Thickening and Pixel Contrast

[Echo Magnum]

I was ripping a sailor moon sprite so I could create a template similar to its style and I saw something that I' haven't noticed in any other sprites, The sailor moon pixels where double the size of a normal pixel exactly, I think its just because I caught the image when playing in full screen mode but this was a very interesting concept.

I decided to strip the sprite down to its cell/pixel level and re-create my own template using the advantage of large pixels to further edit my template. With double sized pixels I could set one pixle half way of the other, in other words I have more control and an advantage in positioning each large pixel to smaller pixel dimensions. The result was this. I know by now you guys are probably sick of my templates but this is going to be the last one before I move on to more complex spriting ( like animation, shading e.t.c ).

Check out the spoiler, I'll tell you my secret on how I did it. :wink:

Spoiler

Original Sailor Moon Sprite.

Made it Black and White to differentiate pixels from color-shading and began to modify my sprite over this.

The result was this template but the pose had no purpose for me so I edited it further

The result was this female template. I edited the eyes and mouth as I wanted and also took advantage of the large pixels

I might need to re-position the knees a little to look more anatomically correct but I think it turned out cool.

What do you think of the style? Is this already a common spriting method ( the large pixels ) or did I stumble on something new?

Oh and just as reference the sailor moon sprite is super sailor mercury :specs: .

 

[Perihelion]

You see tall pixels sometimes, but that's the only stylistic large pixels thing I know of. Double pixels isn't a style; it's just 200% magnification. The ROM you were using was probably just zoomed in.

Here's an example of tall pixels:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/63189.htm#

 

[Echo Magnum]

I had a feeling it was just magnified either by the emulator or something but I sort of prefer 200% magnification because you can still add detail and move the pixels in more accurate positions.
Even here the large/tall pixels are used for the magnification of the foreground kind of like in normal art how you make whats closer have thicker lines/boundaries and whats in the distance is thinner. I like the coloring though very retro, I read he used a Commodore 64 pallet which was well used and creative in this piece of art.

You could use the same technique in a game though and it could turn out really intresting, most games I've seen have the same pixel magnification for foreground and background but using this style could bring in an element of depth to the game.

Do you have any more art/sprites with large sprites I could check out for reference Perihelion? I'll check out more of Pixel joint also.
I want to see some more reference on the use of retro palettes specifically the NES pallet and if theirs any more pieces like this one. good find :thumb:

 

[Perihelion]

Uh, let me see... I know there's lots of retro stuff on PJ, but only these come to mind off the top of my head:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/57251.htm
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/47308.htm (NES palette)
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/47122.htm

Look through old PJ challenges. A lot of them have preset palettes, although not all of them are retro. This one, for example, had to use some awful palette from some old system:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/2011/05/30/34 ... emplok.htm

Also, this challenge used tall pixels, although I didn't think any of the entries were fabulous:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/challe ... sp?id=1138