castpixel

Ludum Dare 39

Proud of my LDJAM game “FuseCell” made in three days. A shmup with a unique absorb mechanic! You can play it here: https://castpixel.itch.io/fusecell

This is the kind of thing your patronage allows me to do, thank you so muc...

Girl Cave poster - making of

This is for a German Webseries called Girl Cave. It's about three geeky girls who are friends.

You can watch the first episode here  (German/ English sub...

moana animation wip

hi patrons, thank you so much for all the support! I've been going through a rough personal period the past few months, but I'm bouncing back.

Here's a personal project I wanted to share. It's a still from a gif animation I'm working on

CD music album cover

The album is "picnic" by https://twitter.com/to6okegao

The theme was "bento", obviously ^-^ 

_..     TINY PIXEL RESCUE WORKSHOP      : .    __

with your friendly neighbourhood pixelartist @castpixel

We know a lot more about pixelart nowadays, than...

Golden Axe Pico 8 Demake

Pico 8 is a "fantasy console", a modern virtual machine, simulating some old-school restrictions, such as 16 colors, 128x128 resolution and limited space for music and code. For some reason, it really inspires me to make pi...

Making of: Golden Axe dragon, Pico-8 palette

So this is Tyris Flame's highest level spell, the dragon. Golden Axe used to impress me as a child, so I decided to remake it (or demake it rather) using a 128x128 pixel canvas and the Pico-8 palette.

So far so good!

Sphinx timelapse

Small size sprites take me a lot longer than larger pixelart sprites or vectors, because I have to make sure pixel clusters are satisfactory and forms read well. 

It's in the 6 hour range for just this sphinx. Check it out from start to finsh, in the gif below


Thanks for your ...

Night Pearl - pirate jrpg visual development

So this is my new project, a pirate jrpg in 64x64pixels. And here's some timelapse gifs of me working on the sprites. I feel the need to remind the importance of using tetris pieces, especially the S and T tetriminos, and to limit the usage of single, unconnected pixels, *and* single pixels that con...

Pico-8 game mockup

So I made a fictional game mockup. I used the Pico-8 palette at half the Pico-8 screen size (i.e. 64x64 pixels)

Working on such a small scale is very challenging but very rewarding. Details are kept to a minimum, but...

How to come up with an innovative game mechanic

with your amateur gamedev host, @castpixel

Ok, so I was feeling very low this past month. Some health stuff to come to terms with, couldn’t focus on work, was out of creative juice.

I entered gbjam in ...

Dilophosaurus pixel portrait process gif

Because of requests, here's a public post: this is my process when pixeling. 
1. search for reference for about 30 minutes
2. work within limitations (60x60px and 4 grays, in this case)
3. don't forget to avoid banding. Avoiding is better than eliminating it. If you wish to know what "...

Psittacosaurus pixelart portrait

Hi lovely patrons! Here's some work for a card game. This is my workflow for an actual, professional deliverable asset.

Step one: The game is a card battle with dinosaurs in ancient egypt.  So I scour google images for psittacosaurus and the pyramids until I'm satisfied I have enough ref...

Pixel Pirate Ship process

Hi new patrons! So, 64x64 pixels is the size of a windows icon. When doing pixelart we tend to be afraid of too small a resolution. What if we can't fit everything? What if we need to add more detail? There's a time and place for more detail. But for me it's very fun to see how much stuff I can cr...

Max from Sam n Max 16x16 sprite downscale

Downscaling sprites is like totally a pixelart tradition. It forces me to think a ton about pixel placement and economy of space. This 16x16 sprite for example. You'd think that Steve Purcell's Max character wouldn't be readable at 16x16. But he is. We instinctively think 16x16 is too small to say...

Ice story 氷物語 Ludum Dare 32 game post mortem

This is all the insight I can offer on the design of my 3-day game "Ice Story"

2 Portrait Studies

Portrait studies for a commissioned game. It's not pixelart, but it's still fun to make :D Check the two attached .gifs

Making of Sleen

Hi new patrons! It's amazing that you're here. Here's a making of another fantasy-ish character for a cardgame mockup. Notice I'm using big forms and then refining them with tetris-piece shaped blotches of pixels. Each blotch of more than 1 pixel is called a pixel "cluster" in pixelart lingo. It's...

Making of Space Goblin

Happy April, Patrons. Attached is a small workflow gif of me pixeling a Space Goblin for a card game mockup. As always, questions are welcome

New Pixelfont "Robot-Y"

I made a squarish pixelfont. I think it looks a little like the type from WALL.E, so I also added inverted letters, which are actually very Commodore-64. That machine was ahead of its time. You're my patrons so you see this first. Download it here: 2015-03-26 01:12:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Making a 2.5D dungeon

Old school 2.5D dungeon like Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master, but at half the size.These few wall panels along with a few front-facing walls are remarkably flexible and with a bit of variation can be used to represent a whole dungeon. Darkness doubles as atmospheric perspective and an illus...

Space Crusade - Wall tiles and double door sprite

Pretty straightforward. This overhead projection style is well explored in games like the Chaos Engine by the Bitmap Brothers. The challenge is to make the wall tiles low enough so you'd still be able to see and select a unit underneath My main inspiration for the door junction tiles was the stapl...