I’ve been using Discord now pretty much everyday for a while now. We have a pretty decent channel going. The Right Reverend has his Imgur game going strong so we have plenty of gifvs to choose from. I felt inspired to make some emojis. Pixel art is probably popular with anyone around my age group, having grown up playing older 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit video games. So it goes without saying, I wanted some damn throwback pixel emojis. I’m not going to go through all the emojis I made, but I’ll show off the hits. First, lets start of with the one that got the ball rollin’.
The Street Fighter II Hadouken, it’s so simple that it was perfect for the first venture into making emojis in Photoshop. Last time I did anything like this was back when Fireworks existed. This one was just 2 frames. Was great for learning how to convert layers into frames for a gif and controlling the speed of the animation. Boom! We were off to the races.
Anyone who knows me, knows Magus. This one was inevitable. I played Chrono Trigger so much, and Magus was my jam. What? you thought the main protagonist was Crono? Fuck Crono, Magus one-hundo percent. Look at him. He is casting some spell that’s about to make the Mute Shithead look like a chump.
These were the first emojis I had to bust out a sprite sheet on. The damaged state Mega Man was my first requested emoji from the Paterfamilias of the House of Jeff. Another great entry level sprite sheet project. At this point, I was feeling quite good at my emoji game and had made over a dozen. I needed a little stopping point. So, I made Discord portraits for the Primogenitor of the House of Jeff and myself.
These portraits are inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics. Another game I put many hours in, and honestly, the best Final Fantasy hands down. I use the one with the green eyes of course. So, these portraits were pieced together from this sprite sheet and modified to make unique looking characters. One day, maybe, I will make a custom portrait in this style. We will see, but for now, these are cool enough for a private Discord channel.
If you don’t know what this is from, these are the two main characters in A Boy and His Blob. This was the first emoji that I had to draw custom sprites. There is no sprite of the blob frowning while eating a jelly bean. Also, there wasn’t a fall animation or one of the boy hanging himself. I really wanted this emoji specifically. I love it and I think it is funny as hell. Laugh dammit.
Whew, ok. Some Idiot asked for Richter, the character in the above animation, pointing image. I gave him a still image of Richter, but I had a vision for an emoji. This gif is inspired by the most popular scene from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I wanted to use those specific Richter animations. I thought there would be a sprite sheet out there that had him pointing and clinching his fist. Nope. I had to rebuild Richter frame by frame by comparing it to the best quality video of the scene I would find. I mean look at this shit.
Click to Enlarge
If you watch the video, you will see I also matched the font and the background for the text. I couldn’t find a font family so I hand drew the text for the gif. I really wanted Richter to be standing in front of the text box. It ended up being a much larger project than I thought it would be, but it turned out exactly how I had envisioned it. In fact, all the pixel stuff turned out just the way I wanted them to. Maybe it’s because grew up playing so many older games that I’m familiar with how they should look, or perhaps pixel art is just that much easier since it is so small. Could be a bit of both.
Speaking of small. The images I have here are quite large, and you are probably concerned. Discord emojis are 48×48 pixels. A lot smaller than what you see here. This is the size they appear in Discord when used as emojis.
See, quite small. I was requested to scale them up as gifs to use by the turds in Discord. They look great in the blog though so it all works out for me, The Duke of New York A-Number One. Anyway, the year is young and more pixel art will be had. Fun side fact, the Richter emoji is actually two emojis strung together as it is 96 pixels wide, two 48×48 emojis side by side. You didn’t need to know that, but you do now.