Blue Dragon

This was a story pitch I made with the purpose of experimenting with telling a story using two different art styles (pixel and hand-drawn) and trying to bring two characters I designed to life.

Initial Style-Boards

Playing around with Pixels

For the "pixelated" look, I simply went into Photoshop, changed the dpi (dots per inch) to 72 and used the pencil tool to draw everything from the characters to the background. For the text I used color select and added darker tones of colors and then applied a Mosaic filter to pixelate the text. In fact, I used the Mosaic effect to anything I felt wasn't pixelated enough.

Title Screen One of my first few attempts at painting a scene that was 100% pixelated. The background was inspired by an image of the Dolomites in Italy.	The Stage Entirety of the arena featured in this film. Once again, the mountains in the background were inspired by the Dolomites in Italy.	Leone Sprites Page Very first sprite page I made for this project.
Iron Crusader Page 01 The big bad of this film. For the armor I took inspiration from Conquistador armor as well as some medieval armor I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of the poses for these sprites were based off of the sprites sheet for Mortal Kombat 3's Shao Kahn.	Iron Crusader Page 02 The big bad of this film. For the armor I took inspiration from Conquistador armor as well as some medieval armor I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of the poses for these sprites were based off of the sprites sheet for Mortal Kombat 3's Shao Kahn.	Foot Soldiers The Iron Crusader's men, design inspired by old Roman armor.
Blue Dragon Full body of Leone's dragon along with some reference pictures I used. I based its design mostly off of Thyrus, a dragon of Italian folklore.

Below is the initial test of Leone's whirlwind slash animation, without the flame effects added

Non-Pixel Scenes

The scenes that I drew for the beginning and end of the piece to book-end the pixel art sections were done in Paint Tool SAI and Adobe Photoshop

bluedragon_frame01_04.jpg Leone flying over the mountains, with the full "sunset" in the background.	bluedragon_frame02.jpg Reveal of the Iron Crusader and his cronies, with an unused "speed lines" effect.	firebreath.jpg One of the few scenes I speed-painted in the interest of time, depicting Leone leaping off of his dragon as it breathes fire at the soldiers.
bluedragon_frame_slicethru.jpg This was one of the first few non-pixel scenes I wanted to get done first, since I wanted a smooth motion of Leone swinging his sword at the weakened boss.	bluedragon_TV.jpg This is of course a parody on Super Famicom, as well as some of the harsh grading systems found in today's more unforgiving games.	bluedragon_finalframe01.jpg This was literally the first non-pixelated scene that I fully colored, so the style looks drastically different than the rest of the film.

Blue Dragon

Initial Style-Boards

Playing around with Pixels

Title Screen

One of my first few attempts at painting a scene that was 100% pixelated. The background was inspired by an image of the Dolomites in Italy.

The Stage

Entirety of the arena featured in this film. Once again, the mountains in the background were inspired by the Dolomites in Italy.

Leone Sprites Page

Very first sprite page I made for this project.

Iron Crusader Page 01

The big bad of this film. For the armor I took inspiration from Conquistador armor as well as some medieval armor I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of the poses for these sprites were based off of the sprites sheet for Mortal Kombat 3's Shao Kahn.

Iron Crusader Page 02

The big bad of this film. For the armor I took inspiration from Conquistador armor as well as some medieval armor I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of the poses for these sprites were based off of the sprites sheet for Mortal Kombat 3's Shao Kahn.

Foot Soldiers

The Iron Crusader's men, design inspired by old Roman armor.

Blue Dragon

Full body of Leone's dragon along with some reference pictures I used. I based its design mostly off of Thyrus, a dragon of Italian folklore.

Non-Pixel Scenes

bluedragon_frame01_04.jpg

Leone flying over the mountains, with the full "sunset" in the background.

bluedragon_frame02.jpg

Reveal of the Iron Crusader and his cronies, with an unused "speed lines" effect.

firebreath.jpg

One of the few scenes I speed-painted in the interest of time, depicting Leone leaping off of his dragon as it breathes fire at the soldiers.

bluedragon_frame_slicethru.jpg

This was one of the first few non-pixel scenes I wanted to get done first, since I wanted a smooth motion of Leone swinging his sword at the weakened boss.

bluedragon_TV.jpg

This is of course a parody on Super Famicom, as well as some of the harsh grading systems found in today's more unforgiving games.

bluedragon_finalframe01.jpg

This was literally the first non-pixelated scene that I fully colored, so the style looks drastically different than the rest of the film.