Ever since the Sprite Stitch Zodiac Challenge started I'd been trying to come up with something for Scorpio, nothing satisfied me.
First I played around with the idea of a creating a manticore, kind of using both my girlfriend's sign and my own, but was more of something I wanted to draw, but as usual could never get myself to put a pencil to paper, and didn't get too far with sprites for this but did spend some time on it. One idea of a few was to have a lioness with a scorpion riding on her back, scorpion's legs wrapped about the lion's body holding on while they combat some unknown foe together, both attacking with tails, the tip of the lion's tail a lit with fire, the scorpion's frosted over.
At one point I suddenly had an idea of a scorpion with boggly eyes like a Trouter from Super Mario Bros 2 and when looking at the sprite immediately saw a scorpion in it. Idea coming into more focus when I looked at the Ostro enemy in that game too, its head looking like a scorpion tail and stinger. Added claws from Clawgrip, but then decided the boggle eyes didn't quite look right for it so used those from Hoopster instead. So during some boredom created a scorpion from a mash up of SMB2 enemies.
Next I did two scorpions from Deadly Towers holding the Scorpio sign from Solomon's Key, then I got distracted with wanting to do every zodiac signs.
Once I got back to it I had an idea of a Metal Gear themed stitch, using the scorpion enemies from that game and the cardboard box with the zodiac sign on it. I went through quite a bit of revisions for this one but still it wasn't quite what I wanted.
Next, used the stage select code for TMNT 2 to get to the stage with the robot scorpions, once I had the sprite I had an idea for it that I thought would be cool. With it firing a laser beam from its tail, the zodiac sign faintly visible in the beam of light. Eh, still not quite right.
I was thinking about how I was trying to round up every NES scorpion sprite I could find and looking at a robot scorpion from Megaman 4 which don't consist of much, just a roundish body with eyes and a tail extending out from the back of it, which somehow looks more like a vacuum cleaner to me, I occurred to me that is exactly what I could do with it. So I put together something with that theme, involving the Scorpio Vac sucking up a scorpion that is panicking to get away. Turned out really cute, and I was going to stitch it, on plastic canvas, but didnt' have enough to work with for the pattern size, plus not enough time anyway.
Okay, now what? Then suddenly I see something unusual, I flipped the whirling sprite that I had gotten from Dive Man in Megaman 4 and noticed how it looked just like the Scorpio sign. Hmm. I went back to the TMNT 2 scorpion. Since its tail is made up of a half dozen disconnected balls I thought well they could be replaced with anything, so put each of the letters from Scorpio there. Then put the Scorpio sign I just discovered, using that as the tip of the tail and stinger. Then drained all the color from the scorpion and hey, that's pretty good. Bizarre but it works, I like it.
I like the concept (and, of course, the execution)! I agree, using the symbol as part of the stinger is inspired!