Backstage Pass #13 (Patreon)

On this edition of Backstage Pass, I’ll be talking about…

My experiences with pixel art! Which I think is a very underrated art form. People who can manage to do it all the time are real champions.

Since PMD is a DS game, it clearly has a lot of pixel art. It sort of comes with the territory, and when I want to mimic certain aspects of the game, I gotta dip my toes in that art style. Surprisingly, this is actually most relevant outside of the comic- I like using pixel portraits on the cast page for OBT.

The way I approach pixel art is almost opposite to drawing normal comic pages- I start by painting the base shapes into place, which is then followed with lines, shading, all the fancy stuff. If you’re into seeing the visual process, I have a (rather old) speedpaint process video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uazKkBnWUd4

That said, I also did some sprite editing for when the gang entered Mt. Bristle! These weren’t too intensive, mostly small tweaks and some color editing to give them cool party sprites.

And maybe it’s a bit boomer of me, but I sometimes miss the old pixel art of PMD. Like I’m sorry, you’re telling me this is pixel art? A bunch of little squares? Absolutely insane.

I’m by no means any expert though! The official sprites for PMD portraits look much smoother, if you compare my style with the official portraits, it’s clear I have yet to master rounding out my jaggies, let alone mimic the official style in any capacity. I’m still proud of them though, and I learn more every time I attempt them!