Hey there 👋 , I’m a self-taught developer from the Cajun prairies of Louisiana with a background in Industrial Design & People Management. I made the leap into software development in 2019 and havent looked back since! When not at my computer, I am usually spending time with my family, reading, gaming, or creating ambient & electronic music.
Jordan Vidrine
Leader | Designer | Developer
My first week with pixel art
After my recent project, Starmaker, I purchased Aseprite in order to begin a learning journey of how to create pixel art. I've been at it for a week now, practicing for at least 20 minutes a day. Sometimes I last a little longer if I want to continue adding detail. The main thing here for me is not having a huge goal. I just want to pick something each day, and try to draw it.
Most days I pick something simple; maybe something on my desk, or an idea floating in my mind. I am trying to stick to a pretty small scale as well to not overwhelm myself. I think I'll need to tame my desires as well and try to really stick with 16x16 or 32x32 in order to really familiarize myself with the constraints that pixel art brings.
One of the first things I really noticed and was exicted about it how when working in the very small scale, 1 or 2 pixels can change the mood quite strongly. For instance, check out the expressions I gave this little guy with just a few pixel changes.
In the next image, I was experimenting with highlights, dithering, and strong outlines. I really like the bottom left bowl outlined in two tones of green. I could imagine this being a nice way to indicate an item in your inventory is selected.
My kids have been enjoying Moana lately so today as an exercise I tried to draw the chicken. This was a bit tough. I think I will scale back and stick with smaller and simpler things for now as I found the shading, line work, and complex shapes pretty difficult to work with. I'd like to come back to this in a couple of weeks and see how I can do.
Chicken feet are hard
Another thing I've noticed is that you have to make decisions on what details should remain, and what should be left out. You don't have many pixels to work with, so keeping things as simple as possible, while still communicating the idea takes some effort. I feel like I learned alot about this when creatin a pixel version of the Playstation Pro controller here.
It's been a fun week, as well as something quite enjoyable to do in a spare 20 minutes time.