Pixel Art

Over these past few days I decided to experiment with pixel art. Pixel art, as described by Wikipedia, is a “form of digital art, created through the use of software, where images are edited on the pixel level. The aesthetic for this kind of graphics comes from 8-bit and 16-bit computers”.

I mostly had the inspiration to create art for characters from my various role playing games. I do not have a great skill in art, but pixel art seemed interesting to me, so I decided to give it a go.

After studying a few different character styles I found one that I liked the look of and created a basic pattern based on it.

Once I had created that I decided to use Ambrosia as my first character to create. She is a character I made for use in a game of Shadowrun, she is a Dryad who focuses on solving obstacles with social and magical means.

First I created her base pattern, then altered her hair for the Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Spring forms you can see on the above sheet.

After that I created group of characters from a Masks: A New Generation game that I play in.

They represented my first attempts with more complex facial features, although in most characters later on I ended up leaving those off of the sprites. They also where my first attempt at varying they height of characters, which I think went well enough. Although I likely won’t do it for characters who are just on their own.

Next I tried for one with a bit of a different pose, and with a lot more complex clothing as she wore a lot of fur and hide armour. So used Aurora, my Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition Shifter Runepriest and her relic-sword Fidelacchius.

I liked how she came out, but at that point it was getting late and I decided to head to bed.
The next day, to my surprise with a new obsession, I still wanted to make more, so I went back to my Shadowrun characters and made “Swarm” the Technomancer/Rigger along with their swarm of various drones.

For this one I wanted to try a very different pose, it turned out pretty decent, although I was not satisfied with my attempt at more basic facial features (in the form of their cybernetic drone-eye).

I got busy for the rest of that day, but still managed to get some time together to create another Masks: A New Generation character, this time Sage, The Brain, and her robotic sidekick Orb.

Sage was very much a return to the basic format that I had done, although was my first attempt at a full body clothing that obscured most of the person’s shape, and some more complex hair. I liked how it turned out.

At this point I got a request from the rest of my Shadowrun group to create their characters, so made Pixel (the decker) and Kitty (the bio-augmented sniper).

While for Pixel I stayed pretty much within my comfort zone, I decided to change the pose of the entire body slightly for Kitty, as well as the additions of the ears and tail, which made her a little more challenging, but it turned out pretty good in my opinion.
These two also solidified my style not including facial features unless they are of a certain weight to the character.

Overall I feel that I am not done exploring pixel art, and may move on to looking at making more objects or scenes at some point.