Yesterday I began work on the first (of many) pixel art character designs that will be featured in the upcoming Light Quest arcade game. After some initial research, I found several pixel artists that recommended starting with a silhouette when designing a character. This achieves several things. First, it helps you create an iconic character that would be easily recognizable by its shape alone. It also helps create a clean design to help better feature the main attributes of the character. In the case of Light Quest, the main character named Willow, is a young girl around age 12 who is almost always seen wearing a pair of roller skates. So in the silhouette, I wanted to make certain that you were able to make out the fact that she was wearing roller skates.
![](http://localhost/playwithblocks/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/willouettes-1024x506.png)
Level Select Screen
In addition to beginning work on the initial character designs, I also began work on designing the various elements that will ultimately comprise the “Level Select” screen. This will be presented as a map of the town that Willow lives in. The icons that represent each level are a house, a pizza shop, a warehouse, a forest, and a lighthouse. The ground of the map (dirt paths, paved roads, sidewalks, and grass have yet to be developed, but will likely be designed separately. The idea is to have a top-down version of Willow’s sprite that will walk up, down, left, and right in order to ‘choose’ the level. Once Willow enters the level, it will switch to a side-scrolling platformer-style level design.
![](http://localhost/playwithblocks/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/forrest.png)
![](http://localhost/playwithblocks/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/house.png)
![](http://localhost/playwithblocks/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/lighhouseScreenshot.png)
Honing in the (Final?) Design
I feel like it took me a long while (maybe around 2 days, while not working on it all the time) to get close to the design as present. My biggest pitfall was actually just starting! Once I had a few blobs put down I was able to make several iterations before I got stuck. After that, I just did the entire process again. Just put a few different blobs down, got a different main shape, then made a few iterations before adding color. All in all, I thought it was really fun! I’m looking forward to creating more characters in this new (to me) style.
![](http://localhost/playwithblocks/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/willowtest_color-1-1024x289.png)