I did it entirely from scratch, selecting and moving pieces I wanted to keep on the side, like parts of his face and mustache, then planning out how his scepter would have to move, based on it's diagonal pattern, I thought a diagonal movement would look natural, then it was a matter of filling in the blanks.
I did it on the same spritesheet I'm using with Belthasar and Melchior on it, so I looked at theirs for reference so it would all match up. It's really similar to drawing on paper, trying to replicate a position or form from a photo without tracing. Just tinier. A great learning experience.
Lance, I probably will need a little help with a few parts of coding. I finally implemented a simple caterpillar script that works, but the order of the characters won't be able to change. We'll talk more over PM.
Since I haven't mentioned it yet, almost every sprite you see in this game is being edited and retouched and recolored to make sure the game takes advantage of the 244 more colors RPG Maker can handle per sprite than SNES could. This does not mean every sprite is a rainbow, but there is more diversity in race and clothing, most characters you're familiar with are going to look very different, due to the game taking place fifteen years in the "past" relative to 12,000BC. In other words, I want it to look like the parts of Chrono Trigger I liked (character design) and the parts of Chrono Cross I liked (color, Color, COLOR EVERYWHERE!)
Here are the main characters and the gurus as they will actually appear in-game. I was holding off on posting this one, but I'm proud of it, and it has the newest version of Norstein. The "new" chrono style sprites that you may not recognize at all come from an amalgam of Trigger and Dragon Quest 4 sprites(the DS version's spriting style was very similar to CT's, characters still designed by Akira Toriyama).
No questions about the old guy in the corner! Spoilz.
EDIT: I think I will get rid of the caterpillar system in exchange for a character swap system. It has more merits, to me, and fewer potential for bugs (like sprites walking behind your airship, etc)