Pixel Art – Protagonist

This was the initial pixel art render. It allowed me to refresh my memory in how one uses pixel art but it was not effective in much else. I found it to be too two-dimensional and cartoonish. This was a result of three reasons:

1. The whole piece was outlined with black, which creates a very cartoonish effect.
2. I had no shading effects, which added to the very flat appearance of the artwork.
3. The pose was not very dynamic and did not lend itself well to creating depth.

I would go on to fix these issues, but before that I experimented with environments.

I created a rough desert background. However, this also suffered from appearing too cartoonish as the colours were very vibrant. This tone was very contradictory to a story about a former slave mercenary. I realized I would have to make changes in how I go about colouring my art. I also tried to add some shading effects here, however, I was not very effective at this point.

I essentially started from the beginning once again. I created an entirely new, more dynamic pose for my protagonist. I kept some things similar, namely the scale, as well as the overall shape of the helmet. I also made some design amendments, for instance I toned down how pointy the Mercenary’s shoes were and I removed the red tunic below the armour, mostly because it just made his torso look disproportionately long. This change made the overall colour scheme more balanced as a result and the shape of the body more defined. I also added significantly more shades of colour for shadow and depth. I also almost completely removed the black outlines which elevated this piece significantly further beyond the original artwork.

Overall this artwork is night and day compared to the first pixel art draft. It fits the tone of the game and captures the character design as perfectly as I envisioned it to in my mind.

I went on to design a different background as well after having gotten used to Aseprite and learning its tools better. I made a significantly nicer backdrop and sand dune that complimented the Mercenary’s colour palette well.

However, I realized I had an issue, which was that this sprite was too large for gameplay, as a result I realized I had to shrink it down for that facet.

I first shrunk down the sprite on its own and then tidied it up to make it proportional in the smaller size I brought it down to. It went from 83px by 155 px to 33 px by 57 px which was a significantly more reasonable size, especially in regards to gameplay. I am quite pleased by how this small sprite turned out, I was worried that I would lose a lot of detail upon shrinking it, but with only a few minor amendments I was able to retain the detailing I had for the most part.

With this smaller sprite I was able to much more easily make variants (for instance the idle pose with the cloak covering one arm) with little trouble. I was also able to do some minor animations.

Lastly, I made this small attack-stance animation. This was to serve as a practice on how to animate in general as well as to envision how the Mercenary might utilize his long sword in combat.