In today's session I used pixel art techniques to create pixel images inspired my video games. This is a widely used form of art known as pixel art most pixel art is based off video games.
I started my pixel art by creating the red ghost from pacman and used a pencil to shade the out line of his body then used a red crayon to colour in his body mass. I then coloured his eyes in with a lighter shade of blue to give my drawing contrast.
After completing my pacman ghost I started working on a object from the game as the ghost is the character I picked. The object from the pacman games I selected to draw was the cherry power up, this is a very simple design and used the same techniques from my first drawing to emulate the cherry from the original game.
The way I have drawn both of these classic icons is by using a square as one pixel instead of using 4 blocks for 1 pixel this means that the parts of the drawing are in a 1:1 ratio and are even thought out my drawings.
This is the concept that i used to create my cherry pixel art.
This is the concept art i used to create my red ghost from the pacman game.
I have progressed in my pixel art as I have now created and full size A3 pixel art drawn character.
I used solid colour and used techniques such as shading to outline my character. I shaded it instead of solid black because there were some grey parts to my character near the black outlining border and I didn't want them to blend in together. This makes it easy to identify were the characters legs are and were the outlining border starts.
Pacman
The red ghost in the top left hand corner is from then very well known game pacman and I there main threat to you in the game.
The ghost appeared in the first ever edition of pacman in 1982, and was developed by Namco. For the read ghost i used a strong outline to define the red from the black to give a very bold contrast.
The cherry to the right of the ghost is also part of the pacman games but is not a threat to you instead it is a power up that gives you additional points to your score. For the cherry drawing I used a less bold outline because I felt that this gave the cherry a more stand out appearance as the red is very visible and you almost dont notice the grey shaded outline.
Skyrim
The Middle left character is a the main character in skyrim named dovahkiin or dragon born in the games fictional language of the dragons. This character was created in the 2011 game the Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim made by the very popular company Bethesda Softworks. The drawing technique that I used for this drawing was shading, I used shading to give his armour a more shining and dark effect that gives extra detail to the character, this helps define what perspective the character is facing.
Mario-Kart
The middle right picture is a power up from the game. Mario-Kart is a game made by Nintendo and was first released in the year 1992 and the game-series has carried on all the way up the the present day with the latest game as of this moment being Mario Kart 8. In Mario-Kart you race karts around a track against other players there are different power up through out the tracks and players pick these up to either give them self an effect or give another player effects. One of the many power ups included in the game is a banana that when placed on the track will spin out any kart that hits it temporarily giving the karts behind the victim of the banana a chance to overtake that kart this can lead to some very tense races.
Super Mario
The bottom left picture is Mario the main character in the game super Mario. Super Mario is a game made by Nintendo in 2004 and is one of the biggest game Nintendo ever made and is still very popular to this day. In the popular game you play as Mario who is the main hero of the game and you set out to save the princess that has been captured by a dragon named browser and you must do this by running through levels of blocks and creatures you must over come. For this drawing I used a drawn grid to see what the drawing would look like this didn't give the look i wanted it to but i now know that drawing a grid to then draw the character on does not look good and i will avoid doing this in the future. The bottom right picture is of a power up in the game, and is a mushroom that will make Mario grow and can then take a hit from an enemy without failing the level. I used the white of the paper to show white areas as white does not show up on the grid paper very well.
My Final Character and Object
Object
For my final A3 piece for my traditional drawing I have picked a fire flower from the game super Mario. I have picked this as my A3 object as the time frame in which the game was created was near the same time frame as the first pacman game. This means that the fire flower from the game was designed in a similar way that the pacman cherry was made. This will help me because I can relate to the art style back in 1982 when pacman was made and the first super Mario game was made in 1981 one year before pacman. These games are very similar in art style and this will help me understand the main art style of retro games.
Character
For my final A3 piece for my traditional drawing I have picked Finn from Adventure Time. The main reason I have picked Finn is that the TV-show is very pop inspired and has a lot of video game references. This will help me because the shows art style might not be pixel art and it might not be a game but it has a very childish and fun style to it . This is for that reason that I have picked Finn the main character from the show to base my final A3 pixel art on.
Peer Feedback
What Works Well
Jordan -
What Needs To Be Improved
