Pixel ART - Pixel Me Crazy

Pixel ART - Pixel Me Crazy

Right off the bat I’m going tell you that I love pixel art. I discovered this gem around the middle of last year and jumped right onto the band-wagon.

Now I tend to jump from one medium to another quite quickly - a couple of friends can vouch for me on this. I think by now they want to run away when I come to them with my new ‘bright idea’. And Pixel art was one of them. I saw one person’s profile on Deviant Art and one picture stood out in particular. The precision, the colors used, a character moving up and down – I was BEDAZZLED.

Intrigued and wanting to try for myself, I started off with my first ever animated GIF of Pikachu from Pokemon throwing a heart at you. I used a free program called Piskel (https://www.piskelapp.com/) where you draw on various layers and then have them played back live as you work. This gives you a nice overall idea of what you’ve done thus far and what you need to do going forward.

My next idea was to animate a cat closing its eyes, but the shading came out a little wonky - so that idea was a bust. I spent a couple of hours looking at references and googling tutorials to get me on the right track.

Then after that I went on to make a rolling apple, sparkling gems and with time a floating wizard.

I literally flipped out in front of my screen when my wizard started floating up and down. The most satisfying part was adding the shadow at the bottom to give you that depth perceptive.

These gems were a bit tricky to get right. I remember struggling to get the 'glossy effect' on them. Animating the small sparkle at the right-hand corner was my favourite part.

The reason I animated an apple was because of the different types of shades I could practice with. You had different colors to work with such as your brown, red, the green of your leaf etc. I really enjoyed doing this, it was a fun experience. But with any other trade practice makes perfect! I really want to animate something else in the near future.
Until the next post and happy steeming :)

Chopelina