Our System - 1 - Mercury (Patreon)

Time to launch a new pixelminis series! The theme is our solar system, and it will feature all the main planets, and some patreon exclusive moons!

I'm starting from nearest to the sun with Mercury. This tiny planet is hardly bigger than our own moon, and at a glance it looks very similar. However, look closely and you'll discover this rocky gray surface has its own unique history of volcanic activity, seismic activity, and impact craters. The result is a tortured surface of overlapping basins and craters. The Caloris Basin is the largest of such features; a 1155km wide crater formed by the impact with a massive meteorite sometime early in the planet's life cycle.

I studied several different references to get familiar with the texture and features of the planet. Since the surface has very similar features all around the globe I took some creative liberty by creating textures inspired by multiple images of the planet. However, I did mostly stick to one reference to capture an approximate geography, which one familiar with the planet could recognize. For example the Caloris Basin can be found in the lower left quadrant of the planet.

The natural color of the planet is dark gray. I went ahead and used slightly abstracted colors to give it a unique expression, but neutral enough to stay on point. It's easy to get lost in the that texture while creating, and I still feel like there are some pixels in there that need cleaning. Anyway, I think it's a fair start and I expect to improve my technique over the course of the series. Hope you guys will enjoy the series, because we are going to be lost in space for a while.

planet-64x64px  frame-128x128px
7 colors
Photoshop