It’s been almost two decades since I’ve made landscape art. Fortunately, it’s only been a few months since I last tried my hand at pixel art. For this cover piece, I started with an internet safari for old video game box art I wanted to emulate. Super Metroid, Castlevania, and even Megaman covers were great inspiration. For it’s name sake, GraveBound’s cover art obviously needed to show a stylized graveyard. A main protagonist is usually shown in box art shots which also adds a lot of dynamism to these pieces. Of course there needed to be a castle. Where else would evil reside? Finally, stylized mountains were in order.
I began sketching out my ideas on paper and quickly jumped to asesprite as my pixel editor of choice. I started with a limited pallet found on lo-spec. However, even this was jumping the gun. I quickly realized my forms were terrible and everything felt…off. I scaled back to a 7-tone gray scale and started working out simple forms. From there, I rendered the mountains. Looking back, I started adding detail way too fast. -point perspective guided everything and I learned a few things about the rule of thirds to further flesh out my composition.
I left grayscale once again and experimented with different colors. Dreary and desaturate colors were the original intent. Maybe all my recent synthwave playlists inspired the new pallet direction. Ultimately the colors aren’t what I aimed for but I ended up really liking them.
Eventually, I made my way to the protagonist and drew him like one of my Warhammer 40k models. The pose made little sense and the cape looked like it was molded from plastic. With the help of my friends and a Burne Hogarth book, I steadily improved the cape’s form. Along the way I added fog to the valley. I really liked its ominous quality.
Soon after, I started looking for ways to integrate my protagonist with the environment. I really wanted to play on the cape’s movement. After hours of deliberation and trials, I settled with additional fog creeping over the mountains. This is a look that inspires awe whenever I see the marine layer cresting over California’s coastal ridges. Now I’m using it to inspire dread.
I originally set out to spend 1 week on this art. That turned to four. I don’t really mind that. There were plenty of shortcuts I could have taken and times I could have just stopped. But I learned so much in the process I didn’t want to take those shortcuts. At one point I found myself reading an entire book on nocturnal shadows and lighting. Hopefully someone like you can appreciate the time I spent to finalize this piece of pixel art.
