Welcome to my little Splinterslands Goblin Sorcerer Pixel Art tutorial!

On Saturday I entered @clove71’s Splinterlands tournament on a total whim… I just happened to be on my computer at the exact right time… and I had a blast. Totally killed off in the 3rd round I think (and that battle is on this stream)… but I did win a Furious Chicken card off @Clove71’s giveaways, which was super generous of her. I just really enjoyed interacting with Chris and the others on the stream. Hearing her opinions on the different playing styles and cards also really helps my overall Splinterlands knowledge… which is not great.

Here is her stream…

It kind of inspired me to create some Splinterland’s art…. so I thought I’d give a Splinterland‘s character a go and recreate them in pixel art… so I’ve picked the Goblin Sorcerer, and the card looks like this:

I’m an absolute novice at Pixel Art, I had to waaaaaaay simplify… but this tutorial is going to help you create this:

I know, I know… not menacing at all… but we’ve got to start somewhere. Did I mention this is a non-advanced-non-intermediate-barely-beginner pixel art tutorial? No? Well, ah… awkward.

There was a game that was popular there for a hot minute called Tiny Tower from Nimblebit and so this little goblin guy is very much inspired by those characters.

Let’s jump in…

Here’s the basic shape. He’s a little dude with a big head.

Bang on some legs!

Chuck on some arms.

To make the head less of a massive block, delete the bottom corner pixels.

Same deal, but this time delete 3 pixels from the top corners.

Alright, so this is what we’ve got so far… if we were drawing a ninja we’d be nearly finished.

I grabbed the main green colour directly from the art card above, and got #93c38e. So I used the bucket tool to colour him in. For pixel art… blast everything with the base colour and then determine shadow and highlight colours from there.

The middle 3 pixels are our base colour #93c38e. The highlight colour used on the Goblin Sorcerer card is #d6da9b and the shadow used on the card is #5c9194.

Grabbing the red from the source card (#eb5154), let’s give him some shorts. I was getting nervous with all that gobbo nudie action.

Here’s some little pockets (#b8353d)… he’s going to need his hands for throwing fireballs, not for holding everything he owns.

Our little Goblin Sorcerer is facing the left-side of the screen (his right) so we’ll put the shadows on our right.
Blurgh! You know what… these cards look great on the source card, but I’m hating them here. I’m going to try and find a more goblin-y green:

Let’s try #617c17 for the green instead. I’ve never met a cute little tiny Goblin Sorcerer (yet!) but this seems more like them to me.

The shorts looked way too pastel, so I’ve made them darker now.Shorts are now #b92222, the pockets are #941b1b and I’ve given him a little silver (#8f9295) belt buckle. This helps lean him to screen-left.

One of the things I love most about Pyxel Edit is that if you click on the colour, it’ll suggest shade and highlight colours. So good!

So, with shading, I like to do 3 shades… the base colour, the darkest shade colour and then a medium transitionary colour.

Alright, back to where we were… add in the darkest shade (two shades away from our base colour)

Now pick the shade between the base and the darkest…

Basically add in the medium shade in the squares next to the darkest shade.

Alright, hard to look menacing without a face.

I actually removed the shading from the right-hand side of the eyes so goblins need ears.

Fill in the two top-most lines with the same red as the shorts (#b92222).

Checking the source card, we need more of a floopy hat, so put two more lines at the top similar to the above.

Add in one little pixel to make the floopiest bit.

Not going to go super dark with the shading this time, since the top of a pixel art character is closer to a light source. So just pick the darkest colour next to the base colour.

Chuck the shading on the five most screen-right pixels.

Since his hat is closest to the light source, we’re going to highlight the screen-left side of the hat. Choose the next-lightest colour from the base colour (#d22727).

His eyes are a bit featureless… so the eye colour of the Goblin Sorcerer in the card are yellow… but since we’ve ignored all the colours so far, lets just do whatevs.

In the Tiny Tower game, all their eyes were black:

I didn’t love the black, so I’m trying our favourite red. I’ve also added more shading above his ear, and on his arm and next to his arm. Shading is a great way to try to show depth and differentiate different parts of the image.

So, this is the actual size of the pixel art we created…

Pyxel Edit has a really handy tool for resizing up. When you export the image, you can choose the pixel scale:

This is Pixel Scale 4.

Pixel Scale 8.

Pixel Scale 12.
Scaling up and down can be a little tricky in Photoshop… because it needs to account for so many scenarios… but it’s so easy for pixel art in Pyxel Edit.

That’s pretty much the end of the Splinterslands Goblin Sorcerer Pixel Art tutorial… but here is the Goblin Sorcerer throwing out fireballs…

There is something so completely fascinating about bringing your little character to life.

The Goblin Sorcerer (inspired by Splinterlands) can conjure up fireballs and throw them at his adversaries. He is not friendly and honestly, he’s a little bit evil.

Unfortunately given how fiddly the animations are, I haven’t gone through each step by step. Animation is understandably super time consuming… but what a way to spend your time!

I’ve used the program Pyxel Edit which I’ve found can make animations easier than Photoshop… however, this is not true of more complex animations where characters are moving around the screen a lot more… but for less complex animations, Pyxel Edit is the way to go.

There is a free version, but for the animations you’ll need the full $9 version.

Hope you enjoyed this little Splinterslands Goblin Sorcerer Pixel Art tutorial.
Thanks for reading and learning with me, here is a couple of artistic Pixel art posts:

Pixel art contest – Items of varying size
Pixel Art NFTs – talking to Andielor

References :
Tiny Tower characters: (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nimblebit.tinytower&hl=en_US)
All other images created by me.