To create the Sprites for the Tony and Steve avatars make8bitart.com was used as sketch pad and for the final in game sprites.
Make8bitart.com was an extremely easy tool to use, similar in nature to MSpaint but with less functionality. The browser based application allowed for very quick sketching and drawing of basic pixel art but lacked many functions that are seemingly standard for visual art software or tools. There is no copy-paste functionality or the ability to crop and translate pixels around the canvas. What you draw is what you draw and anything that doesn’t turn out the way you want needs to be redone. There is an undo button a pencil tool and a fill in ‘bucket tool’. Exporting a section of the page as a png file is simple but importing a completed asset did not appear to work properly therefore any corrections to finalized assets involves recreating them from scratch.
This inflexibility is a major drawback and even for a project with a 1 week scope, can cause workflow issues or impact asset quality. Overall the pixel art style can offer quick and effective assets but does require practice and reiteration to develop assets in this style while communicating clearly to the user. However even at the cost of research and time sourcing a more robust tool/software has infinitely more value when considering that future projects will involve multiple team members and a much larger scope.
Use of make8bitart.com or similar tools will be reserved for early prototype/brainstorming of concepts or where installing software is impossible as the risks to workflow and quality of work are unacceptable in a studio environment, which is well outside of their intended use.
Ash Jagath 