Notes
- The first one I’ve done that I included facial features. I could have left it without, really.
- The green on green tunic/cape made this one a little more difficult than most.
Pixel Art – Joker
Notes
- The light tone of the Joker’s bleached skin made it necessary to use outlining to get the hands to stand out enough. I also outlined the neck and jawline but not the face.
- The hair is a bit difficult.
- If you google image search for “Joker” it’s almost ALL Heath Ledger, a tiny bit of Jack Nicholson, NO Casear Romero, and the occasional Batman The Animated Series. Wasn’t Batman at one time a comic book?
Pixel Art – Robin, The Boy Wonder
Notes:
Rather than spend a bunch of time writing words, this time around, I thought I’d show what the evolution looks like from 16×16 to 64×64:
16×16
32×32
At 32×32, he’s really good enough. I think the extra detail at 64×64 enhances but isn’t essential.
Pixel Art – The Thing
Notes
This one took a lot more time due to all the detail. Thing, the loveable orange rocky lug from The Fantastic Four is an iconic hero, and I thought it would be very challenging to get the look right in super low res. I must be getting better at this, because I didn’t hardly stumble at all, just worked my way through it, and got good results pretty easily.
- Started off with The Hulk as my base model, turned him orange.
- Found a suitable color to use for shading. I ended up going with two darker orange-brown colors.
- I don’t really know what The Thing wears, if they’re like boxing trunks or what, but the Fantastic Four blue is not hard to mistake for anything else.
- With the amount of detail needed to draw in the Thing’s rocky texture, it would have been possible to do facial features. I did not want to do that, because none of the other heroes have any facial features (except Spidey’s mask eyes.) I did just give a very weak impression of a nose and a jawline here. Because I’m doing shading elsewhere on Thing’s body, it forced me to do something for the jawline, or it wouldn’t have looked consistent.
- I kept the texture lines jaggy and short, and just kindof pieced them together. It really didn’t take too long, and I didn’t have to use Undo very much, which surprised me. In the torso, to keep it more solid, I didn’t connect the lines so much, and I drew them where they would also help define the anatomy and the major muscle groups. I liked the way that worked out. Once I had the internal shading lines drawn in, I went to the outside and added a few more orange pixels here and there, to give his outline a bumpier appearance.
- Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the effect I got, and it didn’t take me much time at all. Probably took longer to write this than it took me to draw it!
Pixel Art – Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin of Crime
Notes
- Another large body type, based on the Hulk figure.
- I kept everything large and chunky for the most part, but went down to 64×64 resolution to provide some detail to make it more apparent that we’re looking at a man wearing a suit. Kingpin is usually depicted wearing an elegant white double-breasted jacket over darker pants. I kept the color palette reduced by reusing the pants color in the shadows on the jacket.
- The buttons on the double breasted suit jacket are were done as single pixels at 32×32 resolution.
- I like the way the navy necktie and the orange waistcoat play off each other.
Pixel Art – Wolverine
Notes:
- To accomodate Wolvie’s trademark hair, I had to shorten him a pixel. Fortunately, he’s known for having a compact stature.
- Wolverine has worn a number of costumes over the years. This one seemed like the easiest to create at 16×16. The Yellow and Blue one with the abdominal stripes on his back wrapping around to the belly would be trickier and require dropping down to higher resolution.
- The flared tops of his boots gave me trouble. I might need to refine these more.
- The claws were another tricky spot. I ended up leaving them fairly chunky, and I like the effect.
- The hair is super chunky. I refined it a tiny bit when I dropped down to higher detail level, but I could have done more. I felt like leaving it chunky, as a stylistic touch. But making it more finely detailed could have been an equally valid choice.
- I made his skin color a little darker, to reflect his nature as a more outdoorsy type.
Pixel Art – Captain America 64×64
Notes
- Captain America was a challenge! I had to go down to 64×64 resolution to get the level of detail needed.
- I haven’t used anti-aliasing techniques so far, but this might be the first time I felt like it might have been necessary. Spider-Man and Hulk presented similar difficulties, but because of the number of colors and intricate detail on Captain America’s uniform, it was harder. Portions of Cap’s uniform are white; I used a light grey solid with a slightly darker outline to add definition to those parts of ihs uniform.
- I modified the square from Iron Man’s chest repulsor into a star by dipping down to higher resolution. I’m pretty pleased at the results.
- Cap’s boots flare out at the top. Adding this detail put me in a position of needing to add more definition at the toes.
Pixel Art – Iron Man 16×16
Notes:
- Not much to say on this one. The one notable thing about this image is that, unlike Batman and Superman, I decided I needed to place the chest repulsor more centrally, because the light yellow color adjacent to the white background made it look too much like he had a hole missing from his chest. This effect doesn’t seem to affect Superman — I’m not sure if that’s because his blue uniform works better for keeping him together, or if it’s because the S-shield on Superman’s chest is more than one pixel.
Pixel Art – Juggernaut 16×16
Notes
- Based on The Hulk I just did.
- Juggernaut actually ended up being a little bulkier. Not because I wanted him to be — I feel if anything he’s got to be a little smaller than the Hulk. But because I needed extra pixels to allow the detail necessary for his arm bands. His helmet also makes him look bulkier overall.
- Again, I’m pretty pleased with the way this one turned out.
Pixel Art – Hulk 16×16
Notes
I’m pretty happy with this one!
- I started out with the same 16×16 figure that I based Superman off of, but added width to it. I added about 4px of extra girth to the Hulk, and it feels about right.
- It took me a while to figure out what to do with the arms. I just kept adding pixels until I felt it conveyed sufficient bulk.
- I immediately had a problem with the thicker limbs overlapping and blending together. I ended up spreading the legs out a bit more (and the Hulk is typically drawn with a wide, squatting stance, anyway, so doing this really helped “sell” the suggestion that this mass of pixels really is the Hulk. The arms were more problematic, in that they blended in with the body too much. I ended up using a secondary green color to offset and give the appearance of shadow and dimension. This really works well.
- I wish I could tell you the science for how I picked this shadow color, but I just looked at the color picker and guessed. My guess was pretty good — but was it the best one I could have made? I don’t really know.