This series began as a monthly challenge to create a GIF for each zodiac sign. I used the characters and concepts from my 2017 zodiac illustrations, and attempted to bring them to life, loosely obeying the limitations of NES graphics. I wanted the signs’ actions to reflect their modality: cardinal signs travel in a path, fixed signs remain in place, and mutable signs go with the flow.
I made this when the Freddy Freaker commercial was still a popular meme. I tried to make Freddy and the background follow the graphical limitations of the NES.
I made a 3D model of my Shyabeetus logo, then rotated it and dithered it with a Game Boy palette in Photoshop. The resolution matches that of a Game Boy screen.
This was a birthday gift for my friend Dan. It starts out looking like his character in my high school comics, when suddenly… It’s his actual devious face.
On two separate occasions, I created low resolution animations of characters for SiIvaGunner videos. The first was for the channel’s false ending, in 2016, and the second was for the Haunted House Fusion Collab. I was really proud of some of them, so here they are!
Title Theme & Ending
While some characters in this collaboration already had existing sprites that could just be dropped in (such as Grand Dad and Felix the Cat), others needed to be created from scratch or modified to fit the environment.
Homer’s sprites were taken from the Simpsons arcade game, then scaled down and cleaned up. Haruka’s appearance was based on a reference image that was sent to me (my version uses an 8-bit palette, but the version in the final video uses a 16-bit palette.) I gave her a 6-frame walk cycle, which I recycled for Nozomi’s sprites. Mudbone’s sprites were modeled after Simon Belmont’s walk in Castlevania. Smol Nozomi and the Bean were done from scratch.
The Kirby sprite went unused, but it was a reference to a running gag on the server. It was made using sprites from Kirby’s Adventure.
Nozomi
OG Mudbone
Smol Nozomi
Nozomi (Confused)
Green de la Bean
Haruka (NES Palette)
Homer
Kirby (vrum)
Haunted House Fusion Collab
Many of the sprites in this collab were from existing game sprites, but scaled down and silhouetted. There were a bunch that I created from scratch or modified.
The Beast’s walk cycle is based on the full Beast sprite I made in 2016, with a simple 4-frame walk cycle. Hamoud and MIDIJam sax were made using keyframes of videos with larger resolutions. Similarly, Buck Bumble and the Beatles were taken from larger images, and animated manually. Leonidas was based on Richter Belmont’s sprites, and Spiderman’s were taken from a Sega Genesis Spider-Man game, but I added his pizza delivery box. Rubber Hose 8-Bit Beast and the Sentry Buster were created from scratch.
8-Bit Beast
Buck Bumble
Leonidas
8-Bit Beast (Rubber Hose)
MIDIJam Saxophone
Spider-Man
Habibi Hamoud
Sentry Buster
the Beatles
And as a bonus, here are a couple shots I animated in Flash. The high quality Beast walk from the Ambience segment, and the Beast doing the Caramelldansen dance.
This idea started when I drew my Capricorn character lying on the floor, and Erica drew her Cancer character riding on his back like a motorcycle. I decided to animate it, and it became the first of many Goat Dad and Crab Mom drawings.
I made these back in 2015 (when I still had hair!) I wanted to demonstrate that I could animate traditionally, as well as imitate 8-bit and 16-bit graphics, and ended up using different methods for each. From left to right:
The 8-bit sprite fits within 16×24 pixels, allowing him to fit in with most NES player sprites. I limited the color palette to 4 colors (including transparency), and only used three unique frames of animation.
The 16-bit sprite was drawn and shaded in Flash, without using outlines. Each color was exported separately, brought into Photoshop, and dithered down to a few colors, limiting the color palette to 8 colors (including transparency.) There are 7 frames, and the sprite fits within 32x64px.
The Flash animation uses 12 frames and follows no specific limitations.
