MAKE YOUR PIXEL ART IN CONSTRUCT 3 FROM SCRATCH – PART 3

CREATE 8X8 CHARACTERS – PART 1

In this part, we will design an 8×8 character.

Deep-eyed characters are difficult to do. Let’s start a new project and a Sprite. We will create 8×8 sprites.

For the most part, we will toggle the grid off, but we can toggle the grid and configure it to be 1×1.

Let’s go black and resize it to one.

With 8×8 pixels, you don’t have much to work with. Therefore, whenever you start designing characters, I always find it hard, to begin with, 16×16 or 8×8. There is a slight difference between these two. Usually, when you learn something, you want to learn it in the simplest form and move on, but sometimes things can be a little too simple. The same is true of 8×8 and 16×16. Older games used sets of 8×8 pixels.

Let’s start with building our character and explain why it’s hard to create an API character and animate it. It’s so simple. Therefore, I add two legs to create an API character.

I should also mention that there are ways to implement API characters. Not just one. There are many ways. I add the body.

It might be better to add a grid to see it here.

Now there are many ways to implement API characters.

I’m going my favorite way, and I also make the colors slightly different to show you how things work.

You have arms, etc., and then your eyes.

It is your character.

It’s a pretty simple tool. It’s not too complicated to generate that API character. Remember, there is a grid.

You can remove that, and now it looks like an indie game when it comes to 8×8. It is the main character.

Sometimes you’re creating a game, your sprite is just a box, and you attach animations to it. That means you give this player the height you want, just like Mohawk Games.

I will indicate what I mean.

I’ll zoom it out a bit, and you move this character down here.

Technically, this is still an 8×8 aesthetic.

Although, the actual character designed here is more than 8×8.

Therefore, whenever you create a game in a retro style, you don’t have to take to heart the limitations they had in the past. You can extend it. I mean, most of the time, when you do this, you’ll still have an 8×8 square moving around, and it’s subject to all your collisions. It is art. It’s plastered onto it and easy to do. Therefore, even though this character is an 8×8, it’s still in the style of 8.

As you can see, all I did was add in the extra Mohawk. That was essentially how this worked here. It’s still 8×8, and we just added in hair that didn’t quite fit in. I undo all

of that.

That is one way to do a character. Let’s add a whole new animation here.

We will make it 8×8 again.

I create another similar type of character.

You see that we have another 8×8 character, and we will compare them. You can see that there is Animation 1.

Then there is Animation 2.

Both work well. Usually, you’ll notice that the head-to-body parts are proportionate and somewhat more cartoonish. It’s hard to get a realistic body size with 8×8. However, we must have both of these here. For the most part, you can see that these things work out in various ways. You can even have them in the same game. These can be enemies and possibly real players. Since we start with shadows, maybe let’s create a silhouette with actual color.

Whenever I color, I start with a silhouette.

Art is one of those disciplines where the more you do, the more you better. Here is our player.

Let’s choose skin color.

It looks pretty good for skin tones.

That is the head. You have arms and legs, and the person may be wearing shorts.

I like black eyes.

That looks pretty!

We are almost thinking about this for a ninja level. We want to make this character a little more colorful. We can give this person a blue shirt.

That blue shirt looks pretty good. Then we can give you something. The dark blue shirt looks good too. I like the arm in a different color.

For animation purposes, it looks better. We have a good pixel character. Now, I draw the mouth. You can add a simple red color to it.

We will make the height 10.

We can make this guy have some hair. We will style the hair dark brown or something like that.

One more can be added here.

That’s probably a good use of pixel art characters.

You also may not need a mouth.

Sometimes in cartoons, you can do it differently. You can take away certain features. Sometimes characters don’t have eyes and mouths. It’s up to you!