Pixel Art
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HIIIIII! Welcome to my short entry about Pixel art! Pixel art as implied by its name is limited to use only a few pixels when creating an artwork. the popular style has its roots in early video games when the designers were limited to 8 or 16bit graphics but it is still widely used in many platform games and RPGs. As the Lead Artist for this project I immediately made the decision to make our game using pixel art. My main reasoning for this decision, apart from the fact that it appeals to me personally, is that it is easy to create coherent art between artists if we are limited to pixel art. In line with this I also theorized that the use of pixel art will make any difference in skill when using photoshop less visible. To start off I asked Benjamin (see first entry) about his first approach to pixel art. I knew he was a beginner as well but he had already created some beautiful sprites. He recommended me the tutorial So You Want To Be A Pixel Artist by Author Tsugumo. As it turns out, there are endless of great tutorials on Pixel art just one google search away! Another tutorial I found helpful was this compilation of Pedro Medeiros GIF tutorials. After that I tried to make my first pixel artwork, I kept the following key rules in mind that I had picked up from different tutorials;
This was the result, a blind cavefish. It has a little more than 5 colors (oops) but I am still pleased with my creation (especially the palette haha) Other rules we decided on during pre-production was the size and resolution of all assets. Since every pixel counts it is difficult to alter a pixel designs size later on. Therefore, to avoid wasting time and effort to redraw any sprites, we decided on exact size and resolution before creating the finalized sprites. The fact that I decided to use a style which my team have no or very little experience with is referred to as a ”Risk” within the SCRUM framework. I considered the severity of the risk beforehand. Based on what I had seen of Benjamins pixel sprites, combined with the experience I had with my own first attempt at creating a pixel sprite, I decided that it was worth it. When following the guidelines I had accumulated, it was neither overly complicated, nor time consuming. We also made a point to practice pixel art by making sprites for our game, which in worst case could be used as place holders if we for some reason decided to switch styles. So far I am very pleased with what we have created and I see no indication so far that we have taken on a too difficult task. BYYYEEEEE!  |
