Tag: pixel art

Pixel Art: Butt-Head

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pixel art "Butt-Head" by Chris Sanyk 256x256px

Notes:

  1. My first pixel art character in this series with a face. I went all the way down to 256×256 resolution to do the fine details on the face.
  2. I did not bother with the “AC/DC” on the shirt as that is still inessential, even though the detail level in the face makes it justifiable to go to that level of detail on the shirt.
  3. Even without the facial detail, I liked it enough, and could recognize it. I could have considered this “finished” even at 16x16px: pixel art "Butt-Head" by Chris Sanyk 16x16px (Zoom the page to check it out, huh huh.)

Here’s a second attempt, after I decided that the body was a little too chunky. Instead of going for chunky style, I’m following the detail level of the head to allow the arms and legs to be more in proportion:

pixel art "Butt-Head" by Chris Sanyk 256x256px

Pixel Art – Catwoman

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pixel art "Catwoman" by Chris Sanyk 64x64px

Notes:

  1. Another female form, this one I think I like a bit better than the first female attempt that I made with Invisible Woman. The body is a bit more properly proportioned and is curvy yet chunky-square-y at the same time.
  2. After wondering about it, I googled and found that Catwoman does not in fact have a tail as part of her costume. I should have checked this before, whoops. It seems *really* impractical for a cat burglar to have something long dangling behind them that could trip them up when they’re trying to be sneaky.

Pixel Art – Mr. Fantastic

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pixel art "Mr. Fantastic" 32x32px

Notes:

  1. Mr. Fantastic is really fun!
  2. I left one leg normal. Usually when he’s drawn, there’s at least one part of him that stays normal.
  3. I could have done a lot of different things with him, pretty much anything would go.
  4. Animating this would be extremely challenging.

Pixel Art – Invisible Woman

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pixel art "Invisible Woman" by Chris Sanyk

Notes:

  1. Invisible Woman is the first female superhero subject in this series. I thought I’d try starting from the generic male figure that I started out with, slim it down a bit, and add some curves and hair. This didn’t really work so well, I think. I need to reconcile the fact that pixels don’t have curves and figure out how to make a female pixel form that has suggestion of curves without actual curves. I will likely come back and try this again when I have had enough distance between me and this work to try again with fresh perspective.
  2. The other thing about Invisible Woman is that, well, she’s Invisible. She’s usually drawn as a ghostly outline. I think the dotted line achieves this, but man is it difficult to make adjustments if you change something after you’ve committed to the outline. Get the shape right first, then worry about the outline. Otherwise it’s just one big cascading off-by-one error until you re-do the whole thing.

Pixel Art: The Penguin

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pixel art "The Penguin" by Chris Sanyk 128x128px

Notes:

  1. The all-black tuxedo look makes it hard to put detail into his clothes. I opted to give him a red bowtie and cumberbund, and matching ribbon for his top hat. The cigar ember is the same red. The handle on the umbrella matches his cigar.
  2. I shortened him and made him a bit more stout, but I’m not sure that I pulled it off too well. He still doesn’t look very rotund to me. I think the tails I added to his tuxedo jacket ended up having an effect of elongating his body, which offset the extra width I added to the body.
  3. I gave him a few extra pixels at 32×32 on his shoulders, to give a more stooped, hunched appearance.
  4. The monocle, I felt, looked too much like an eye, so I added the other eye using 128×128 pixels.
  5. For some reason though, I just don’t feel like this one is right. I haven’t captured the essence of the Penguin, his malevolent greed, and his sneering spiteful glare. I think I’m going to have to let this one sit for a while and keep looking for a way to get it right. Quite possibly just starting over and trying again.

pixel art "The Penguin" by Chris Sanyk 512x512px

Here’s another attempt that I just made. This time I started over from a blank 16×16 base drawing, and used a much wider figure. The first attempt was based on a shortened, widened Superman figure, but I think this one came out better. The legs are spread wider apart, and I made the pants dark charcoal gray instead of black. I made the hair grey and the pointy nose more pronounced. This one feels more influenced by the Danny DeVito movie Penguin, while the previous one feels more like Burgess Meredith from the 1960’s TV Batman.

Pixel Art: The Human Torch

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pixel art "Human Torch" by Chris Sanyk 32x32px

Notes:

  1. Frankly, I’m not even sure that Jack Kirby knew how to draw a guy who was on fire. The lines along his body never really did it for me. I know, who am I to question The King?
  2. Still, this was pretty easy to pull off at 32×32.

Pixel Art: The Scorpion

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pixel art "Scorpion" by Chris Sanyk 32x32px

Notes:

  1. To avoid blurring the tail and arm, I had to use a second green color. It’s not the perfect solution, but it works OK, and I’m not sure what would be better at this resolution (32x32px)

Pixel Art: Dr. Octopus

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pixel art "Dr. Octopus" by Chris Sanyk 32x32

Notes:

  1. Not much to say here, really.
  2. I’m not confident that I shouldn’t have had the octopus arms wrap around and overlap his body and other limbs. Doing it this way was easier, but working a little harder to get the extra dimensionality that overlapping would have given might have been a better choice.

Pixel Art: Silver Surfer

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Pixel Art "Silver Surfer" by Chris Sanyk 512x512px

Notes:

  1. Silver Surfer took two clicks with the fill tool to convert IceMan to what you see here. So, not a whole lot of effort here, and still the same problems. For the style I’m using, I think keeping things simple and not messing things up with trying to do reflections is probably the best solution.
  2. Silver Surfer is highly reflective, but not translucent.
  3. Unlike IceMan, he’s not faceted, but smooth and curved. So reflections on a smooth surface using square pixels are going to be even more challenging.

I’d love to hear your suggestions on how to do that.