Retronator

Clouds practice #3

I did two studies of clouds all the way back in March and April 2018. Now that I’ve been looking at all the amazing skies during sunsets in Tahiti, I had to get back to it.

This time it’s painted from my own reference with colors mostly picked plein air at a different sunset with similar conditions (Atari 2600 palette, as always).

California Sunset

First artwork of 2025. I tried to retain the expressiveness of my pixel paintings but also clean it up and make the clusters at the edges reminiscent of impressionistic painting where there are abstract blobs of color that slowly get representational towards the center.

9 years ago (minus 2 days), I posted this image to announce the launch of my Kickstarter for a game called Pixel Art Academy, an adventure where you would become an art student and learn how to draw.

While the path hasn’t led all the way to the city of Retropolis yet, 2 days from now, on the 9th anniversary of the Kickstarter launch, the game’s Learn Mode will launch into Early Access on Steam. It’s a smaller version of the full game I imagined, but the good part is that you will be able to start learning with it straight away.

Check the trailer below and wishlist on Steam to be notified when it launches on August 5.

6vcr:

my friend made a game about learning pixel art that will go into early access this August! I want to check it out on stream! let’s play, chill and chat 🐸

This has been amazing and nerve-wracking to watch! Luckily, the game didn’t break and only one tutorial lesson was really bad (as I already knew), so I think it was a success?

9 days till release …

I hope you will enjoy doing pixel art in my cozy pixel art game.

Wishlist here.

This is it! I can officially announce that my game Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode will launch into Steam Early Access on August 5!

It’ll be the 9th anniversary of the Pixel Art Academy Kickstarter that day and about 1.5 years since I decided to take the educational core of my adventure game and release it as a standalone, downloadable Learn Mode that focuses just on the educational parts without the story elements.

The reception of Learn Mode has been great so far and people seem to enjoy learning digital drawing and pixel art fundamentals through a video game. Whew! I’m far from done though, but the first chapter focusing on lines will be getting released now before I finish the other 6 out of 7 elements of art throughout Early Access.

Here’s the release date announcement trailer and don’t forget to wishlist the game—or play the demo—on Steam if it looks interesting to you!

It’s been a hot minute, I should really spend more time back here.

(Saying it today so if I fail, it’s a (bad) joke. 😬)

In the meantime, here’s some fan art I recently made.

…

Reflecting on it a bit more, I think I put my bar up quite high for what to post since everything appears on the front page as a newspaper article. But I really want to post more just casually. Maybe not everything needs to be a proper article/review/whatever. More like back in 2010 when this whole blog started.

Lily pads

Starting a new series of paintings called Sweden (since they’ll be landscapes from around Spelkollektivet where I live now).

Mostly done with Pixquare—the iPad app I reviewed a few posts back—plus some Aseprite and Blender for heavy lifting on the reflections.

Things are getting real! My game, Pixel Art Academy, designed for learning how to draw pixel art, now has a Steam page!

In particular, the version I’ll release on Steam is called Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode. It’s a standalone, single-player artist simulator where you actually learn to draw! You’ll go through interactive tutorials, complete challenges, and make art for different projects (mostly pixel art video games).

If this is the first time you’ve heard of Pixel Art Academy, it’s a game I started working on 8 years ago with the idea of making a text/point-and-click adventure/RPG where you play as an art student. The kicker is that to improve your character’s skills in-game, you gain them yourself in real life!

Even though I’ve been working hard on this project for many years, it’s far from finished since it’s very ambitious and I’m mostly working on it alone. There are some parts that are already polished and work well, in particular the learning core of the game. That’s what I’ll be releasing as Learn Mode. You’ll skip all the character creation and go straight into pixel art, something many have been asking for (to just learn as fast as possible). Hopefully, it will become exactly that: the fastest, most fun way to learn drawing in the form of a video game.

If you like the idea, check out the new Steam Page. Wishlists are of course hugely appreciated!

Haven’t been around much, so here’s a sort of catch-up post with y'all.

Most of my content lately has been on YouTube with the Pixel Engine devlog. It’s going strong with a video every two weeks (on episode 14 at this point) and I keep them short and sweet, about 5 min or fewer.

This blog has been very dormant this year. Having two jobs—neither of which is a walk in the park (making your own video game or running a physical school)—takes all of my creative energy. In my ‘free’ time on the weekends, I prioritize making the YouTube devlog. I wish I could do both, but to keep my life sustainable I have to draw the line somewhere and this year it’s been mainly in front of the blog.

I’m currently thinking of new ways how to get Pixel Art Academy out to more people, mainly a standalone, single-player version that jumps straight into the interactive learning parts. I’ll be working on this next year and closing the current pre-orders in my online store. If you wanted to play the current alpha and buy it in one go (instead of a Patreon membership), now’s the time to do it. Plus I’m having some big discounts before the pre-orders end:
— Basic game $5 (67% off)
— Full game $10 (60% off)
— Avatar editor $5 (50% off, upgrades from basic to full)

Note: Alpha access is not required to play the current version of the game, but will apply in the future.

I’m taking the next two weekends off, going on a retreat to recharge and plan the future. I wish you a lovely end of the year too and a happy 2023 when it comes. I’ll see you there!

p.s.: If you’re on Discord …

A bit late celebration of the 40th anniversary of the one and only, the ZX Spectrum! 

Made this fan art quite some time ago for a project that took a different turn so it has never seen the light of day. Polished it up today for you to enjoy finding all the games in there!

Back in 2018/2019 when new features of Pixel Art Academy were being released quite frequently, I started my Pixel Art Academy 101 series of videos where new concepts were explained when they entered alpha stage (early access).

I haven’t been sleeping since then and it’s time to start Pixel Art Academy 102, a new season of video updates that will focus on the next chapter of the game, leading with the learning materials added to the Retropolis Academy of Art Study Guide.

Almost a year ago I announced that I’m starting to run a physical school called The Indie Quest where my game’s art curriculum is being used. I’ll be talking about the whole experience in my 6-year anniversary video in August, but I also recently started doing The Indie Quest vlog where I talk about the school on a biweekly basis.

The sixth episode above is especially interesting for this blog since I talk about how the Pixel Art Academy curriculum comes together in the environment concept art missions at The Indie Quest. Check it out to learn more about the work I do at the school.

Environment concept art of the island Hapunui for my game Pixel Art Academy.

Very much inspired by 90s dithered point-and-click adventure backgrounds, in particular Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Some more words on the devlog (4 posts in total) or in today’s Spelkollektivet livestream.

I’m a game developer, but you don’t get many finished games from me. Pixel Art Academy is the longest project I ever embarked on and while I regularly release alpha updates, it will probably take another decade to wrap the game up (check out my video I made a text adventure in 5 years (with 10 more to come)).

There is, however, a game jam happening every now and then when I take the opportunity to work on something small and bring it to completion. This past weekend I took part of the 48h-long GMTK Game Jam. After not much sleep, our team of three submitted a build of RetroCop, an FPS where you have to survive an onslaught of ghosts in a maze that is constructed and destroyed as you play.

The theme of the jam was “joined together”, so the rooms procedurally join and break apart. The game is also pretty much Doom+Tetris+PAC-MAN joined together (with Tron+RoboCop on top for the art style). I was happily surprised how entertaining the game is and the short, unforgiving play sessions make you want to try again and again.

The programmer put a bit of a crazy mouse sensitivity into the submitted game jam version (which you can try in the browser), so I made a new build yesterday with some more fixes and goodies squeezed in (menu music, dynamic mini-map location, better ghost hitbox). If you want to give the new version a try, you can download it for macOS, Windows, or Linux.