Ryan's Art Topic of Practicing Pixel Art

[Ryannumber1gamer]

So, I mentioned it on the statuses a few times but since I'm planning to try practice more often with sprite artwork, I decided I might as well make a topic for the artwork. I'm not the greatest artist (Hands down, I think I'm crap with artwork). But I found out today I actually do quite enjoy doing pixel artwork. So as practice, I'm gonna try do some pixel art gifts for people around here and hopefully build up my skills.

For now, here's the two pixel art characters I'm done thus far.

First is a survivor character I created from scratch as my very first attempt at pixel art.

I really like how this sprite came out. If you're wondering about the skin colour present in the jeans, it's a survivor's outfit, so those are tears in the jeans themselves. But yeah, overall do like how this turned out. I also did a sprite animation of him blinking.

And for the next one I did for practicing with non-square shapes. A gift to my good friend @Failinhearts. It's his version of Sonic! 

As you can see here, this was a proper animation. I do like how it ended up coming out. If there's any criticisms I have personally with it, I think the shoes might've been bigger, and maybe figure out how to make the smile better. I tried to transition the smile as you can see (This was done as an animation, so if you look at it as a GIF, it starts with the first piece of art and moves to the last piece). But anyway, I like how it came out. The spikes were interesting too. I had to make sure the circular shape was kept and it was tricky to figure out how to keep the spikes, so in the end, I decided to go 90s Sonic style, and have them begin on his head, and start leading down.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy these sprites! 

[DiamondX]

Both the survivor and Sonic look amazing.

But I guess I'm not the best person to hear this from since I am horrible at drawing...

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Thanks for the feedback regardless

Now, for the next one. For @Cheawn @kirby1up and the other Kirby fans out there, this one's for you. 

We've got Happy Kirby and Bored Kirby! The lesson with this one was trying to do mouths that are open, especially in a smiling motion, and since Kirby is known for his smile, I thought I'd give him a go. Liked how he came out, although ironically, the two hardest parts about this sprite was the mouth and eyes. The eyes because Kirby has a really tricky colour blend (Which forced me to leave out the blue in his eyes). And the mouth because I had to fiddle around with the positioning and shape of it. Overall, I think it came out alright. 

[Spin Attaxx]

I'm liking your pixel art, man! Sentinel Sonic and Kirby look adorbs.

[Failinhearts]

Thanks for the Sentinel Sonic, man! He looks adorable!

A very unique take on how the character looks, that's for sure!

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Alrighty, so this was probably the biggest challenge for me so far, but also the one I had the most fun doing. You see I'm apart of @Failinhearts and @Princess Jellicent's SSMB Heroes RP (I'm apart of staff and an active poster in it). And I'm currently doing a Kingdom Hearts story in it. Since a lot of the other members here, including @Dee Dude @Mightyray and @Emperor Robrainiac have created keyblade designs for the characters they use in the role play, I decided I'd give it a go too since I'm trying to practice pixel art.

From left to right...

Edgeworth (Ace Attorney): This one was probably the one that took the longest amount of time to create because of the fact I had a ton of ideas for this keyblade. Firstly, the colours on the keyblade itself are Red, Pink, Blue, and Purple. This represents...

• Red - Edgeworth/Apollo Justice
• Blue - Phoenix Wright
• Purple - Maya Fey 
• Pink - Kay Faraday 

The green on the tip of the keyblade itself right before the blade represents Detective Dick Gumshoe as well. The proper handle is full red and blue, representing Phoenix and Edgeworth's rivalry and friendship. The blades themselves might look odd, but they are an extremely obscure reference that only fans looking closely would get. They are based on the weapons from Edgeworth's favourite anime, Steel Samurai. 

As you can see, the top blade is Pink Princess' sword, with the pink colour scheme and the blade that's long and thins out as it goes, while the bottom blade is Steel Samurai's staff blade, with the small golden colour, the brown staff and the thick blade. At the bottom of Edgeworth's keyblade is of course a mini Steel Samurai keychain. 

Aoi Asahina's: 

Aoi's keyblade was one of my absolute favourites to do because again, I just had a ton of ideas flow to my mind. It might confuse some people on some of the choices here, but the version of Aoi I use in the Heroes RP has survivor's guilt and one of her primarily motivations is to make a world where her dead friends, and family would be happy to live in, and make sure there's never that kind of despair again. Because of this, the keyblade's handle represents Sakura and Yuta Asahina, Aoi's best friend and Aoi's little brother who both died during Monokuma's killing game. The handle being Yuta and Sakura's hair colours. The keyring is of course a 8-bit Monokuma head. 

As for the blades, I can see them being a bit confusing. One of them is obviously Monokuma's head, but the other looks like just a random mess of colours. However, this has more meaning than you might think, because it represents all of the Danganronpa 1 characters, specifically their hair colours. 

Going from top left to bottom right (In the Keyblade colours)...

• Blond: Junko Enoshima
• White: Sakura Ogami
• Dark Black: Celestia Ludenberg
• Dark Purple: Toko Fukawa 
• Light Purple: Kyoko Kirigirl 
• Light Black: Hifumi Yamada
• Dark Brown: Aoi Asahina
• Dark Blonde: Byukuya Togami 
• Light Brown: Makoto Naegi 
• Medium to Dark Brown: Yusihiro Hagakure 
• Red: Leon Kuwata 
• Black: Kiyotaka Ishimaru 
• Dark Blue: Sayaka Maizono 
• Orange: Mondo Oowada 
• Yellow: Chihiro Fujisaki

This should also reveal the biggest theme in the keyblade. It shows Aoi Asahina, and all of the DR1 cast as a group VS Monokuma. It shows Aoi's wish for everyone to unite against him. 

Kat and Raven's (Gravity Rush):

This is one I definitely expect most people to not understand. Not only is Gravity Rush relatively obscure (Or at least I doubt many here have played it and know a shit ton about it's lore and such). The yellow and red represents Kat and Raven retrospectively, the blonde/yellow representing Kat and the Red representing Raven, and how the two have become best friends and partners in Gravity Rush 2. The keyring of the keyblade is a small 8-Bit Dusty head (Kat's cat and guardian). The blades of the weapon represent the two's guardians, as well as their unity. The yellow is Raven's raven and is blonde (representing Kat), and the bottom is Dusty's tail, which is red (Representing Raven). 

 

Mega Man's: 

Mega Man's should be a lot more recognizable. You might notice it being a bit similar to Edgeworth's with the handle. Said handle represents Rock (Mega Man)/Blue and Blues (Proto Man)/Red. The blades should definitely be recognizable, as the weapon's blades are the two's mega busters. And what else could be the keyring other than the iconic E-Tank? 

 

Danny Phantom's:

Last but not least, it's Danny Phantom's keyblade! A lot of the design choices were rather obvious. Like the keyblade's handle design was definitely going to be black and white to match Danny's ghost form, and the keyring of course had to be Danny's D emblem. The blades were really fun to make though, as they were based on Danny's ghost ray ability. A fun fact being that originally, it was going to be one ghost ray, and then a icicle (to represent Danny's ice abilities too). But I decided two ghost rays just fit the image and colour scheme a lot more. 

 

[Spin Attaxx]

Nice Keyblades, I can tell you put a lot of thought and effort into them!

they're better than my keyblades at least :U

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I liked your keyblade designs :U. 

On another note (Sorry for spamming the topic btw, I just keep coming up with ideas lol). Another one for @Failinhearts. We can't have a Sonic without a Tails. Looks like on another one of the sentinels' missions, Taills accidentally stumbled upon a gaming relic of the past, and doesn't quite seem to understand how something so bulky is portable.

 

[Failinhearts]

but ryan, don't you know? In the RP, Tails actually has a secret love for retro tech!

But seriously, looks great, man!

[MightyRay]

Nice work on those keyblades Ryan! Your pixel art is very cute!

[Polkadi~☆]

Loving what I'm seeing, mate. Keep it up!

[Ryannumber1gamer]

@Spin Attaxx is up next with the sad tale of a robot who just wants to say hello, and his jackass of a "boss". 

[Spin Attaxx]

He's not actually a robot; he's a living metal creature. But people often mistake him for one, and Shade sure treats him like one.

Good work, man! These are so cute!

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Well, @Forte-Metallix asked me to do some pixel art of one of his characters, so...

Dr. Haxx is in the house and is ready to see you now. Don't worry too much about the cyborg eye...or leg....or arm....or....

[Ryannumber1gamer]

And to end off tonight, we have @Emperor Robrainiac's Katii. 

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

What I like about your sprites is the expressions. They're cute and funny, such as the Kirby and Sentinel Sonic and Tails.

Keep up the neat work!

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Rocku's showing off his strength before he starts a fight! @Dee Dude

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Welp, it's art dumping time! 

First up, it's Amitie for @SurrealBrain!. She's happy and giving a hello! 

The biggest challenge for Amitie here was three things. Firstly, the unique blending of colours on her outfit, which caused me to have to rethink things and redesign multiple times, the hair, which Amitie has a really damn unique hair style which I had to play around with several times to figure out a good way to retain the hair and make it work with pixels. It did help me a lot though as I think I did alright with her. For those wondering, the red thing sticking out of her is apart of her belt. 

Next up was a request from @Galabance, who asked me to make a character from one of my favourite series! It's a terrifying character all right! 

Tell me SSMB, Have you seen this chicken? He goes by the name Feathers McGraw. Yep, one of the most iconic villains from Wallace and Gromit! 

And since we did Feathers, I decided for fun, let's try another character from that series...

"CHEESE GROMIT!" 

Yep, it's Wallace from Wallace and Gromit! Asking for some cheese! Wonder what kind he wants? This one was really fun to do, and as you can see I even made an small blink and smile animation for him. I really love how this one turned out and it gave me fantastic practice for doing heads that weren't entirely circular. 

Next up, it's a gift for @Polkadi, @Boomer @Mystwalker and all of the Overwatch players out there. 

As you can see here, it's Dad Soldier 76! This one was another fun one to do and it gave me a lot of experience with blending hair with heads, and as well as that, creating masks and blending colours on the sprites. I did two versions, one with him fully masked, and another where parts of the mask was cracked off, leaving just the viser and his mouth piece. I think my favourite things about the sprite is 76's Scar and the sports jacket!. 

[Agie]

Looking real good, Ryan! I like the Amitie you did! Keep it up!

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Thanks Surreal  

Well, since Wallace and Feathers got one, it seems only right for the brains of the operation to get one too.

As you can see, it's a very grumpy Gromit, who sees rather annoyed with Wallace and Feathers' hijinks. Gromit here was much more difficult than Feathers and Wallace. Not only did his head have a unique shape, but it also came with the challenge of making Gromit emote without a mouth. I didn't want to give him a blank expression due to how him being emotive with his eyes is a well known factor about the character, so I experimented with the eyebrows to give different moods, and the grumpy Gromit was born.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Been a while since I updated.

Firstly, the very first SSMB Badge I've created for an upcoming event I've got planned during Summer. 

Really like this badge, only problem with it is the colour blending on the Mario coin. I think my favourite ended up being the triforce.

Here, we have one of my most favourite pixel arts to date, Zenyatta from Overwatch. The most difficult part was definitely blending the metals together on his neck, and he went through a ton of revisions. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Latest piece of art, my contribution for Season 3 of SSMB Heroes. Inspired by Archie Sonic, how do you save the multiverse when reality itself is shattered? 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB, IT'S PIXEL RICCCCCCCCCK