I’ve had little experience with Pixel Art despite wanting to make games that focused heavily on that aesthetic. This was a good exercise to work on as it’s showed me the fundamentals of working on pixel art and sprites.
To start off with, I started to compile reference images, my main inspiration however comes from a game called Katana ZERO which predominantly uses pixels for their art style.
So to start off with – I drew out what my sprite would look like:
![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/774418225281761310/904765982747291668/20211101_161316.jpg)
Then I picked out a color palette making sure not to use predominantly black in my sprite but also adding highlights to it, I used the pencil in photoshop along with a minimalist canvas to create the pixel look. I tried to make my scope small when it came to pixel art but I wanted to add details to the sprite:
![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/774418225281761310/904796567909851156/unknown.png)
![](https://samsudeen-2021.hulldesign.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Pixel-Jasp-finished.png)
![](https://samsudeen-2021.hulldesign.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/15-1.gif)
and so I added shadows to the sprites, much similar to Katana ZERO’s artstyle.
However, the main lesson I’ve learnt from this piece is to keep the amount of pixels and the overall scope of the piece small. There are a lot of jagged lines in this pixel art which makes the sprite look harsh, this could work to a certain extent depending on what mood, art style and atmosphere I’m going for with the overall game.
However, it’s better to have less details rather than focusing heavily on creating anatomically correct and detailed art. The less is more when it comes to pixel art and this exercise helped me understand that.
References:
Katana ZERO . April 18th 2019 . PC [ Game ] . Askiisoft ( Published by Devolver Digital ) Austin, Texas .