SY-99 Teardown

Well, I have an SY-99. And like any old electronic device, it always needs some kind of repair. During one such repair (out of the three it needs, total), I took some pictures. They've been kind of lying around since, but I figured I'd upload them with some commentary, because it's an interesting build.

For those who don't know, the Yamaha SY-99 is the most complicated synthesizer Yamaha ever made. If you don't believe me, just let me hit you with the several hundred page user manual and the MIDI format addendum. Heck, even the on-screen user interface is several hundred 'pages', using the manufacturer's own terminology. It uses the very same AWM2 sample-based synthesizer engine Yamaha is still using today (though they don't really advertise it anymore - it's not like there's any real difference between it and any other PCM sound system), combined with an AFM synthesis engine. AFM is Yamaha speak for FM synthesis with eight usable operators instead of the more standard two, four, or six. These synthesis engines are augmented by two very high quality effects DSP, which are capable of a number of different effects including the then-new aural exciter.

This synthesizer is actually the big brother to the earlier SY-77, but there are a number of enhancements that are, for the most part, minor. However, there is one feature that is completely unique to the SY-99 which is major for a number of reasons. The keyboard is capable of what Yamaha has dubbed RCM, or Realtime Convolution Modulation, and basically what it does is it modulates the output of one voice from the AWM2 section with the AFM section. This is pretty major; it basically means that the SY-99 is not entirely limited to the handful of sine-based waveforms previously available in other FM synths. But as this is the last keyboard Yamaha would produce with an FM synthesizer, it also means that it's the only synthesizer of it's kind. It's rather strange, because it means that this several decades old piece of hardware is still Yamaha's most advanced synthesizer, in a way.

But when you get down to it, being more advanced just means more complicated; despite the surprisingly intuitive software-based controls, getting any real sound out of it can be difficult; programming the rich and vibrant sounds that this keyboard is known for can take hours out of the day. There are voice presets, but not many - definitely not covering the full GM Spectrum. But it's a professional tool through and through; every single thing about it is high quality, from the heavy full steel body, to the full-weighted keyboard, to the extremely clean and just perfect audio output.

The SY-99 was not completely lost to history; Yamaha's later Motif keyboard workstations (which, like the 99 was, is their high-market product) are very clearly modeled after the SY-99, and even some of the synth sounds are very similar. It wouldn't surprise me if it had a new iteration of the same effects processor.

But enough tech talk; let's take a look at what's inside.

This is just from the first step; the rear cover was just removed and you are just seeing the very first layer of circuit boards. And yes, I mean the first layer, as in there are multiple - usually somewhere between two to four, since there are no boards that stretch the whole way across.

The transformer on this is HUGE. And I'm actually pretty glad, since this is technically a european version and I have no idea if the converter I have is any good or not. The power circuitry is very important in this since it is a professional audio product; if it generates too much noise or radio interference, it will affect the quality of the audio.

This is just a quick picture of one of the two main system boards. Nothing too incredible here; most of the chips are made by Yamaha themselves, or are at least marked specificially by them. It does have a mark of it's times, though; if you look at those bar-shaped components at the bottom, you may notice that they are dreaded ZIP chips. I am so glad nobody uses that package anymore.

The second system board. Also not much of note.

The keys in music keyboards are always pretty interesting as well. I took this picture to show off the leaf switches they use on here; there are actually two of them per key, and the time between their activations is what determines the velocity of the note. Not pictured is the pressure-sensitive strip on the other side of the keyboard used for aftertouch.

The only other thing I wanted to show was how much free wiring there is on this build. This is just one small segment that I took a picture of just to make sure I was able to wire it back together correctly. I can't imagine how many bad assemblies they must have built when assembling these new. Seriously, there are about ten wiring harnesses per board on average, and many boards use those stiff ribbon cable (I assume that this was before plastic printed circuit cables became popular, but as far as long-term repairability, I consider that a plus)

Really, there's a lot more to this keyboard. The main reason why I didn't take more pictures is simply because I got tired of doing it halfway. It literally took me several days to disassemble it to get to the problem I was repairing (the buttons on the front weren't working. I replaced something like 50 of them).The only thing I regret not taking a picture of was all the shielding. There were more plate steel shielding pieces built into the thing, and they also used a plastic-reinforced aluminum foil to surround each board.

But the best thing about opening up this synthesizer is to learn just how much effort went into this thing. The engineers really didn't spare any expenses and made sure that they made the best instrument they possibly could, and that shows throughout every design decision they made. Frankly, I am so impressed by the quality, I think that $30,000 in 1991 money seems like a value. And it was worth it. I have not heard anything that sounds better than this synthesizer. And that's saying something.

Video Games as Art

A while back, famed film critic Roger Ebert made the infamous claim that Video Games are not art. At first I was mortified. How could he not see the value of these incredible works? Recently, however, after reading an excellent article by Pitchfork, I have begun to re-evaluate his claim.

The specific article at hand is his in-depth examination of Mother, Shigesato Itoi's first video game. I must give him a hand for this feature; it's one of the most brilliant examination of any piece of media that I have read in at least five years. Like most video games of that era, it had not aged well, and so reading this article will probably be one of the closest to getting Itoi's message across for anyone except those lucky enough to have played it in the 80s (which rules out any non-japanese people since the overseas versions were canceled).

To quickly summarize the article, Pitchfork describes Mother in terms of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, which is basically a kind of meta-rubrik that describes the basic plot of most cultural folklore such as The Odyssey, Beowulf, and most religious stories like that of Thor, Hercules, and Jesus.

Before I continue any further, it should be made clear as to what Art is. And that's difficult enough as it is. Some would argue that all 'media' - including movies, music, painting, sculpture and even possibly typesetting - is art. I reject that idea; Scary Movie 4 is not art, nor is a five-year-old child's fingerpainting;  the 'b-tracks' from various musicians released with every album do not qualify as art. Others would define art as something that art is anything that 'touches your heart', but that's highly subjective and therefore makes a poor definition.

Let me tell you what art is; art is a lens that allows us to reexamine a part of our selves or our world, that will change the way we perceive that which we have examined. In other words, art is not that which a person creates; art is the effect of the creation.

That may still be a bit difficult to comprehend. To make it a bit easier, let's look at some famous examples. M.C. Escher's drawings are artworks because their impossible nature makes us examine the possible flaws in perception, and how our perceptions may not be correct. Keith Harring's art highlights the joie de vivre in the viewer's life. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was an exploration of mortality and the meaning of life, and how that can change as technology replaces us. Music is used to explore the depths of emotion and their meanings.

But returning to Pitchfork's article, he does say something unique as he begins to conclude his findings:

This is the essential difference between a quest and a detour. What happens on the detour is its own reward, but the success of a quest is determined by what you take back with you.

With books, the same: the best books are the ones in which the reader experiences a transformation somewhere between "once upon a time" and "the end." In any other case, you're just taking a pleasure cruise through somebody else's imagination.

What Pitchfork is trying to illustrate in this point is that mother stands above the crowd because the experience stays with you. But in my case, I actually see the case for the argument of wether games are art or not. Games have always been a diversion. "Diversion" is practically the definition of the word 'game'. If you don't take something out of the experience, it can only ever be a diversion. The 'transformation' that Pitchfork mentioned is the very same qualifier that makes any given thing art!

Naturally, the next question is, "Is Mother art?" It's a difficult question to answer; as a coming-of-age tale, one could easily argue that it would only affect the young, which makes the game a subjective lens, removing it's artistic value. Let me bring up a quick example; there is a major turning point in Mother when you play the Eight Melodies to Queen Anne of Magicant and she tells us who the antagonist of the game is. For the unaware, Magicant is a bizarre dreamworld where everything can and will happen. After your last encounter with Queen Anne, Magicant disappears as you absorb it's energy and gain levels from it. Magicant was also a symbol; it was a safe, comforting, and even motherly place; there were four places to replenish yourself for free, it's the only place where you could eat your favorite food, and you could instantly teleport there if you were in trouble. The absorption of Magicant was a metaphor for growing up; you'd never be able to return there, but you were much stronger after leaving it behind. And Magicant wasn't destroyed; you carry it within you.

The neat thing about Magicant is that it was itself a metaphor for a mother; protecting you, making your favorite food, feeling safe whenever present. And that's my argument for why Mother is art; the loss of Magicant reflects on the viewer's (or, the gamer's) own loss of innocence, when they realized they didn't need their mother and could stand stronger on his or her own. It repaints growing up, from losing innocence, to gaining knowledge, ability, and inner strength.

Now the real question is, is Mother an outlier? We can't make the claim that games are art when there's only one game that contains art. There are a few more games with art though; don't forget, Mother is the first game in a series; Mother 2 had similar happenings in a new Magicant, and Mother 3 is more of the same. There are a few more games that fit the criteria though.

Perhaps the best argument for games as art is Xenogears, where quite a lot of things happen; You are half of a couple with a bond so strong it surpasses life and death; You change Gears as you become more god-like, and then you eventually kill god himself. In the same team's next project, Chrono Cross, you literally destroy Fate. In it's prequel, Chrono Trigger, you see how man's hubris lead to it's destruction. A more modern title, Nier, illustrates how love and obsession can be destructive - a demonstration more shocking and well-done than I've seen elsewhere, honestly.

And that's literally it. Those are the only games I can consider Art. There are a few earlier games by Quest that actually get pretty close, but they tend to fall just short of that goal. Braid is supposed to be art, but it seems like the people who describe it as such are vastly over-analyzing it, especially since the author refuses to explain it. Drakengard is by the same team as Nier, so I have some hopes for it, but as I haven't played it yet, I can't confirm it.

That list is small even if you compare it to the amount of games released in a single year, let alone the nearly 40-year history that video games have. So while there is a few games that are art, or at least contain some art in one point or another, they are clearly the outlier. So to answer the question, "Are games art?", no — but they could be.

XBOX Failures - A Visual Guide

Today, in America's gaming climate, the Xbox has a good reputation, due to it having a very large share of hardcore gamers devoted to the Xbox 360. There are even hardcore fans of the Xbox 360 who will get upset if you prefer another gaming system (*coughstephencough*). And while the 360 is a very competitive console, the truth of the matter was that the original XBOX was a horrible mess, and, while the system was very sturdy and generally reliable, it was only possible because of all the extra shit they packed in that box. It's something of an open secret that Mic
rosoft was taking a major loss on the sales on Xbox consoles.

Presently, Xboxen are a dime a dozen at my local thrift store. And since the Xbox I had originally bought was having problems playing Shenmue II (which, I should add, is one of the few games that gave me motivation to spend an entire nine dollars for the system in the first place), I figured I would tear it apart to see how it works. I'm not a stranger to console repairs thanks to common laser proble

ms in PS2 consoles, and I've probably opened every console I've ever owned. So with my experience as a 'tech guy', I offer you a list of the design failures of the original Xbox console.

Problem 1 - The Power Supply

The first thing I want to say about the power

supply is that I have seen it before. It's almo

st identical to the power supplies I've taken out of Tandy T1000 series computers, all the way down to the internal power connectors. The only difference is that there's extra logic in there to turn it off when the system is in a standby power state. The T1000 computers are 20 years older than the Xbox.

That's not really a bad thing, honestly, since most of the components used in that style of power supply have not really changed all that much. The only thing I can really say is bad about the design is that it's an old transformer-based design, which isn't as efficient as a switching power supply.

But the real problem is that Foxlink built it. Which is not to say that Foxlink makes bad power supplies. An outsourced power supply does make logistical sense, since you can just purchase them en masse and if you need more than they can supply, you can get them from other manufactured. But, as a rule of thumb, whenever you buy something from someone else, they have put a markup on the product so they can make a profit. In other words, using this power supply made their console more expensive.

Something else could be said about the positioning of the power supply - it's inside the console. It's not really too bad a decision in this case, since overheating was uncommon on the platform, and not needing to add extra cable and shielding saved them a couple cents in the process.

Problem 2: The Case

When the Xbox first came out, I was given a magazine that tried to sell Xbox consoles by it's technical merit. One of the things it said the console had was that you could take off the green XBOX emblem from the top and use it as a coaster. It

turns out they lied. Oddly enough, you can almost do it with the Gamecube, though.

Coaster issues put aside, the case for the Xbox is a plastic and steel mess. While everything was relatively easy to take apart (the system was designed with servicability in mind), it is, plainly, ridiculous. Someone in the year 2000 decided "SLOTS ARE FUCKING AWESOME" and told everyone the news slightly before joining microsoft and adding hundreds of useless fins to the design. But that's just the aesthetics, so it doesn't make that much of a difference (besides the extra plastic costs, which is trivial at best). The real problem is how damned wasteful the whole thing is. In fact, there's even a piece of plastic that covers the buttons in the front, even though there's already a layer of plastic covering them.

Underneath the ~1/2 inch plastic veneer is an entire goddamn faraday cage. Don't get me wrong, the electronics do emit radio noise, so some degree of shielding is absolutely necessary. But in this case, they literally include an entire complete faraday cage around everything in the entire console.What's worse is that they actually include it over the DVD and HD drives, which are already shielded. It's just unnecessary waste.

But wait, it gets worse! Holding up those two drives are two more cases! So what you've got there is two cases, held in a cage, held in a case. Yo dog....

As an unexpected upside, I found when I opened the case, the insides of the plastic parts all had internal Flextronics part numbers that started with MSX (which is, for the record, Microsoft's only economically successful computer). Sadly, there is nowhere for you to plug in your Knightmare cartredge.

Problem 3: The DVD Drive

The DVD drive is another set of problems entirely. The main part of it is that it's designed to be very simelar to standard PC DVD drives.Reliability issues aside, my personal problem with it is that it has a side-loading tray, which are generally fragile.

For some reason, Microsoft felt the need to connect the DVD drive to the system through good old PATA. This is a horrible solution. That DVD drive was custom-made and could have been made any way they wanted it to. In practically any other console, the hardware would be wired directly to the logic board which would drive the equipment directly.

While using the ATA standard made the design easier for the Logic board and software designers, it did make the console a bit more expensive. If you remove the shielding from that drive, you'll see that there is two seperate boards in there, increasing complexity and costs. One one of those boards there's a gigantic QFP microchip that takes about half the width of the board. What you may not know about devices connected via ATA is that they actually have to have essentially a seperate computer built-in to the device that knows how to drive the actual hardware. Add that cost to the unnecessary shielding and the cable itself, and you're losing quite a lot of money.

Problem 4: The Logic Board

There's actually a lot of problems with the logic board. Shall I count the ways?

1. There's a 'Hot Area'

In electronics, the "Hot Area" is a section of the board where the levels of electricity are altered to suit the components that will be using them.

Another word for "Hot Area" is "Power Supply". While it's not uncommon to have a bit of power management done on the logic board, the Xbox takes it to an extreme - a result of using a generic power supply. If the power supply was generating the correct levels to begin with, this would not be a problem. Thankfully, the biggest potential problem is solved by that power supply - the levels coming in are too low to start a fire.

2. Breakout boards

Breakout boards do not make a project more expensive because the board is expensive - it's because they need extra connectors and support. There are, in total, four breakout boards on the Xbox (actually six, including the power supply and HDD board, but that's a bit unfair). Two are in the CD drive, one is a simple backplane for the buttons and lights at the front (a pretty standard fare), and the other one... is something of a mystery.

This breakout board contains two 12-pin connectors to the logic board, and two 12-pin connectors that connect directly to the four controller ports. This breakout board has no reason to exist at all. It's a bastard board.

I'm completely baffled by this board. There's enough pins on the logic board itself to support the controller ports, but what's baffling about it is that the only chip on it is a Texas Instruments USB hub. If it's got that many pins going into it, why does it need a hub?! And that's completely ignoring the fact that they could have put that chip on the logic board in the first place.

My personal theory about their reasoning is that because the signals go through the hot area (Yes, seriously), they wanted to minimize the number of signals going up there, so they only put in the signals for a single USB connection and put a hub inline for it to support the other devices. They just put in the two connectors to make the breakout more stable.

But this theory doesn't even make sense. Those two connectors are marked "Game 1&2" and "Game3&4", respectively, which means they should just fit directly in theory. Plus those connectors are not used anywhere else in the system, so it couldn't be just for support.

3. Something Like Video

Ask me anytime what I hate most about the Xbox, and my answer will always be the video. Microsoft should be congratulated for having the console with the arguably best graphics. Then they should be bludgeoned for not letting us actually see it. Video through the Xbox is a barely-visible blur that makes my LCD TV look like it's a burnt-out CRT. Playing through Tenchu or any other dark game would make you wonder why there's so much smoke, until you realize that that's the blackest it actually gets.

I would love to assign the blame to the Conexant video encoder, but having seen it on other consoles, I know it's not the problem. It's probably because they put too much resistance on one of the lines. Worse, this problem is still evident on the Xbox 360 despite the fact that they don't share a design, so they really havn't learned from their mistakes.

4. NitPICking

There's a PIC Chip built into the logic board. I'm not entirely sure what it does, since the traces on the logic board are very difficult to follow (there's many hundred vias drilled through it). The thing about it is that it's just incredibly unnecessary. The GPU and SPU were both custom-made so it could have been eliminated. I know it's just nitpicking, but seeing that class of microcontroller just bothers me personally.

Then there's the issue of the heatsinks. Both are generic. But if they had made their own, they could have replaced both with a single heatsink, saving money while simplifying construction. They could probably have gotten rid of the GPU Fan while they were at it. 

Also on the list of "Why is this here?" is an ICS 10/100base-T Ethernet PHY controller. There's no reason for this to exist - it should be integrated into the custom chips. That's kind of the point of custom chips - they save you money.

And that's about it for the logic board.

Problem 5: All the Other Shit

The Xbox is the only console I would have actually prefered to see with a single controller port on it. It would have made the console look a lot better and saved money on costs. Why? Because of the damned breakaway cables on the controllers. Instead of packaging every controller with a stupid adaptor cable that can be lost pretty easily, the console would have come with a single controller port and a two- or four-player multitap. The multitap would have the hub built-in, thus making the breakout board and a lot of plastic unnecessary, plus it would have had those quick-disconnect connections on them, so they would eliminate that crappy breakaway adaptor. Microsoft would have made more money on selling these multitaps, and you could combine them to have more than four players.

The sound on the Xbox is generated with a custom chip that also acts like the northbridge/southbridge does on a PC. But it's not enough! If they really wanted to save money, they could have integrated most of the other chips on the DVD drive and a few of the logic board chips as well (especially that pesky PIC microcontroller).

The Intel chip was probably a bad decision as well. There are only two manufacturers who are making the most highly competitive microprocessors on earth, so those prices must have been truely premium. There were quite a lot of competing chips from many manufacturers that would have done as good a job as the Pentium III chip they put in there - especially because that was around the time that AMD's CPUs were the better performers. I wouldn't doubt that there were people out there who didn't buy an Xbox because they already had a PC, especially when the Xbox was "PC-based" (which, to be fair, it really isn't).


Problem 0: The Good Parts


It's really not impossible to please me. I was just a little surprised to see what's inside this thing. Microsoft's products have always seemed to fall a little short for me, and all the design shortcuts they take are pretty apparant in this particular product.

Even with all the faults I listed, you can't deny that the console is very sturdy. You could probably put it to the 10ft drop test, and it would still work (though the cynic in me wants to say that the breakout board would probably fall out of place).

Perhaps the best part of the console is how service-centric it is. It's designed to be as simelar to a PC as possible so that developers have minimal skills to learn. There is a non-attached 15-pin connector on the logic board marked LPC debug, making the console a development platform as well (though it looks like it would be more useful for hardware debugging than anything else - which would make it useless to software developers). The actual build is designed for it to be as easy as possible to service - every screw can be removed with a T10 bit on a slotted screwdriver, and the only recessed screws have a lot of clearance so you don't have to buy a dedicated screwdriver just to open it.

I hear Xbox Live is nice. Seeing it now, though, I don't really believe the accounts.

Problem -1: The Xbox 360


Forget it. I still play that thing.

Some new stuff

So, as only Stephen knows, I have a game concept that I was going to eventually write into a detailed proposal and use to launch my design career. As it turns out, I am in something of a rut. Not a single word has gone into that document.

In an effort to not forget every bit of the design I had come up with, I had decided to take my new Monoprice graphic tablet (A rebadged UC-Logic H850) for a spin, and drew a major character. That's what you see above. I must say, I am astounded at how bad I am at art some times. This is probably one of my best works, but this one is supposed to be an early-adult female, and I absolutely failed at any attempts at boobs. Add the SD-style head and the really strangely positioned legs and you've got my caricature I painted there.

The truely sad part is that that's what your main character is supposed to fall in love with. Could you fall in love with that? But then again, I bet that I'll look back at it again later and say, "Hey, that's not too bad." Oy.

Awesomely Unique Famiclone

Shopping at Goodwill is an interesting experience. Everyday I find yet another new toy or trinket to play around with. Today I found my third famiclone there, and boy is it an interesting find. Enter the Power Joy Navigator.

This is the part where I would show you the package still in the box, but being the cold that I am, I couldn't wait to open it up. It was actually new, too - still in the shrink-wrap. So let me just tell you why I bought it: its a famiclone with a crappy LCD game built on it.

As amazing as the design is, the build quality is utterly crap. There's no missing buttons or anything, but the plastic cover over the LCD screen is cloudy even though I took off a plastic protector that on top of it when it was still packaged. The screen itself is damaged- most of the corner "blocks" don't come on and the numbers don't show properly. You can even hear the buttons rumbling around when you shake it. At least I hope it's just the buttons.

The system is designed to be portable. That being said, there is a compartment for 4 AAA batteries. I haven't bother testing if it works since I don't keep AAAs around the house. The manual insists both the LCD and NES games are playable with batteries. The wall wart worked nicely.

The manual is kind of cute. It is a manual for a device that shouldn't really need one. So just to waste paper, it includes short descriptions and directions to each nes game.

The lcd games are not really worth mentioning in any detail. I almost feel sorry for the guy who invented the original this is based on since it is an oft-stolen design. You know the type. Its where the display is made of large-ish blocks in a vertically-oriented rectangle. There is more than one game, and the type is often hyperbolically called 101(or more)-in-1. Every kid had one growing up in the 90s until they broke by accidentially exposing it to sunlight. Or oxygen.

underneith the system, in the very middle is a port for connecting the external controllers. This isn't really required since you can actually use the buttons on the system itself. The external controllers are of an inspired design. Inspired by the playstation controller, that is. it actually is unique, though; controller one has a light gun on it (seriously). The second controller has what is supposed to be like an analogue joystick, but it sits above digital buttons. It has no fulcrum, so playing with it may not actually be possible since you will be too busy accidently hitting all of the direction buttons at once.

Unlike all the other famiclones I've collected, this one doesn't have a built-in ROM. The par-for-the-course multi-ROM is contained in a seperate cartridge. This would be a good thing if it were a standard famicom or NES cart port, but they were too busy making it look like the original gameboy to fit that in there. The cartridge doesn't even fit right, instead sticking up about a centimeter and a half. To my knowledge they have not created any other cartridges for the 84-in-1 that comes with it.

Despite what I said earlier, the actual famiclone part of the system is solid. This is the first famiclone I have perchased where the audio and video wasn't muddled and unusable. The picture was rather pristine and the sound crystal-clear. They even went a step ahead with the a/v cable that comes with it (although it is still monaural). The controllers are actually surprisingly good, even if still a little cramp-inducing. The light gun even works with my LCD TV.

The game choices in this system are actually noteworthy. In most nes multicarts, they tend to just throw in whatever was the most popular games of the time along with whatever is related and maybe a couple of PD games. This one is notable for rom hacks where all of the graphics are changed so we get to believe that the piracy is less illegal, I guess. Pole Position has creatively been changed into boat race; mario is now Pandamon. Of course a majority of the games are straight rips such as city connection and the like.

The best feature of the cart is the selection made available. It isn't just popular games on there; they also include some kusoge. Spelunker, the game notable for making you die if you fall further than waist-deep, is on there, as well as several bad space shooters such as B-Wings. There are also several more obtuse japanese classics such as The Tower of Druaga, Chack n Pop, and Son Son, which are definately worth playing.

The most notable addition to the collection is a few games which I have never encountered before, a number of them relatively innovative. Baltron is a space shooter where thes speed increases depending on how far forward you are on the screen. Bird Day is a game where you are a bird trying to feed her chicks. Gotcha is a lightgun paintball capture the flag game. Sqoon is a submarine shooter. Othello is othello the board game.

The variety of the games makes the collection altogether a very good deal. Its honestly not all that bad that I won't be playing any other games on it. Overall, it the system was worth getting, especially because it only cost me $9.

I give up on this design

Did you vomit when you looked at this image? Because I was getting queezy when I was drawing it. It turns out that I can't design art for shit. I guess this means that I will have to get an artist for the cutscenes.

You have NEVER had a BAD HAIR DAY like this girl has.

Seriously, though, I can't believe it got this bad....

Who's that lovely headless girl?

For those not in the know, I am in the process of making a game. This is a very very very very early sketch for the main charicter. Note how tiny she is. That is because I was originally planning on the game running in 320x240! Now I know the error of my ways, and will make it 640x480. Probably.

Her name is Sarena, and she is a witch. Kinda.