¶.Monster | 2024 October 10: Pixels

2024 October 10: Pixels
In which I admit to a bit of a fib, provide examples to illustrate exactly how much of a fib it was, and expound on a particular area of related curiosity.

...I'm probably not going to do even the simplest little thing?? Well, excuuuuuse me if that wasn't a total and unabashed fib. I am ashamed of my fibbishness! I have actually tried to do some pixel art and animation. Simple things like rest and walk and run, and of course jump; keeping it all super simple but exploring the inherent complexity within. This right here? This pretty much sums up why I wanted to start this blog: to have some small space on the internet where I could justify and explain these little things I work on sometimes.

Here we have little Bartimæus. Just standing there, a bit restless, just waiting to go exploring. Let's give him a sword and a crown. King Bartimæus. Bartimæus Rex!

OK, little dude. Now a dragon (off frame) is chasing you. Put away your sword and run!! Run, Barti, run!

Don't you just want Barti to do well in the world? Find a princess, defeat the evil goblins, take his rightful place on the throne of some bygone, pastoral Ghibli village? Each of these so far has exactly two frames each. Simplicity it's own damn silly self.

I did a few little guys in this pill style (it occurs to me that maybe I should attempt a crow in this style... a pill crow, get it? eh?). This, according to the file names, is Dill, the cool kid with the backwards cap. Here he is calmly walking, and then he's just had a crazy epiphany about something (maye because he had too many edibles), and so he does a little hop-turn dance thing.

This is William; walking into the wind with his scarf blowing behind him, front view, side view, it's-raining view.

This is stoic George sporting a pork pie hat (I think he's a boxer from the 1920s), and two views of little guy Jimmy, with a slightly more complex three-quarter view jogging action.

Now we come to Stretchy Daniel, my little experiment with a squash-and-stretch style animation and motion blurring inbetween the key frames. I decided he needed a tricorner pirate hat. I think I could've pushed the squash and made it much more squashy as he prepares to jump and at the apex of his jump. That first hatless one there's ZERO squash; he's just on springs.

And finally we have some random oddball things. A rocketship, a nice little jerky swirly.

One of the programs I was working with has a feature to create seamless, tiled texture patterns! Useful when creating old-school RPGs and the like.


And that, my friends, is about the extent of my experiments with pixel art & animation. There's a great little mobile app called Pixel Studio where I did most of these. I put it in my GAMES folder because it's so fun to screw around with... when I'm in the mood. For the computer there's Aseprite, which has all the features you could possible want. I think that's where I did the tiles. If you're into this, I can suggest a few YouTube channels to check out of people dedicated to the craft; great teachers but also just so fun to watch these things being created.

All the other dudes are fun to watch, too. With a little digging I'm sure there are dozens if not hundreds of other decent pixel art channels, but these are the ones I recommend.

Stay nifty, thrifty, and pixelly, my friends.