Day Zero: Prep Work
Today was about rallying together and draft a plan for the week.
Tasks for today:
- Research state-of-the-art pixel art editors that are open source, and pick one or two for everyone to use.
- Gather learning materials.
- Craft this very own site :)
By the end of the day:
- We tried out pre-compiled binaries and/or compiling from source Libresprite, Pixelorama and Aseprite (note that Aseprite's source is public but not copyleft).
- We published this site on Github Pages.
Day One: Learning the ropes
Today we aimed to get used to pixel art editors and have a dab at making sprites. For that we suggested these activities:
- Copy pre-existing sprites in our editor of choice, so we could explore it and get used to the tools and features (we chose Libresprite and Pixelorama).
- Draw sprites based on a pre-existing template (for instance, the classic character from Mega Man), as explained in this video.
Here are some of the sprites we copied:
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Eva: Copy of some cute rabites, from Seiken Densetsu 3. -
Belén: Copy of Sonic from Sonic 2 (Master System), with the colors of the Shiny 16 palette. -
Natacha: Scaled down version of an embroidery by iamnotadoll.
As for our custom creations, most of them based on a template:
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Eva: A bard ready to rock! Based on Mega Man. -
Belén: Shepard and Liara from Mass Effect, based on Mega Man. -
Dani: Spiderman, based on Mega Man. -
Dani: Larger version of the previous Spiderman sprite. -
Eva: A rogue rat, based on Mega Man.
Day Two: Taming the lines
Today we wanted to focus on the basics of the craft, so we went on reading Chapter 1 from Pixel Logic, which is about drawing clear lines, avoiding jaggies and different outline styles and their possibilites.
Our aim for today was:
- Learn about actually drawing pixel art.
- Improve some of the sprites we made yesterday, fixing jaggies and trying out different outline styles.
- Keep on working on new characters, applying what we just learned.
This is what we came up with:
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Belén: Improved version of Shepard sprite (addressed jaggies + colored outline). -
Belén: Improved version of Liara sprite (addressed jaggies + colored outline). -
Eva: Animated bard. -
Eva: Animated rabite, jumping. -
Belén: Remake of Shepard from scratch, no template. -
Dani: Improved version of the Spiderman sprite + animation. -
Natacha: Self-portrait, with attention to avoid jaggies, etc.
Day Three: Animations and backgrounds
So far we had been focusing on characters, so today we opted for exploring backgrounds (including tiles) and also to keep dabbing into animations.
- Explore drawing backgrounds
- Learn about making tiles for backgrounds
- Make some animations
And this is what we made!
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Natacha: Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3. -
Dani: Walking animation for Spiderman -
Willy: Animated cactus (part of larger scene) -
Eva: A self-portrait. -
Carmen: Self-portrait, with an animation rocking the guitar! -
Eva: Grass tiles forming an island. -
Belén: Shepard (Mass Effect) in a city setting.
Day Four: Personal projects
Since each of us had different reasons to learn or practice pixel art, we thought it would be cool to just do a personal project —hopefully applying what we have learned so far!
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Natacha: An idle animation for Karlach. -
Dani: Spiderman walking (side view). -
Dani: Spiderman looking back. -
Eva: The rogue rat character walking on a pirate ship (boat in the background by JanCb). -
Belén: Mockup of a dungeon crawler, with 16x16 tiles. -
Willy: Kaleidos HQ in Madrid, animated. -
Carmen: Remake of the playing rock animation.
Day 05: Wrap up
It's demo day at Kaleidos, so we need to wrap up:
- Finish compiling the images for this site, plus other pixel art learning / reference resources.
- Prepare (and deliver!) a 5-minute presentation for our colleagues.
- Write our project report.