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Why i changed the art style of my Beat 'em up game to Pixel art to 3D!

A topic by Camila Borges created Sep 02, 2021 Views: 802

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Hello itch.io! Today i want to talk about the reason why i have changed the art of the game to pixel art to 3D.

First of all let me tell you about the game, i am developing a game alongside with my friend, so we are the only developers.

The game is a beat them up game inspired by river city girls, TNMT Turtles in Time, Street of Rage, Mega man and Super Metroid. Our game is set in a fictional city in Brazil (Our country).

So as any indie game developer, in a 2D game most of us choose to go whit the pixel art style, for the simplicity and the appeal of it, and i wasn't different especially after playing River City girls!

So i begin my journey to create appealing pixel art using River city Girls as a guide. On the left is the sprite that i create, and on the right is a River city girls sprite!

(To clarify I paint and draw for about 7 years now, but i usually don’t draw pixel art)

I usually don't like the sprites that i do in pixel art, but i was really happy with the result. But the is a problem and is called TIME!!

In beat them up games the Player goes against several enemies at the same time and in River City girls they have several enemies with a AMAZING PIXEL ART ANIMATIONS!

And for some disillusion reason I thought that I could do the same! (the little I know…)

So it toke my about a ONE WHOLE MONTH to finish one single enemy, and the animations suck!* HAHAHA *

Here some of the animations!

Idle

So in one month I was able to animated only one enemy, with one skin color!

My friend was waiting for me to finish my part so he can tune the hit box according to the animations, but I was no way near finishing the art!

Therefore, that was when I decided to bring my old 3D modeling skills to change the art style of the game! However, how do I make a 3D model look appeal as a pixel art game?

The answer is … IDK

I could do a 3D object with pixel art texture, since I have done that before BUT (image bellow)

Since this is a beat them up game the camera of the game is far from the character and will be very hard for the player to see the pixel art texture.

So I decide to return to one of my favorite games, Megaman Legends for PS1. The Flat shaded art style in a 3D model has such appeal as a pixel art game, I remembering playing the game as a kid and was one of my favourite just because it looked different from anything that t I played in the PS1.

And here is the resoult of my attempt to make a similar art style as Megaman Legends

I think that the model come out right…It doesn’t have the same appeal as a pixel art but, 3D is much more easy to work than a 2D!

Moral of the history if your game requires a lot of animations and your are in a small time consider to changed the art of your game to Pixel art to 3D!