Yawn - base sprite

This still isn't quite finished. Yawn is a bit of a trickly character to sprite and animate because he's surrounded by floating panels that exist on another sprite layer separate to his main body (think Litchi from Blazblue, and her staff)

Except in Yawn's case, the panels have to animate alongside him whenever he does any regular movement, and the most I'm prepared to consider at once is 4, but the more panels he has in his design, the cooler stuff is available to him in terms of function, so I might just have to be a bit cheap and have him 'download' the panels in if he needs more than the default set.

Yawn also has glowy bits that I haven't gotten around to adding in yet. We might use a pixel shader to make them fade in and out.

Anyway, updating on Yawn's background. Yawn is a New-type android, the species developed post-war to uphold peace in the perfect city of Utopia 1.0. and the only person whom Ginnigan will readily refer to as a friend. N-types are generally placid and friendly, and are programmed heavilly towards acceptance and compliance. They don't thrive on conflict like the W-type and are perfectly happy obeying strict rules and regulations. As of such, most of them follow the dominant (and somewhat compulsury) religion in Utopia 1.0, the Church of Daylight Star. The church is also closely associated with the police force, ensuring to preserve dicipline as well as teach it, priests and their underlings being the only androids authorised to carry and use weapons systems and firearms in case of an emergancy.

Yawn hails from a rich family who own a renowned luxury resort, especially popular with N-types, though during the night it opens a nightclub casino which tends to attract W-types as well. The theme is classy and Yawn was trained in hospitality service from a young age, helping his older brother run the bar and keep the place in order.

His kind's speciality is absorbing solar and lunar energy and purifying it within their panels in order to create a refined energy that wipes fatigue and speeds healing. On top of this, they are also able to project soothing signals that will override agressive emotions and impulses, and create powerful defensive energy shields to protect themselves and others from danger. For this reason his model are often sought out as healers or therapists.

Yawn is somewhat lazy and coy, preferring to slack off rather than work, but he has a dream. He intends to prove his worth as a medic working for the church. Having witnessed his brother being attacked by a gang and beaten near to death, he developed an interest in the healing arts and shows promising skill. But so far he's never gotten around to making an audition...perhaps he just needs an incentive to do so.

He's not a fighter by build, but Yawn is a sly opponent who knows how to abuse his own system in order to make a weapon from his otherwise peaceful skillset. His floating solar panels have a multitude of uses, and by anchoring their gravity point to his fists and feet, he's able to swing them around like katars, or flip them around to create spinning pinwheels. He can create energy shields that will absorb attacks in a small area while he's free to move, and give him a moment to find an opening. He also makes use of his ability to calm and heal, since it has a disarming effect that can cause his opponent to fall asleep or become tranquillised. And if he must show some force, he can also overheat an enemy with a concentrated beam of sunlight from his panels. There's no such thing as a safe tan!

Putting up shields or pinwheels will remove Yawn's panels for a moment and place them elsewhere, meaning that certain melee attacks won't function properly until they return. Without his panels, Yawn's melee attacks are laughably weak and lack range, so putting up a strong defense is something that has to be done with tactics or else he'll be left defenseless. Even with his panels, he's not very strong at all, dealing consistantly small damage even with large combos, but he also has the highest defense out of any character, and with many crafty ways to interrupt and frustrate an opponent he can either whittle them down while keeping his own health high, or simply attempt to run the clock with his keep-away game. He has a hard time applying guard pressure due to his low damage, which is a disadvantage over strong agressive characters, but has other ways to punish an opponent who thinks they can play defense better than he can.

I'll update this image once I've completed the sprite.

Next up, a totally new character!