I chose to create this piece in a pixel Art style to pay homage to the original Space Invaders Game. I also took inspiration from the game’s theme of space combined with the aesthetic reference from the film Alien (1979) as this is one of my favourite movies and I felt it allowed me to be creative within the brief of the project.

After watching an episode of Netflix’s High Score featuring the original game’s developer Tomohiro Nishikado, I learned that he drew the original designs for the enemies using a square grid. I created a similar grid in Adobe Illustrator to mimic this and began planning out my designs using reference images from Alien. Initially, my main concern was being able to fit all designs within the confines of the grid as some of the shapes I wanted to create were quite complex, I decided to begin with what I believed to be the most complicated: the player sprite (based on Ellen Ripley in the “Work Loader”).

As I’ve never worked with the pixel art style before my method was unstructured and I simply began filling the squares of the grid with colour to resemble the desired shapes. I used the “Shape Builder” tool to connect multiple squares within the grid however, if I made a mistake I found this method to be destructive as it combined multiple squares into one shape and therefore meant that I couldn’t change the colour of individual squares once they had been merged. Going forward I made sure to build the shapes with caution to avoid any unrepairable mistakes being made.

In terms of outlines and shapes I was happy that the player sprite resembled a Christ-like figure as ultimately she is the saviour in the movie and reflectively in the game I was building. Furthermore, I tried to add as many spikes and sharp edges to the enemy sprites to emphasise their danger and threat to the player. I did however find it quite restrictive to make softer round shapes given the limited number of squares in my grid. However, I aimed to use as little squares as possible to stay true to the style of the original space invaders game as adding more detail to my sprites would have detracted from the retro style of the original. I did however change the design of Enemy 4 to make it more threatening in game as seen below:

I also aimed to use colour to effectively depict the evil nature of the enemies by keeping them dark and ominous, as well as including a green bullet sprite to highlight the toxicity and danger presented. On the other hand, I used bright pastel colours for the player sprite to indicate their purity and positive force when compared to the dark coloured enemies/background.

As I was limited by time I used a shortcut and added a pixelate filter to a stock image to create my background for the game. I also darkened the image and added a green hue to reflect the nature of the scene and set a dark and ominous atmosphere.

In conclusion, I enjoyed experimenting with this style of art and felt that the sprites created fit the retro feel I was trying to evoke in my game, hopefully felt by the player.On the other hand, I felt limited by the grid I used and felt that my method of creation was not best practice as it didn’t allow me to amend my designs easily. I also wasn’t happy with the highlights/shading I attempted in my art as I felt the values didn’t correctly indicate shadows and light and therefore going forward I aim to research the use of shading to better depict this in my art.

References

Classical Gaming (2021) HISTORY OF SPACE INVADERS. Available online: http://www.classicgaming.cc/classics/space-invaders/history.php [Accessed 17/10/2021].

Nathan Duck (2018) The Tunnel. Available online: https://unsplash.com/photos/KnLj3o9A66E [Accessed 17/10/2021].

Netflix (2020) High Score. Available online: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81019087 [Accessed 17/10/2021].