castpixel

2 MORE FREE PIXEL FONTS

"Heroine sword" is an 8x8 font. 

Features

• very readable in both upper and lowercase
• strong distinction of glyphs for dyslexic folx
• full set of letters, numbers and symbols
• monospace and bold
  

"Stylish 6x5" is an 6x5 font

Features:

• very readable
• strong distinction of glyphs for dyslexic folx (although caps only)
• caps only, numbers and symbols
• fits ...
  2020-07-07 16:52:18 +0000 UTC View Post

GHOSTVAC post-mortem - masterclass in fakery and illusion

This is a post-mortem/ behind the scenes of my game GHOSTVAC. Made in 3 days for the Ludum Dare 46 jam, in Construct 2, a 2D engine.

THEME

First things first, I did let the theme get lost in development. The game was initially about feeding balls...

Alphonse Elric cosplay build making of

Here is the making of for my award-winning Alphonse Elric cosplay. It took me 6 months, and was very taxing and very fun.

2019-04-24 07:34:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Thundercats mockup timelapse

Here's two timelapses of those thundercats mockups.

To begin with, I chose a resolution (a widescreen version of 320x224, which is what old-school capcom beatemup arcades use). Then I started "translating" the old thundercats cartoon into the language of the Thundercats Roar trailer. I observed...

Thundertank timelapse!

Have y'all seen the Thundercats Roar trailer? It's so amazing! The designs are cute, but also super grounded on the original!

I'm making a mockup of what Thundercats Roar might look like as a fighter game.

Here's a timelapse of how I pixeled the thundertank.

castpixel's curiously chunky free pixelfonts

Free for any use. Drop me a tweet if you use them @castpixel

True type fonts. Use size 15

How to make a 2D dungeon crawler in 3 days

Hi all!

Here’s a post-mortem for Lands of TSR Lore , my tiny dungeon crawler made from scratch!

This was my 10th Ludum Dare and I thought I’d treat myself.

Early on I realized I will have no fun if I follow the 2018-02-08 13:56:44 +0000 UTC View Post

How to make a bullet-hell SHMUP in 3 days

This is a post-mortem and game design analysis of my Ludum Dare game “FuseCell” made in 3 days with a competition theme of “Running out of Power”

Getting Inspired

As soon as the theme “Running out of Power” was announced, I knew I wanted the experience my players get to not be one of limitations. Running out of power can be in...

Ludum Dare 39

Proud of my LDJAM game “FuseCell” made in three days. A shmup with a unique absorb mechanic! You can play it here: https://castpixel.itch.io/fusecell

This is the kind of thing your patronage allows me to do, thank you so much. Post-mortem coming up

Girl Cave poster - making of

This is for a German Webseries called Girl Cave. It's about three geeky girls who are friends.

You can watch the first episode here  (German/ English subtitles) 

The creator, Memofilm, contacted me to create a pixelart poster for one of the episodes. Here is my process from beginning to end:

I started with the concept, the girls are cont...

moana animation wip

hi patrons, thank you so much for all the support! I've been going through a rough personal period the past few months, but I'm bouncing back.

Here's a personal project I wanted to share. It's a still from a gif animation I'm working on

CD music album cover

The album is "picnic" by https://twitter.com/to6okegao

The theme was "bento", obviously ^-^ 

_..     TINY PIXEL RESCUE WORKSHOP      : .    __

with your friendly neighbourhood pixelartist @castpixel

We know a lot more about pixelart nowadays, thanks to the amazing work done on Pixeljoint.com and Pixelation &nbs...

Golden Axe Pico 8 Demake

Pico 8 is a "fantasy console", a modern virtual machine, simulating some old-school restrictions, such as 16 colors, 128x128 resolution and limited space for music and code. For some reason, it really inspires me to make pixelart for. So I decided to demake the first beat em up I ever played, Golden Axe. It ended up taking a full week, all told.

16 colors and a 128x128 resolution can hold *so* much i...

Making of: Golden Axe dragon, Pico-8 palette

So this is Tyris Flame's highest level spell, the dragon. Golden Axe used to impress me as a child, so I decided to remake it (or demake it rather) using a 128x128 pixel canvas and the Pico-8 palette.

So far so good!

Sphinx timelapse

Small size sprites take me a lot longer than larger pixelart sprites or vectors, because I have to make sure pixel clusters are satisfactory and forms read well. 

It's in the 6 hour range for just this sphinx. Check it out from start to finsh, in the gif below


Thanks for your patronage, you're really making a difference.

Night Pearl - pirate jrpg visual development

So this is my new project, a pirate jrpg in 64x64pixels. And here's some timelapse gifs of me working on the sprites. I feel the need to remind the importance of using tetris pieces, especially the S and T tetriminos, and to limit the usage of single, unconnected pixels, *and* single pixels that connect at the corners with other pixels. 

2015-09-29 18:34:52 +0000 UTC View Post

Pico-8 game mockup

So I made a fictional game mockup. I used the Pico-8 palette at half the Pico-8 screen size (i.e. 64x64 pixels)

Working on such a small scale is very challenging but very rewarding. Details are kept to a minimum, but my design philosophy for these is that big glamour shots/cutscenes can immerse you in the game world enough that you forget you're playing a less detailed sprite avatar. 

The beauty of pi...

How to come up with an innovative game mechanic

with your amateur gamedev host, @castpixel

Ok, so I was feeling very low this past month. Some health stuff to come to terms with, couldn’t focus on work, was out of creative juice.

I entered gbjam in the hopes of getting my mojo back, and it totally worked! I frequently feel like I fail at game jams, because I usually don’t end up with finished, fun games. Nobody cheers for a half-baked engine. ...

Dilophosaurus pixel portrait process gif

Because of requests, here's a public post: this is my process when pixeling. 
1. search for reference for about 30 minutes
2. work within limitations (60x60px and 4 grays, in this case)
3. don't forget to avoid banding. Avoiding is better than eliminating it. If you wish to know what "banding" is, check out this tutorial that, as I frequently say, taught me most of what I know: 2015-06-23 21:09:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Psittacosaurus pixelart portrait

Hi lovely patrons! Here's some work for a card game. This is my workflow for an actual, professional deliverable asset.

Step one: The game is a card battle with dinosaurs in ancient egypt.  So I scour google images for psittacosaurus and the pyramids until I'm satisfied I have enough references (I try to limit myself to 30 minutes)

Step two: I set two layers up, one for the background and one for the dinosaur. My limitations are 60x60pixels and a gameboy 4-gray palette. Which ...

Pixel Pirate Ship process

Hi new patrons! So, 64x64 pixels is the size of a windows icon. When doing pixelart we tend to be afraid of too small a resolution. What if we can't fit everything? What if we need to add more detail? There's a time and place for more detail. But for me it's very fun to see how much stuff I can cram into a 64x64px canvas. Pixel clusters (i.e. collections of more than 2 adjacent pixels of the same color) need to be very well thought-out at this size. One can't get away with sloppy pixeling, sin...

Max from Sam n Max 16x16 sprite downscale

Downscaling sprites is like totally a pixelart tradition. It forces me to think a ton about pixel placement and economy of space. This 16x16 sprite for example. You'd think that Steve Purcell's Max character wouldn't be readable at 16x16. But he is. We instinctively think 16x16 is too small to say what we want to say. And sometimes it really is. But my biggest learning moments are after I've tried something that small. If it doesn't work, fine, I'll move on the the next largest resolution. Bu...

Ice story 氷物語 Ludum Dare 32 game post mortem

This is all the insight I can offer on the design of my 3-day game "Ice Story"

2 Portrait Studies

Portrait studies for a commissioned game. It's not pixelart, but it's still fun to make :D Check the two attached .gifs

Making of Sleen

Hi new patrons! It's amazing that you're here. Here's a making of another fantasy-ish character for a cardgame mockup. Notice I'm using big forms and then refining them with tetris-piece shaped blotches of pixels. Each blotch of more than 1 pixel is called a pixel "cluster" in pixelart lingo. It's a good idea to have pixel clusters that read well, and tetromino shaped clusters are ideal, they lock together so well. As a sidenote, I'm using the very versatile and popular 32-color palette by Da...

Making of Space Goblin

Happy April, Patrons. Attached is a small workflow gif of me pixeling a Space Goblin for a card game mockup. As always, questions are welcome

New Pixelfont "Robot-Y"

I made a squarish pixelfont. I think it looks a little like the type from WALL.E, so I also added inverted letters, which are actually very Commodore-64. That machine was ahead of its time. You're my patrons so you see this first. Download it here: http://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/bitfontmaker2/gallery/?id=1677 or use the attached file I made it in an online editor called BitFontMaker2 ( 2015-03-26 01:12:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Making a 2.5D dungeon

Old school 2.5D dungeon like Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master, but at half the size.These few wall panels along with a few front-facing walls are remarkably flexible and with a bit of variation can be used to represent a whole dungeon. Darkness doubles as atmospheric perspective and an illusion of unexplored space. It also lets gamedevs get away with making assets for only 4-5 tiles ahead instead of infinite LOD. Feel free to ask stuff, and as always, check out the attached .gif Thanks...

Space Crusade - Wall tiles and double door sprite

Pretty straightforward. This overhead projection style is well explored in games like the Chaos Engine by the Bitmap Brothers. The challenge is to make the wall tiles low enough so you'd still be able to see and select a unit underneath My main inspiration for the door junction tiles was the staple in tabletop wargaming Hirst Arts sci-fi molds catalog; http://www.hirstarts.com/molds/moldssci.html Check out t...