Jessica’s Playful Pixels

Remember Jessica? She works with instructor Matthew as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Matthew’s helping Jessica build her skills as an artist and a game designer. Some artists create with pencils, some with paints, and others use pixels. Guess which kind of artist Jessica is!

Moving on from expressive emojis and an awesome .gif, Jessica and Matthew started a character modeling project using Paint.NET and Gimp. Matthew took a backseat so Jessica could first design the character and then go through the hands-on process of creating it as a sprite. Ever draw a series of pictures in a flipbook and then let the pages flash past? Flipbook drawings create the illusion of movement. Sprites do the same. By creating a series of poses and perspectives for her character, Jessica can animate him on her screen.

Once Jessica created the sprite, she and Matthew added highlights, shadows, and colored outlines to her design. Together with the flipbook-style animation, these artistic details bring realism to the sprite and his movements. Finally, Jessica and Matthew got started on a side view of the character, and they plan to shade in its outline to match the front-facing view.

Cool work, Jessica! You and Matthew make a great team, and your digital designs will enhance all the games you build. Stay in touch so we don’t miss out on your progress!