An in-depth art breakdown of my process when creating the header portrait for my portfolio site below.
Tools Used: Krita (Concept work), Aseprite (Pixel-Art)
The character I decided to use for the portrait was 'Dhana Dimension', a character from a game project concept I made a few years ago but haven't acted on due to being occupied with other things. Still, I really liked the re-design of the character that CrowMesuro created and wanted to draw her more. For the header I focused on a simplified version of the character to fit into a rounded pixel style. When starting out I paid close attention to the character turnaround for Dhana created by CrowMesuro (Shown Below)
It's important to keep the character recognizable while still working in the more stylized art-style I was using. The first step taken was solidifying the look and layout, going into this piece I knew I wanted to use it as a header so those aspects were planned in advance. Including making sure it would overlay on top of the site UI. I sketched the layout in Krita - in a way that was rough but enough to get an idea for the pixel art. I call it the 'storyboard' phase of the piece's development
The next step was making the outline of the figure in Aseprite and using grayscale to give a sense of colors without coloring yet. I do this to help determine contrast, and because it's more streamlined to change palettes later if needed while keeping the same general look. I also added the shadows and highlights in this stage.
After the piece is fully translated into pixel art and shaded in monochrome, I move on to the coloring stage. Sticking roughly to the original reference color palette. During the detailing / coloring phase, I went over the artwork one last time to take care of any oddities that strayed from the sketch, like small changes to the hand pose and the facial expression. I also took this time to add additional effects like a glow emitting from the energy pistol, which softly glows against the figure and fades in + out.
With that, the character artwork was ready to be used as a website header, and be set up as intended. I wanted the header for my portfolio website to be dynamic and fun, but subtle. With the character and foreground elements moving when the user scrolled down. This can be seen right now in the home section of this portfolio site!