Hey! My name is Christopher George; I am a student at Perth UHI doing visual communication. I always want to create things that are visually appealing and learn different techniques and styles. I started my interest in the arts like everyone else when I was scratching with crayons on the walls of my childhood home. Parents saw this as interest and started taking me to draw and painting clubs as a toddler. Jumping ahead to college, I started my digital design career with the vector art style and logo design when I was introduced to Adobe illustrator. This helped start to create some posters and logos for small charities and friends. During this time I had influences from the very famous Saul Bass and got introduced to the designers like Milton Glaser and Paul Rand.
One of the problems I realised with using vector style was that I was never happy with just that I wanted to learn more styles and slowly started becoming interested in traditional methods like (lino-printing & painting) and animation. I wanted to evolve and adapt to times because the vector art style while popular was too basic, at least to me. I started becoming someone who had the knowledge on how to do several styles but was never a master of all of them. As I progressed from the second year to the third year of visual communication I had realised that I lost something that was at the base of my interest in the arts, Illustration. Throughout this year I have tried to lean into illustration when I'm working on university projects. I have also begun to spend more time doing creative projects of my own so that I don’t get demotivated when working on any creative works I have to do.
On this journey towards developing my illustration skill, I discovered the pixel art style. This was an art style that I have appreciation and love for already so I became determined to learn how to create my own. Pixel art originated during the start of the gaming industry which was caused by a limitation of computer technology at the time. Nowadays this art style has had a resurgence again through games but also has been adapted to be used for logos, posters and album covers. Pixel art has a very dedicated community eager to teach and learn techniques to help each other improve. While the art style and the techniques are still very similar to the origins; the artists in the community have evolved to use programs and software available today. Developers have even created programs specifically to create pixel art, the most popular one is called Aseprite.
Some of the main techniques used to create a smoother and finished look to pixel art are:-
· Anti-aliasing – this is where additional pixels are added to the main line to create a smoother look. While modern programs have automated this process artists still prefer to do this themselves to perfect their art to their specific style.
· Cluster Theory – this is about managing how the clusters of pixels sit together and the cleaner and more managed it is, the more comprehensible your art will be.
· Dithering – dithering is when you create patterns to create the feeling of texture or shading in pixel art.
· Pillow-shading – this is something to be avoided, it is when an asset is shaded like there is no specific light source.
To me, pixel art helps me create some of the art pieces I have always wanted to create with some needed restrictions that let me not think so perfectionistic. With every piece I create, I feel like I'm still enjoying and improving which helps me stay interested. Even though I still love to learn new art styles and techniques I have a feeling pixel art will stick with me throughout my career.
For anyone curious about my pixel art pieces I will feature three works in the order I made them.
Thanks for reading.
If you are interested in seeing more of my work follow me on Instagram @line_dot.colour
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