dispute on the Opera Ninja and he couldn’t use it. For almost a month prior to his private message he had been showing it to everyone he could it seemed. The last one he showed it to knew of a copyright dispute… ouch. Fred asked me what I wanted to do, so naturally I went for something else. Fred suggested transforming him into a knight with a round red shield to symbolize security. It sounded like a great idea, but the background elements I had in the header image would have to be changed as bamboo doesn’t really fit a medieval setting, at least an European medieval setting. I thought of a samurai and procured some illustrations done in a style similar to how the Opera Ninja was initially done. He rejected those because they were too similar stylistically to what the disputed ninja. By that time I was sort of annoyed with the entire samurai idea, feeling it really didn’t fit.

About a half-week later I started sketching in a notebook a sort of cute ninja guy just for the heck of it. I do this from time to time. I just start doodling to see what comes out, and a squat ninja with more realistic ninja clothing appeared. I showed that to Fred, and he approved it. I set off to draw it and sort of lost interest in the uniform, so I put him in the red body suit with a white O on his chest. I first created the illustration used in the Opera ad and then created its sprite. I just wish Fred would have told me that they were going to change the statement in the Opera ad or I would have changed it.

There shouldn’t be a copyright dispute on this little guy, and Opera’s welcome to use him however they please if they want. Meanwhile he’ll be trying to do battle with Explorer Hats and Firefoxes.