Orbiter

180x180px
12 colors
2 hour 45 minutes (final process)
Photoshop

This is the artwork featured in Pixelcast 44. People often ask about my thought process, and how I even get to the starting line on these pieces, as one can see I already have a palette and apparent plan from the get go. Well, allow me to explain the making of a typical Pixelcast artwork.

Before I attempt to record the process of the final art, there's a fair amount of planning involved. First, I brainstorm for a concept. This starts with idle thinking, letting the many visions run through my head with little guidance. Usually, I can at least get a vague idea of where I want to go from here. If nothing in my stream of thought sparks my imagination I may look for inspiration from various sources, ie. books, internet, nature. The less I force it the easier it comes, as it seems the best ideas pop up when I'm jogging, showering, and doing other mundane activities away from the blank canvas.

Next, I make rough hand sketches. Often the vision evolves or changes into something quite different than the original thought. Or, sometimes I jump straight to the sketching phase when my head feels empty, and quickly something will manifest from my somewhat unconscious hand chattering. I take the sketches no farther than crude thumbnails to keep ample room for the imagination to expand and exploit the quality of the pixels when I go digital.

With some rough sketches in hand, I then create a complete rough concept in pixels. The goal of this step is to establish the composition in more clarity, and nearly finalize the color palette. I usually spend about 30 minutes to an hour on this step. This would essentially be the start of the final art in any other piece I do, but for Pixelcasts I want to ensure the final product is smooth and engaging. Furthermore, this step requires a lot of trial and error to get to the final concept. While it could provide some insight to see this process in the time-lapse, the logistics of recording and editing this somewhat sporadic exploration are difficult to capture and edit in an engaging manner. What's more, the idea of someone looking over my shoulder constrains me from making the mess required. With speeding things up, it would be hard to even tell what's going on, as I sample through many different colors, and bounce around the canvas. By slowing the playback I fear most would quickly lose interest, and the length would seriously tax my storage capacity. Therefore, I feel the best way to illuminate the prequel chapter of Pixelcast is to explain it thus, and provide images. In the future, I will try to at least capture multiple phases of the pixel draft.

Once I have the rough pixel version the rest of the story plays out in Pixelcast. In this example, you can see how the composition changed from sketch to pixel, and how the details evolved in the final. This is about par for the course, but sometimes things can change dramatically from start to finish. Remember you can slow down the playback speed on youtube if the action is too fast. Enjoy!

Watch on Youtube