Roark is a gym leader from Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum. I based the palette on this sprite from Black 2/White 2, and added one color (the lighter pink on the hair). Didn't expect this to be my first submission to PJ, honestly.

I made this last year when I still had free time haha Since I'm free today I figured I'd fix and upload it to finally have something in my gallery.

So Roark normally wears a helmet, and I did want to make another version where he wears it, but then I got a job and couldn't dedicate any more time to pixel art so I couldn't finish that one. To decide how to draw his hair without the helmet, I had to do some research since his bangs are depicted a bit differently depending on the source (manga, anime, etc.). I wasn't trying to replicate the Pokémon artstyle, so this came out as a mix of that and my own style.

Also, I love animating blinks. The first blink is slower than the second; this is intentional, though I've learned a couple of things thanks to this little experiment.