Lecture
For that week, we have received a lecture about pixel art. In the past, I had some experience in creating pixel art and I have always understood that when creating pixel art, we will be always working on powers of two meaning the pixel size depth is always even. For example, 8×8 or 16×16 would be perfect for the pixel size of the canvas to work on.
I also learned that pixel art needs to have a good readability because the tool to draw a pixel on a canvas is already extremely small, the detail is within the shape of the object or character. I found out that the reason why people uses a colour pallet when making pixel art, is because it helps to keep a focussed colour scheme and avoid the art from being packed with lots of colours.
Something I didn’t know about was a technique called dithering. Dithering is shading to make something look lighter or darker. This is mainly used in backgrounds (if you want to have a nice shady sky). This also makes the game more visually impressive and create a retro style theme within the image.
I also understood the fact that to add shading within a pixel art, you need to think about lighting and shadow. Those include directional light, highlights, reflection, rim light, bounce light and shadow. Directional light includes lighting at a certain direction. Reflection includes the shine of the texture of the object your drawing. Rim light is light that appears on the edge of a character. Bounce light is when light bounces off an object and landing on the art piece you are drawing. Shadow is anywhere the light doesn’t touch in an art piece.
What I have created
I have used this lecture to create shading into my platformer characters for my platformer game:
The characters have lighting to give them a some texture within the drawing. Also the reason why the picture is slightly fuzzy because originally the picture is soo small (16×16). Overall, I have enjoyed taking part in the pixel art lecture and have learned a lot in that lecture and gaining knowledge on designing using pixel art.