An in-depth art breakdown of my process when creating the 'Lucca Ashtear' fullbody art piece.
Tools Used: Krita (Initial Sketches), Aseprite (Pixel-Art)
Creation Time: ~4 Hours (Split over 2 days)
Disclaimer: This piece is fan-art of Chrono Trigger, by Square Enix. All rights to characters belong to the original creators/owners. This work is non-commercial and made as a tribute.
Lucca Ashtear is a character from the game Chrono Trigger (One of my all-time favorites!) She seemed like a great candidate for a full-body character sprite.
The first thing I did when making this sprite was do a few test sketches in Krita to help determine what pose and expression I wanted her to have, eventually settling on this pose which I thought showed off the character well.
After finalizing the pose and rough sketch I moved to Aseprite to start on the sprite properly. The sketch is rough, I don't spend much time on it and it is mostly meant to aid in keeping the shapes / proportions feeling right. Most of the actual details are added in Aseprite. In Aseprite I start by blocking out the character.
Blocking the character out first helps to make sure all of the shapes look right and that the pose works in pixel art as well as it does in the digital sketch. With that looking good, all that's left to do is refine the outline, block out the colors in grayscale, and start adding shading. Keeping a consistent light-source, and making sure everything was of the same level of detail. My goal for this character was to make them detailed, but not overly so. Simple shading sufficed. After shading was finished, I started adding the colors from the palette I'd made previously.
And with that, the character sprite was mostly finished! After the first color pass, as I usually do, based on feedback I went through and improved on detailing here and there - primarily around the glasses, clothes shading, and simplifying the palette. Total creation time was roughly 4 hours spread across two days. Most of which was refining and improving on the intial blockout.