Steve Makes Art

There's occasionally technology in Mega Man games, usually on the Wily Capsules, that let a robot or device go completely invisible. Ghost Man was born from me thinking it would be funny to give this technology to a Robot Master, and then cover it with a blanket. It would create a nice illusion of a traditional sheet ghost.

They would work in a haunted house, basically being both an employee and a prop at the same time. Their torso can extend to make it look like they are flying around, and the (unweaponized) Ghost Wave could interact with other props in the attraction, like knocking something over while they distracts guest to get a cheap scare.

Ghost Man doesn't like their body being visible. If this project ever became an actual game, Ghost Man would be weak to Paint Man because it would prevent them from going invisible.

Because the invisibility made me put this one together a bit differently, here are some bonus pics:

pose, invisible (how they normally look)

pose, visible

neutral, visible

So, funny story: This was supposed to be finished months ago, since wrapping up Paint Man gave me some motivation again, but then Mega Man: Dual Override got announced out of nowhere, so OF COURSE I had to drop everything to participate in the Robot Master Design Contest (didn't make it past round 1 but my guy was kinda crap lol. I guess that makes him SBN-009 but I don't consider him part of this project. I'll clean up and post my entry some other time, after I'm done with these guys). And then I got distracted. Whoops.

There's a lot I could say about this one.

I wanted to do a paint-themed robot master but I didn't want to just make a generic "artist" character with, like, a beret and paintbrush. The big breakthrough I had was making the design based on paint styles, rather than making it just an artist. That way he could be "Paint" Man, and not just "Art" Man.

This then created the problem of "how do I stylize the character to look like real life painting styles while also still (kind of) looking like a Mega Man character?" The solution was to use styles that could be simplified to work in the style I wanted the project to be in, like Cubisim, Geometric Abstraction, De Stijl, etc.

I didn't really have a good solution for the rest of the body without getting too abstract with it. I totally could, but then it wouldn't really fit what I was going for with this project so I settled on just stylizing the head (went with Picasso since thats easy to tell at a glance, and its cartoony enough that it can still read as a Mega man character). In universe I think his head is just made entirely of paint and he can make it look like whatever he wants.

Anyway, cans of paint can be installed in his chest, which he can then mix into new colors (for example, putting red and yellow can let him dispense red, yellow, orange, and any variation of those three). So long as he has a good supply of a few basic colors, he can create virtually any color. It comes out of his finger but he usually paints with a brush.

I mostly wanted to try and make a robot with an unusual amount of eyes. The first draft had just one eye, but I couldn't figure out how to make it look good so I went with three eyes instead.

Part of what makes this project fun is trying to make concepts that feel like they could work in the Mega Man universe. Mega Man 5 already established that there is a gravity research lab, so surely there’s experimental research in there. Psi Man isn’t really psychic, he’s just using gravity manipulation. The researchers thought it would be cheeky to make him look psychic themed.

Imagine researching for this project to see both canon and fan-made robot masters to get an idea of what has already been done. Imaging getting attached to a design and committing to the project. Now imagine stumbling upon this April Fools post from the development of Mega Man 11, only to find that your specific idea had technically been done before. While I have other themes down the pipeline that have already been done by other artists, I feel mine are unique enough takes on the concepts I looked at. Whip Man, on the other hand, is a tad too similar to the joke post for me to normally be comfortable with. If I found out about April Fools Whip Man earlier, I probably would have done something else, but I got too attached to my version of Whip Man to do anything about it. TLDR: sometimes people just stumble upon the same ideas. It stings to know I didn’t get there first, but maybe it means that the idea was good, since someone else also thought of it?

Anyways, Whip Man came from wanting to make a Robot Master that would give a special weapon that would functionally just be the Vampire Killer from Castlevania. I originally wanted to lean into that, but design-wise it quickly turned more into “Belmont Man,” with less emphasis on the whip, so I went with the cowboy asthetic instead.

Design notes:

I'm back and it didn't take me over a year this time 🫠

Brass Man was mostly inspired by those images of people wearing parts of tubas and other brass instruments as if they were armor. It felt pretty natural to make a music themed robot master, especially with how important music is to the Mega Man series.

His design took longer than I thought it would - I originally wanted to have more instruments/parts of instruments sticking out of him but he ended up looking more like a Dr. Seuss character than a Mega Man character. I didn't want to make him too simple either so I think what I ended up with is a nice balance. Shading in the posed image was a bit of a pain but I think it came out alright.

Design Notes:

I thought it would be a fun creative exercise to make a set of Mega Man Robot Masters! Basically just coming up with a theme for a robot, thinking about its function, and then drawing it in that official style. 

You might have noticed that this one is number 8. I drew Shroom Man first because I’m a tad out of practice and his design was the easiest out of the set I came up with (Plus it might help motivate me to finish the set quicker since I hate leaving things unfinished. By posting the last one first I feel the need to do the others).

Anyways, Shroom Man! He grows mushrooms! He spreads spores! Most of his design comes from wanting to draw less humanoid robots, since I have a bunch of those. Also I wanted to have a design that counters one of the other robots in the project, and having a red, mushroom-themed guy that throws a projectile that bounces along the ground felt appropriate (hint? maybe??).