As for my final thoughts, Dracula was definitely a challenge for me, as an animator, given the absurd amounts of secondary motion he contains. However, it is definitely fulfilling to give Final Frenzy a sendoff, with a character as popular as Castlevania’s Dracula. It was a fun project to work on.

Lastly I would like to make mention of Dracula’s respawn platform, which is literally just his Symphony of the Night’s final form.

Dracula’s taunt itself is actually in reference to his iconic “wine glass” throw he does in a few games, particularly Symphony of the Night.

However some of these normals ARE actually a reference to Dracula in the games. UTilt and FAir being from OoE, DAttack being Bat Moon from PoR and SSBU, and even UAir who’s pose is in reference to Castlevania the Arcade.

For Dracula’s normals, we had to get creative. Dracula’s never gone and throw hands himself in the games, which is why we’ve made references to some fighting games, with vampires such as Demitri (for his DTilt and NAir), and Wallachia (for his FTilt), and Corrin (for his BAir)

Dracula’s strongs aren’t like any other from the frenzy. Boasting the largest FStrong*, UStrong and DStrong in the frenzy cast.
These are definitely the moves that a lot of players will hate me for, however I am willing to tone them down, but I’d like to keep them as those huge and slow attacks.

For Dracula’s specials, we take a lot of inspiration from a lot of his signature attacks from his boss fights. There’s your Hellfire, Dark Inferno and Flame Pillar, as well as his signature teleport.

With that in mind, we made a lot of his attacks huge, but slow. He utilizes his huge vampiric wings for a few of his attacks, as well as casting huge spells to strike fear on foes. The character might be too broken though, which we hope to avoid…

Anyway, let’s talk about the moveset design for Dracula. Making the moveset, me and VVizard had a few design philosophies in mind, which is to make him feel imposing and feel like THE final boss you have to face in a game (similar to Ult’s Sephiroth). A fitting end to the Final Frenzy, I think.

As an added bonus, here is Dracula’s True Form from Rondo of Blood. We originally planned to involve his True Form, in one way or another (perhaps as a gimmick), but due to the time constraints of the Horror Jam, we weren’t able to… Perhaps in another time.

Eventually, we’ve used Dracula’s Symphony of the Night design as our base, which was largely inspired by @mariosantos.bsky.social SoTN Dracula redesign. (When I originally saw that post, I was fully convinced right then and there that SoTN’s design is the way to go.)

Back to Dracula, originally I'd drawn him with a mixture of his Order of Ecclesia/Rondo of Blood design in mind, but I’ve gravitated towards Symphony of the Night’s design eventually.

Below we’re the possible Death sprites we could’ve went with, taking from his Order of Ecclesia (Grimoire of Souls), Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night poses, respectively

Before settling fully on Dracula, me and @vvizardx.bsky.social had a bunch of ideas as to which character from Castlevania to bring in, seeing as we both love Castlevania. We’ve narrowed down our choices to Dracula or Death, of which Dracula won.

For my first post, I think it would be perfect to talk about the recently concluded Final Frenzy presentation and the character that came from it, Vlad Țepeș Dracula, also known as, Dracula from the Castlevania series.

#pixelart #rivalsofaether #castlevania

Hello everyone! I’m Batit the Plant 🌱, a pixel artist and an animator. I am also a Rivals of Aether Workshop creator and have done various character mods and stages.
Pleased to be here y’all.

#pixelart #rivalsofaether