I think the most important thing to remember when animating in such a small and restrictive medium is to focus on strong key frames. I find this helps to sell a game’s concept since it is more alive than a static screenshot concept.Īnimating in pixels can be tough, particularly because most pixel art sprites by their nature are quite small with very little resolution to capture information. It’s useful for some complex game play animations, allowing me to mix pre-animated sprites in a more random play like fashion. The other tool I find very useful when creating game concepts is Adobe Flash. There are other pixel art specific tools out there that other artists would favor, but Gale and Photoshop mixed would be my weapons of choice. Its general tool set shares a lot similarity to Photoshop when it comes to pixel art, its layers in particular, but otherwise it far exceeds it when comes to frame based animation, which is essential for pixel art. Graphics Gale has a particularly good animation time line. It’s especially handy for figuring out general color palettes as is has some useful tools to quickly edit and filter your pixel art, pushing the results into unexpected areas. It’s graphics tablet friendly compared to Gale and has a smooth work flow for image editing in general. Photoshop is very flexible when it comes to drawing up pixel graphics. The main tools I use to create pixel art are Adobe Photoshop and Graphics Gale. It also doesn’t hurt that pixel art, when done right, looks cool as hell. For me that transformation is a kind of magic that places a certain amount of investment in the users imagination which is ultimately rewarding.
There is just enough iconic and essential detail in some styles of pixel art, which I believe players mentally translate into pieces of art, or vistas of beauty. To my mind it’s like video game impressionism. There will always be a retro charm to pixel art which draws users of a certain age toward it, but I also see it as a means to find art through limitation. I see it as a stylistic choice which, in my opinion, can help to realize unique visuals that capture the heart of a video game world better than most AAA 3D engines can. I tend to lean toward pixels as my medium of choice. We hope to release some more content from it soon, when our schedules align a bit better. Its development has been stalled for a while due to other commitments (I’m currently working on Gunman Taco Truck with John Romero of Doom fame and my own game The Darkside Detective is deep into development), but the time away from the project (and public reaction) has convinced us to return to it as a more straight up shooter in the vein of Metal Slug and Contra and to release it onto Steam. It’s aimed at the mobile market, and the current prototype of the game is a take on the endless runner genre, mixing in lots of gun play and huge explosions. Only one man has the strength to fight back, Steak Blisterin. The pigs start to take revenge on humanity for its unapologetic eating habits. Scientist experimenting on bacon to enhance its already perfect flavor accidentally create a super race of pigs who quickly rise to the top of the food chain. The story of the game is set in “the far distant future of 1996” and is a very tropey tongue in cheek affair. It’s a love story of sorts dedicated to the simpler imagination of a VHS child, when transforming robots were the best thing ever invented and one man could believably take down an entire army with a handgun. The game is a homage to all things 80s and 90s, born from my misspent youth watching cheesy movies and playing video games. I’m working on Aporkalyspe Now with local Irish indie dev studio, Tribal City Interactive. Apparently it was good enough, as they hired me shortly after my submission and the rest is history. I did my best to learn rudimentary pixel art over night and applied for the job. I was originally a 3D animation student, but games jobs were thin on the ground in Ireland when Nephin were advertising for an artist. I started in game industry with the now defunct studio Nephin Games, which specialized in old Java phone games. I always wanted to work in games as a child, being awe-inspired by classic games such as Another World and Flashback. I’ve been working professionally in the games industry for ten years. I’m a freelance video game artist working under the handle of DoomCube.
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