Pixel Art
Tuesday, 4 October 2005
In another life, I was an active leader in one of the largest pixel-art communities, known as Pixelation. I did a good deal of pixel art for several years, and became particularly well-known for my ability to anti-alias pictures by hand.
Here is a selection of some of the pixel art I did over the period from February 2003 to October 2005.
From left to right, top to bottom:
Hourglass: my first real foray into hand-dithering and anti-aliasing, and the earliest work on this page.
Ninja: This was a 1-bit (that is, two-color) picture intended to be part of a collaberative work which never fully materialized.
Star: This little catlike figure was a collaberation between myself and Adam Tierney. I always felt he'd be quite at home in an early-1990’s DOS platformer.
Mewee: This little doll-like figure is something of a self-portrait. Hundreds of talented artists made their own versions from a similar template, giving us a veritable hoard of little pixel-people.
Kagari: The woman with a katana is a character derived from the exquisite Ikaruga, and the pilot of the second player’s craft in a two-player game.
Chibi Catgirl: One of my favorite parts of pixel art is optimization, both in terms of picture size, but also in number of colors used. This particular picture is only four colors, but still manages to pull off strong smoothness of form.
Study of a Hand: This was a small study of a human hand (which is notoriously hard to draw), using only a 1-bit color palette. I was always pleased with how it came out.
Kneeling Woman: This was a collaberation between myself and the ever-talented John Arnst. It is done with only three colors.
Pixie: This was an experiment in varying line thicknesses, to give a brushed feel. The spine of the book reads “Nemesis42,” which was my online handle at the time.
Suki with a Giant Pencil: Suki was my trademark character for some time, being an easy and fun character to work with. She was popular for other artists to parody over the years too. Why does she have a giant pencil, might you ask? Nobody is exactly sure, though I always liked to think she used it to erase her problems.
Singing Twizzy: This is a caricature of my friend Jess, who I have not seem in quite some time, unfortunately. This particular picture was drawn for her because we co-authored a blog at the time.
Suki: Another, more subdued, rendering of Suki in a pink sweater. In trying to distill her character further, I think it became somewhat bland; however, I always liked the line quality of this picture.
Never Die with Regret: Another picture inspired by Ikaruga, and draws from the mythology and imagery of the title.
Stargirl: My swan song in pixel art, it was the final one I drew, having yet to return to the medium to any significant degree. It is exemplar of anti-aliasing and dithered shading, and is undoubtedly my favorite work of those I've done.
