Ronnie Dieleman: Balthazar (Rotterdam,NL)

Ronnie Dieleman, better known as Balthazar to some, is a very diverse pixel artist. Read what he had to say about his creative passions, Hyper Dragonball Z, and more below:

1.)What made you decide to become an artist?

Well, I already used to draw a lot when I was a kid, and loved cartoons (Ninja Turtles was the best thing ever) and I basically never stopped doing that. I tried a few different directions education-wise but never really appealed to me, so eventually I decided to stick with artsy stuff and attended a graphic design school.
Note that I was already dabbling with pixel art at that point, I started on Goku Z2 that first year of school. And I just kept doing that.
Also note that there were exactly ZERO courses, educations or classes devoted to as much as mentioning pixel art.

2.)Is there anything or anyone that influences the direction of your work?

When I was a kid (around 7/8 y old), my family went to stay at a camping, and there was a tiny arcade hall there. Among the cabinets there was Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.
Everything about that struck me so deeply that I would definitely vote SFII as my main influence on drawing, pixel art and animation.

3.)What is it about pixel art that appeals to you more than any other forms of art?

(When done well) There’s just a certain honesty to it, I think. Pixel don’t lie, they are truth. To me it’s really the thing that makes something be a ‘game’, as pixel brought games to life since the very humble beginnings. Polygons don’t have that effect on me. I think you definitely have to have been born at the right era in time to fully appreciate it.

I’m a 90’s NES kid,but I can understand that a kid that was born in the 00’s would think pixel art was just an ugly,unappealing pile of squares.

And in terms of animation, well it’s more like a stop-motion type of animation versus 3d/polygon animation which would nearly always have some kind of tweening between ‘keyframes’.
That’s not the case with 2d/pixel art, every frame truly counts and almost tells its own tiny little story.

4.)Hyper Dragonball Z looks and plays like the DBZ Capcom game that every fighting game fan of the manga series has always wanted. Did you and the Z2 team go into the project looking to bring fans’ dreams to life? Or was it strictly inspired by things that you all have personally wanted to see in a DBZ Game?

Yeah it was pretty much a contained hobby. We wanted to bring our own vision of a fast-paced, combo-oriented, 2d and well-animated Street Fighter- esque Dragonball Z game.

Goku, Vegeta, Mr. Satan , SSJ Goku and Saibamen had actually been released throughout the 2/3/4 years before we decided to try spreading that vision to beyond just the Mugen community.

So we came up with a title, Hyper Dragon Ball Z, and I made that trailer, which was made to look like it was an actual trailer for an existing game, fake title and character select screen and all.
Needless to say, indeed it seems that’s exactly what a LOT of DBZ fans have been wanting all along.

5.)What would you say is your Long Term Vision for yourself and your brand?
Well I don’t really have a plan….I would like to be able to continue to do commissions and assignments like I did with WayForward Technologies,as well as eventually truly develop a game with the team of talented people around me.

Something that can actually be sold and make money, which obviously is not the case with HDBZ since it’s a licenced property. And I think we don’t really even want it that way, we would like for HDBZ to remain a hobby with no ties, no restrictions, no deadlines, no stress, none of that.

So one day I’d like to direct/design a game, though I would probably always like to remain things on a sort of small-scale. A game like Shovel Knight, now that’s something I would focus my efforts on if the time, team and opportunity are all aligned.

6.)When it’s all said and done,what creative aspects of your work would you like to be remembered for?

As mentioned just before, I would love to be the designer of some games in the future.
For the time being, I’ll gladly take working on Reus with Abbey Games, Adventure Time 2 and 3 with WayForward Technologies and obviously being one of the main guys behind Hyper Dragon Ball Z.

You Can Check out more of Ronnie’s Sprite work on his Devianart page, His work with Hyper DBZ and more on his Youtube channel, and also check out his growing portfolio of work at: http://network.mugenguild.com/balthazar/index_portfolio.html