Self Portrait | 16-bit

Got thinking about the Atari Jaguar again, 8/16-bit stuff, and nostalgia hit. So, to help feed the hunger for the good-old-days, I thought I would do a some 16-bit graphics myself.

I didn’t want to come up with a character concept, or anything, so a self portrait seemed like a good choice. As for style, I was thinking of King of Fighters, or Samurai Showdown. Great fighting games, in the same realm as Street Fighter. Sticking closer to the cel shaded style over the smoother more realistic styles that come from some of those games.

Doing 16-bit art changes the way I think about things. I started out with a sketch, just like any other piece, but when I began moving into the line art, things began to change. Similar to paying attention to the shapes of your lines when inking, when doing low-resolution outlining you have to pay special attention to your lines. The limited resolution forces you to figure out how to make lines go from thick, thin, then to nothing.

Also, another problem that is introduced lines that curve, don’t curve very well. Because pixels are generally square, it gets harder and harder the smaller resolution you have to make a decent circle or curve.

But there are pros as well. With the limited resolution, there is less detail to worry about. This is one of the reasons why games have gotten shorter over the years. The more resolution you have, the more detail you need to fill that empty space, and the more the costs go up to fill that space. Therefore a shorter game. But, my point is, less detail to worry about.

This piece was originally done at 256 x 512 pixels, with a palette of about 30 colors. I did it at that resolution to test out larger graphics on the Jaguar for the future. My brother and I have been playing around with coding our own Jaguar stuff, and would like to move into a game eventually.

But that is way in the future, and I consider this more about practice than actually putting together a game. I have enjoyed doing this small piece. Simple, stylized, and looking forward to doing more in the future. And I wish my hair actually looked like that sometimes.