Project 3: Pixel Life

For our third project of embracing something with the digital aesthetic, I chose to pixelate everyday life with my friends, in a video game style. Doing what we usually do, taking a walk with our dogs, and mine with his stubby legs growing tired too quickly. Pictured is me, Scotty (my dog) the chihuahua, Zach (the one talking), my brother John, and Zach's Australian Shepard Cosmo. I feel guilty to point out Zach doesn't really say stuff like that about Scotty, but it was funnier that way. Scotty really does make weird quacking sounds when he's excited.

First, I started with an initial sketch of me, my friends, the dogs and the background.
Then, I started to do each pixel individually to make up the line art on all the main subjects, finally filling them in and pixeling in further details with color. The background are three rows of houses going back into the landscape. Originally they were only a slight blue, mostly grey, but it made Scotty's word bubble hard to read, so I changed it to a brighter blue. The sidewalk also has three layers as it melts into the landscape. First is the one the characters stand on, then in the background it gets lighter. Clouds were also added to the sky. Zach's character also has a dialogue box to show what he's saying. Often, pixelated games will have a more detailed facial expression with the text, to show what the character's mood is. This serves a great importance in games with more of a storyline. A border of blue was added to emphasize it clearer.
 I cannot say that I pixelated the text, instead I downloaded the font "DisposableDroidBB", made by www.blambot.com

I kept the background simple to show the characters more attention, though I do feel a bit more detail could've gone into it. Overall, I am happy with the result. 

 Heavy inspiration for this comes from the game Cave Story, as I loved the pixelated art style very much so:

Pictures of the characters Pixelated:

John, my younger brother








Cosmo the Australian Shepard, Zach's dog

Zach







 And my Chihuahua, Scotty

Concept sketches for project:

At first I thought of actual drawings of the pixelated characters from cave story, but that doesn't really fit the criteria, plus I do stuff like that all the time, so it wasn't challenging. Then I thought of making things look like video game characters, and instantly thought of my friends for making a real life video game setting.