Never did pixel art before so mine is a very simple and literal approach. For those reasons I didn't find the limitations an issue at all; just the opposite! Made it easier to focus on what was working and what wasn't. I tried a few things to make it more complicated, but couldn't arrive at anything that didn't just look busier for the sake of being busier. Something to work on in the future I guess. It was fun!
I went for an abstract piece, using "balance" but also "disintegration" as my inspirations. I wanted part of it to be clean and use clear lines and gradients, and part of it to be messy, as though breaking the typical spritework standard. It's also my first project submission, so there's a chance it's just haphazard lol.
I enjoy tarot a lot, and the idea of a tiny pixel tarot card sounded really appealing to me! So I picked Temperance to match the theme of Balance (Temperance shows balance through the imagery of the cups - the water isn't flowing just from one cup to the other, but equally between them. It's symbolism for equivalent exchange, that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction) and tried a few thumbnails to see what would look effective at that scale. The best thumbnail when scaled down, was focused primarily on the cups.
When it came to the actual pixel art itself, I tried to save as many tile slots as possible by reusing tiles where possible. Once I'd finished my focal point and border though, I'd only used about 90 of the tile slots, so I then focused on a background, and then added some additional details all around (some unique tiles for shading on the cups, making sure there's a legible border between the background and the cups, the Tarot suits in the corners of the borders). In the end I was still pretty far under the tile limit (I may have been a little over the top with saving them...) but I'm really happy with the result visually. It feels authentic for GB styled art which was ultimately my goal!
