Space Arts!

Here is some work I’m currently doing for my friend Paul at Black Lab Games.

About 5 years ago Paul and I made a game called Defiance: Final Strike for PocketPC. I did the artwork and Paul did the code. It was/is a retro arcade space shooter with some objective based missions and lots of enemies as well as friendly ships.
Black Lab are doing a remake of the game for current hardware so I’m redoing the artwork. Basically just taking my original designs from pixel art to much higher resolutions.

The plan is:

1. Minimal redesign. Only where it won’t translate or just plain sucks will I do much redesign.
2. No angled lighting. In game the sprites will be rotated at runtime so any strong side/top/bottom lighting wont work.
3. Make it look cool.

To achieve the plan I went with a really colourful, cartoony style which matches the feel of the original game quite well (some crazy designs). I think they’re turning out pretty slick.

Here are some before and after comparisons:

High resolution remakes of old pixel art.