Pixel Art Characters
Pixel art assets for a 2.5D murder mystery game.
The Jock and the Blonde
I worked on the concepting of 2 characters, and I composed a pixel art rendering guide for the team for consistency. Aditionally, I helped with lowpoly modelling and texturing of some assets.
This projects is a murder mystery 2.5D game with stereotypical characters who turn out to be more nuanced than they seemed.
Because of the small worldview of the main character, everyone starts out in a rigid pixel artstyle, and look like they’re stereotypes.
As the story unfolds and the MC’s worldview changes, the artstyle changes to show everyone’s nuance.
Character portraits (hover over them!)
Concept art
I was in charge of the visual development of 2 characters of the cast.
The Blonde personality
While presenting herself as kindhearted and a bit ditzy, Katie is actually incredibly cynical and down to earth.
Her persona is made to ease social interactions. Her default is fawning over others and following the crowd, as she struggles with reading people and lack social awareness.
Now studying to become a neurosurgeon, she knows she’s competent and is trying to accept herself her the person she is, instead of making herself smaller and digestible.
The Jock personality
Bryce is the heart of the group and incredible at de-escalating situations. He was chosen as the leader of his highschool football team because he often managed to work trough scuffles between players.
He’s pretty loud and over the top and may come across as a bit much initially, but he’s a real soft guy.
He’s painfully aware of people’s mental struggles and desperately wants to help.
Murder victim
Next to the NPC sprites, I made more pixel art for the murder victim and a splash screen for the introduction cutscene.
The different versions were for playtesting, as her body holds clues. They had to be identifiable for the player, so we tested if they were readable enough.
The clues:
- Her necklace chokingly wrapped around the neck
- Missing ring on her hand
- Headwound with weirdly blobby blood
