There are Tactical RPGs in which attacks are displayed on the map with the same sprites used for movement (like Final Fantasy Tactics) and others in which attacks happen in a separate screen with bigger sprites (like Shining Force). There is good and bad in each option, but I went with the second because I like high-res character display and because it's more faithful to my main inspiration, which is Shining Force.

Originally I was going to draw all the battlers with my very limited spriting skills. Gladly I found an alternative: Mugen sprites, which are basically rips from numerous fighting games.

It helped me TONS, and while there are hundreds if not thousands of characters available online, I still found the need to make something more custom. So I'm making frankensprites, which is incredibly time consuming but I kinda like the results.



So while I'm still using rips, the degree of customization is enough to give my characters a real unique look. It takes me about a day or two to make a sprite like that (considering each battler has 10 different poses), and a day or two to make his walking charset. So I don't expect to finish this game anytime soon, but I'm enjoying the process!