Project
The Local Universe
Pixel Artist | 2023
Pixel Artist | 2023
Skills
Pixel Art
Iterative Design
Communication
Tools
Aesprite
Photoshop
My Role
Pixel Artist
Strategist
Supporter & User
With The Local Universe extension, every website transforms into a unique planet filled with activities and multiplayer features. The online world becomes a personal playground, providing fun activities, social interaction, and endless customization.
Previously, the Local Universe featured vector planet designs that did not align with the pixel art designs of the character sprites.
The goals are twofold: to redesign LUX in a pixel art theme and to accomplish this in a manner that allows easy customization of the artwork. With the new designs, developers should be able to easily create landscapes with lakes, hills, islands, and platforms, as well as the incorporation of randomly placed objects.
First, a format for designs to be recreated in was decided.
The pixel art designs will use a 32px x 32px tileset. With a tileset, developers will be able to assemble individual tiles like building blocks. This approach allows for creative and flexible scene construction, promoting efficiency and resource optimization in design.
The addition of objects to each design enhances diversity and allows for the incorporation of customizable elements like, hills, islands, gems, plants, and platforms.
%20(1).png)
After finalizing the approach to creating new designs, the company's development lead offered inspiration on the building process. Seven planets will be created, with 6 showcased in the slide deck animation below. Additionally, a special "city" design was planned to overlay the company's webpages.
I iteratively went through each desired design in the ideation slide deck, sending them to the development team as I created them. Below are the initial tilesets.
After team feedback, I enhanced the designs with subtly fading backgrounds using a pixel art gradient as they went underground, improved rock quality with a more sophisticated texture, and added planets for enriched color and to promote the game's lore (ensuring colors matched those of other planets), bringing an interconnected atmosphere to the game.
It was exciting to see members in the Discord community react positively once the designs had launched. One user, pictured below, expresses their enthusiasm for the designs and even speculated on game lore based on them—an unintended but appreciated consequence, aligning with the creators' inclination to lean into such engagement.
Below is a trailer for The Local Universe, where each website transforms into a unique planet, offering opportunities for connection. After its launch, it briefly secured the second-place position in the Games category on the Google Chrome Extension store!
.png)
