For week 165 of the Splinterlands Art Contest, I decided to pay tribute to one of the game’s most sought-after legendary promo cards: Doctor Blight. Like many Splinterlands players, obtaining Doctor Blight is a bit of a quest. This powerful card was primarily available to those who participated in the Chaos Legion preorder, with a guaranteed drop for those who purchased 50 packs in the presale. Unfortunately, like many, I’m relying on a bit of luck to add this card to my collection. Consider this pixel art rendering my offering to the gaming gods, hoping it tips the scales in my favor!
What makes my approach unique is my choice of medium: Microsoft Excel. Yes, you read that right! I create all my pixel art using this spreadsheet software. I appreciate the deliberately manual nature of using a program not designed for art. There are no shortcuts, every pixel is placed intentionally. The accessibility of Excel, available on both my office and home computers, also allows me to work on these projects incrementally throughout the day, which is essential given the time-intensive process.
Crafting Doctor Blight in Excel: A Detailed Process
When I decided to create Doctor Blight, I immediately recognized the level of detail involved. To truly capture the essence of this legendary card, I knew I needed to significantly expand my digital canvas. Doctor Blight is double the size in both length and width compared to my previous piece, the Retro Sea Monster (https://hive.blog/hive-13323/@tomarabi/splinterlands-art-contest-week-164-retro-sea-monster).
Once I had established the expanded workspace in Excel, I began by creating a basic outline of Doctor Blight. Following this, I focused on constructing the card border and the essential game tokens: mana, health, speed, and damage.
With the tokens in place, I proceeded to complete the card border. This step was crucial in giving me a clearer sense of the overall composition and the space I had remaining to work with for Doctor Blight himself.
Doctor Blight is known for his complex abilities, and I felt it was important to represent these in detail as well. Therefore, I worked on the ability tokens separately before integrating them into the main artwork. This allowed me to focus on the intricate details of each ability icon without being constrained by the larger composition.
The Final Render: Doctor Blight Brought to Retro Life
With the borders and ancillary elements finalized, I embarked on the final and most demanding stage of the project: rendering Doctor Blight himself. The character’s intricate design demanded extensive shading and color blending to achieve the retro gaming aesthetic I was aiming for while still capturing his detailed appearance.
Here is the final pixel art rendition of Doctor Blight, positioned next to the official Splinterlands artwork for comparison.
I sincerely hope you appreciate this pixel art tribute and that my rendition does justice to the epic nature of Doctor Blight. Fingers crossed that the gaming gods are watching!
