Hi everyone!
So, I'm not sure if you know this about me... but I'm extremely motivated by contests. There was a Steem group ages ago linked to theCreativeCrypto magazine that had a huge delegation from Ned and awarded upvotes for contest entries.
I entered quite a lot of them, spending hours on little pixel art artworks, and while I didn't do well, I always enjoyed putting in the effort and seeing what other people came up with. I wasn't out to win (although it was always really exciting if I did) but to have an actual goal and criteria to work with is SO MUCH easier than just staring at a blank white screen.
I was absolutely rapt to find @kristyglas for a Pixel Art community on Hive and then start a Pixel Art Contest about Fish. Thanks so much to @acidyo for Tweeting it out, I'm honestly not sure I would have caught it otherwise.
The people that submitted entries already were totally intimidating, and looked really life-like (as far as pixel does anyway) so I thought I'd instead play with Splinterlands cards instead.
There's actually quite a lot of fish cards in Splinterlands, but I chose this guy even though I'm not sure I've ever used him in a game:
My water deck is all about magic anyway, I have no time for fishy melee... but that doesn't mean I couldn't pixel him up.
My version is way more cartoony than the source material, but I don't mind it.
I've very rarely started any pixel art from scratch and so this was a really good exercise to draw the overall form I wanted first, and then fill it out a bit. I'm using Pyxel Edit as my program of choice.
I found drawing the eyes and mouth super easy, but then really struggled with the overall shape of this monster...
I don't have a stylus or anything... so I just drew the basic shape by throwing the mouse around, and then going through the individual pixels and cleaning it up. The fins and bumpy bits were much easier...
One thing I love love love about Pyxel Edit is that the colour palette suggests lighter and darker colours for shading...
So picking a darker red for the tongue is so easy! I really struggle with colours, and so I really do love this feature...
Here is the base colour as suggested by the source material...
I also grabbed the under belly and that darker top colour from the source material as well...
I originally intended to draw in a whole ocean and animate him jumping out of the water to snatch a flying dragon... but I think that would take me weeks... so I actually exported my pixel art to Photoshop and then added a simple gradient background. As far as I can tell, Pyxel Edit doesn't have a gradient type option.
Here is the guy in the size I drew him:
and here is my entry for the first Pixel Art contest on Hive:
Thanks so much for reading! And thanks again to @kristyglas for generously hosting this competition...
