Pixels and Palettes

The Game Boy held worlds. Legend of the River King, Final Fantasy Legend, Kirby’s Dream Land—these and more captured me and took me away. I remember being home, plugged in, under the lamp, playing through the weird Super Mario Land, the incredible Link’s Awakening, and the all consuming Pokémon Blue. All with simple, black and white pixels. Of course, the original Game Boy wasn’t actually black and white… more like black on green.

Quick digression… has anyone reading this played the James Bond 007 Game Boy game? Despite its license, it was an incredible adventure game to my nine year old brain. It was a top-down Zelda-like with adventure game elements. It was fun. But you know what is absolutely wild? As part of the main quest, you are required to win several hands of Baccarat. As an adult, the card game and its rules are opaque. As a child? Impossible. I remember just playing again and again, bashing my little head against its wall until, randomly, blissfully, I happened to win. An absolutely bizarre design choice for a children’s game. Although, true to the license.

While exploring game developer tools, I came across Pixaki. It’s an iPad app made only for pixel art and animation. It’s of singular purpose. And I really like it. It wasn’t as full featured as Aseprite (the best pixel art tool?), but it had one thing going for it.

It was on the iPad.

I could sit on the couch with my family, laying in bed before sleep, or sit at the coffee shop. I could find time way easier than if I had to commit to staying at the computer and drawing drawing with a mouse. With the Apple Pencil, the drawing experience was one-to-one with the screen and it came with a built-in Game Boy palette. And even better… it exported projects as Aseprite files.

I went through a huge growth phase. Adam Younis’s YouTube was my masterclass [https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamCYounis]. His videos were great and I still revisit them for my current work. But a few months into my journey, I came across #septembit on Instagram. It was a 30 day challenge. They post a prompt, everyone draws it and posts it for that day. They decide their own color palette but I went with Game Boy palette to help build my skill working with the four colors. It was so challenging to keep with it and the prompts really pushed what I thought I could do. By the time it was over, I gained a real confidence in what I could accomplish with pixel art and animation (you can find that work at https://www.instagram.com/goodgoodgames/).

I had one mantra during this whole experience. KEEP. THE. SCOPE. DOWN.

I could learn pixel art. I could limit the palette. I could pay homage to my childhood. Those little worlds in my pocket.

Next time, Devlog 03: I Digress.