If you know me, you know that I love gaming. And you also know that I'm a huge fan of Nintendo. I was first introduced back to the gaming world as a young lad where 3D-rendered polygons were still just a pipe dream. One of my favorite games back then was none other than the classic Super Mario World. Between it's lively music and vibrant colors, I was constantly enthralled.
Of course, the crowning point of games like Super Mario World were the fact that they were rendered in 16-bit graphical sprites. Even to this day, I am still a big fan of 16-bit graphics, so I decided to take the opportunity to use "Computing Retreat" as my first true foray into the 16-bit world.
Computing Retreat is pretty straightforward: it's a retreat where computer fanatics can go new coding skills. Topics range from how to code iOS apps in Swift to rendering 3D polygons for modern day gaming. It's a nerd's heaven!
Speaking of nerds, I only felt it appropriate that this logo is represented by a nerd. And not just any nerd: a 16-bit nerd. Given that this is my first go at a 16-bit sprite, I purposefully chose a view that would make the face symmetrical. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but trust me: once you start to introduce asymmetry to 16-bit art, the difficulty gets ratcheted up.
Actually, this isn't the first time I've given 16-bit art a go. The problem before was, like I said above, I tried starting off with complex, asymmetrical 16-bit sprites and ultimately gave up because, well, they ain't easy. BUT when I did try to learn it back in the day, I learned that the actual execution of design in Illustrator is super simple.
I know it's a little difficult to see above, but Illustrator actually has an aptly named "Rectangular Grid" tool to create a grid pretty easily. From here, all you have to do is make this grid "Live Paint" compatible, and you can chug away using the "Live Paint Bucket".
Knowing the head shape would be difficult for me to create, I decided to start with the glasses. I figured, the glasses had to be the most simple structure on this whole thing, right? Fortunately, I was right, and if you know from my other graphic ventures, I'm rarely right in this program. Yay me!
(That's me. Cruising along and feelin' good!)
Okay, from here I can go ahead and begin structuring the face. While I am able to take 100% credit for the entire creation of this piece, I did look at other 16-bit sprites across Google Images to take note of tricks people use to make their art look as "realistic" as possible. One thing to note is the trick to creating curved edges. You can kinda see how that was done down below. There are two basic rules: you don't go fully diagonal, and you don't go fully horizontal / vertical. Instead, you stagger the pixels in pairs of two's or three's and the occasional one to make a more seamless, natural looking curve.
After having a general outline done, I jump in with basic colors to begin with. I choose a pale skin color for the skin, dark brown for the hair, light blue for the glasses frames, and purple for the bow tie.
Here's where things get interesting. The biggest difference between 8-bit art and 16-bit art is that graphical artists back then had a more expansive color palette to work with, meaning that they could re-color things in a certain way to make it appear as if light is playing a factor in interacting with the objects. Take the glasses, for example. If you look closely, you'll notice that there is a lighter stripe of color running diagonally on each frame, as if light is reflecting off it. Same with the skin and bow tie. And using different colors on the skin, I can make it look almost like his skin is clammy.
This is all thanks to our handy, dandy color guide. In the image below, I have the primary color of brown I used selected. From here, Illustrator provides me with different shades of that same brown. I use the browns on the left to represent "shade" and browns on the right to represent "light".
That pretty much covers it for the nerd's face. I decide I want to custom make the background. Using the same 32x32 grid I used to generate the working space for the sprite, I create a basic swirl-like pattern against a color just a shade lighter than the pinwheels itself. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.
And finally, I want to show the text in that same 16-bit style. Now, I probably could have created that by hand, but I was almost certain there was a font that would do it for me. I'm already feeling pretty good about the rest of it, so I don't feel like I have to prove myself anymore with the font. Fortunately for me, there's a free font floating out there called "Minecraft", likely because it matches the same style of text used in the popular game Minecraft.
Put them all together, and you've got the final product at the top of this post! I'm pretty proud of this work and am super glad to have learned some of the basic tenets of 16-bit graphical art. I'm really looking forward to exploring more projects like this in the future. (My wife is already asking me to create a sprite of our baby!) Catch you guys in the next post.
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