For All Time: A CT Tribute

IT'S FINISHED!

Haha, my secret little obsession. I have never worked this hard or this long on a single image. I finished it just a few days ago, and decided to symbolically submit it on the anniversary of my tribute pic from last year... DKC2: Ten Year Celebration. As I'm sure you all know, it was my pride and joy, the crown jewel of my gallery in my opinion. Nothing I have submitted in the last year has ever quite lived up to it. Well, while that image can never be replaced in my heart, I am forced to admit that I have spent even more time on this picture, and it means just as much to me. I am extremely satisfied with it, and I hope you'll enjoy it too.

Even if you haven't played Chrono Trigger, I hope you'll like this image, and maybe it will inspire you to try and play this great game if you ever get the chance. And if you have already played the game, I hope you'll be able to enjoy and understand this picture more. ^_^

But first, I ought to go into a little history. That's right. I've been working on this for a super-long time, and I've had so many thoughts about it as I worked, that you can't expect anything else than a super-long description! Especially out of me, the super typaholic queen! Better get comfy, maybe grab something to eat or drink...

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The story of this picture goes back to this summer, when I was able to play for the very first time a game which I had been hearing good things about for years, but never gotten a chance to play myself. That game, obviously, is Chrono Trigger. At first, I thought the game was really cool, and I certainly enjoyed it. But once I hit a certain point, my strong liking started to spiral into a deep love. For some reason, this game struck me in a very powerful way. The characters, the story, the music, everything about this game... I was in love with it. I found myself thinking about it a lot, and I realized that as I had played Chrono Trigger, it had become one of my absolute favorite games ever, a spot usually only reserved for games that I had grown up with, games that had affected me throughout the years and burrowed their way deep into my heart. But CT had already affected me, in a very strong way. Something about this game deeply captured my heart and my imagination, and I warmly welcomed it into the hall of my most beloved games.

In August, I discovered a free vector program, Inkscape. I instantly fell in love with the program, and the first thing I did to test it out was a simple image of a character I liked in Chrono Trigger, Azala, having just defeated him in the game. I was very happy with the way it came out looking, and soon afterwards, I created images of my two favorite characters in the game, Frog and Magus. Then an idea came into my head... since I was coming to love the game so much, I felt like making vector images of even more of the awesome characters. So why shouldn't I take it to the limits? I got the crazy idea that I should make every character with major importance to the storyline, and put them together into one big image as a tribute to the game. The idea planted itself very firmly into my mind, and I soon became devoted to the task.

As it turns out, I had no idea how long it would take me. Each of the images had to be sketched out, and then I would create the lineart in Inkscape, carefully making all the lines and vector points, then creating the shading as well. Then, the lineart was colored in the GIMP. Seeing how I'm a slow worker and a perfectionist as it is, each of the characters typically took me a few days.

As I went on, the picture grew into an obsession. Though I had distractions, like my mythology project, I've been working on it pretty much constantly. Sometimes, certain characters frustrated me (particularly Johnny the bicycle robot guy... he took me like five times to get right...), but most of the time, I really enjoyed working on it. It's consumed my art lately, so that's why I haven't been submitting as much. The thing is, I could've added yet more characters, but I figured I had a good amount, decided I was fully happy with it, and felt it was time to draw it to a close. It's been a long journey that lasted over three months... but I am very proud of it.

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I realize the file is really big, but I can explain this. I wanted to spread the characters out, because I worked hard on each of them and didn't want them to be jumbled up or on top of each other, so that they covered each other up. The image is 10,000 pixels long, and 600 pixels high. Yes, it's huge. But please fullview it and wait for it all to load anyway. Hey, at least you didn't have to make it... My computer is already slower than it should be, and whenever I loaded the full image and tried to work on arranging the characters or creating the background, I thought my poor sluggish computer was just going to crash or freeze at any moment.

So anyway. A message I'd like to make... a truly classic game is never "outdated," and can still bring you as much true enjoyment and captivation as anything you'll find on a modern console. So it's never too late to get into an old game. Perhaps I have inspired some of you to play this game?

(By the way, the SNES just rules.)

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Fun facts! (Not that they matters to anyone else, but I've been working on this so long that they matter to me, ha.)
* The last character I finished was Toma, who was a good way to end because I'm particularly proud of him. The funny thing is that he's the only one in the picture with actual muscular structure XD But he doesn't even do anything but sit around and drink soda and claim to be a great adventurer. Ha.
* That is indeed a Lavos Spawn in the picture. Lavos himself is not here... that's because I didn't know where I'd put him, what with him being so freaking huge, and I didn't want to just draw his final form (and if I did, I still wouldn't know where to put him). But since the background kind of looks like his "realm," I intended that to symbolize that he's there, encompassing everyone...
* I used character art as a reference whenever I could find it. Flea is not pink in the character art, but my younger brother criticized me for not making him pink. However, though in the cutscenes for the PS1 CT port (I watched them on YouTube, heh, and they're awesome) Janus's cat Alfador is white with purple spots, but I like the coloring from the sprite.
* I had to pick one of Spekkio's forms to portray him in, so I went with the first one I saw him in.
*At first, I was going to name this picture "Trigger Happy," but thankfully, I realized that was stupid. XD I then settled on the name "For All Time," and that's just what the picture came to be known as to me. Though I toyed around with other names in my head, I had become so used to that name that I could never change it.

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Well... that's all. Hope you like it, guys! I can get back to my normal art schedule now. Wow. It feels weird to be finished.

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Chrono Trigger (c) Square
Art (c) Me!