Ryan Bloom
patreon
Sonic Mania Review: All Pixel Art
🕑 Added 2018-07-16 17:36:59 +0000 UTC Here's a dump of all the "pixel art" I did for the Sonic Mania review. Scroll all the way down and I'll talk a little more about the process.
As you might discern from the process video, most of these were done by drawing an image in pencil first, scanning it in, and then scaling the pencil art down and inking/coloring it as pixel art.
I couldn't always do that, though. Again, I refer back to that shotlist: I outlined the general visual flow of the review before I opened Sony Vegas, so I knew what artwork I'd need, but midway through the video I realized there were places where I could have more artwork.
So, for example, Thanksgiving Food guy was done exclusively with a mouse. So was all his food, of course, and the skull faces. Fun fact: the two side-facing skulls were from the same rough line art that I flipped and they naturally look slightly different because of the way I inked them.
The "backseat driver" image was also done exclusively with a mouse. Here's the rough line art for that:
As you can tell it's also smaller -- I didn't like the driver getting cut off, so I expanded past his shoulder on the right there so I could round out the wheel, give him another hand, and flesh out his left shoulder.
And, finally, the pointing finger was all mouse art.
I think if I do the pixel art schtick for more video reviews, I'll drop the resolution even lower. It's hard to tell this stuff was done in pixel art, I think. Instead of 560x560 (or even 512x512), maybe I'll go 480x480 or even lower than that.
Fun Facts:
- Sonic originally said "Do it, coward!" After thinking it over for a second, I figured calling Metal a "coward" for not throwing himself down the stairs was a bad look, so I changed it to "nerd."
- I appear to be developing a roster of characters, somewhat unintentionally. Backwards Hat Kid has been in other videos I've done, and Thanksgiving Food Guy could be seen as an older version of the kid kicking over the sand castle in my "How Do We Fix Sonic?" video.
- The text dumps being spouted by the fan girl come from a few different sources. Some come from the GiantBomb Wiki for articles about Sonic, others come from the Sonic Retro wiki (Rouge's Report in particular), I put in text from some of my Tumblr blogs in there, and even text from that book I was writing. I think there's roughly 12 frames of unique text in all, and it loops three or four times. I'm curious if anyone on Youtube will pause the video and try to read any of it.
- For the second Professor Sega image, "Hedgehog" on the blackboard is replaced with "Hechoeg" which is nickname/codename I've seen members of the development team use for Sonic Mania. I felt weird about using it, but if you search twitter for "Hechoeg" it's started spreading to the fanbase in smaller pockets, so it's probably fine.
- The break room the secretary sits in is based on the break room for the thrift store I used to work at back in Colorado. Not that it's super iconic, or anything.
- The first piece of artwork I finished for this was Sonic and Metal Sonic at the staircase. The last was the Back Seat Driver image.
