Another day, another cat drawing for the old Commodore 64
😻 🎨 👨‍💻 🕹️ 👾

I reworked an older self-portrait that I made last year as a pixel art drawing, and turned it into an image on the Commodore 64. I like that the limited color palette doesn’t seem to limit me as much as it used to. It takes some effort (well, a lot of effort), but I think it was worth the time.
🎨 👨‍💻 🕹️ 👾

Here are some of the steps I took to create a multicolor pixel art drawing of a cat.

drawn in ibisPaint X in 4 colors

traced and redrawn in Pixaki

made into C64 runnable multicolor art with MultiPaint, loaded into VICE C64

It’s a process, taking many hours to complete. I think I’m improving.

👨‍💻🎨

I fired up my art app and sculpted on a canvas the size of a retro-computer’s text character (8 pixel wide and 8 pixels high). I had to struggle, because the app wanted it to look nicer than it really was.

I suppose you can already guess what it represents. You can do a lot in 64 bits of data 👨‍💻🎨

I would prefer owning a Mac, but I simply can’t rationalize the “Apple tax.” I used to be Mac or Die. A computer is more like a way to access the Internet nowadays, anyway 👨‍💻👾

It’s all very technical, this Commodore 64 multicolor mode. I made a special 2x1 grid in my iPad pixel editor to help me, but still I need to check in an actual multicolor editor if I made a mistake. Anyway, I’m improving as a C64 pixel artist, and that’s very cool 👨‍💻

Since I took the picture myself, I can copy it, I guess.

Creating something colorful that can be displayed on a Commodore 64 by loading and running a file involved a lot of (impossible to automate) creative steps. It took me around 4 hours for this simple drawing of my cat Aziz. 👨‍💻

I found an image editor that is able to draw Commodore 64 multicolor images. It can load PNG images, so I could draw on my iPad and color in this Java app on my Raspberry Pi-400. Yay!

I’m still learning, though. Also found a SID tracker to compose music on the C64, and my musical knowledge is meh.

Based on my previous sketch I made a pixel art version. To me it doesn’t look very convincing, which probably means I have to revise my process.
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I knew Ibispaint on iPad can do pixel art, sort of. However, its pixel brushes give more an impression of pixel art, than actual pixel art, more as an art meme rather than something to be displayed on a cathode ray tube. That isn’t a bad choice, especially since it allows art forms to be mixed.
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For the month of September 2023 micro∙blog organized a photo blogging challenge with daily prompts, and I adopted it for pixel art. 👾 Abstract Buildup Precious Orange Forest Well Panorama Yonder Language Cycle Retrospect Panic Glowing Statue Red Oof! Intense Fabric Edge Disruption Fall Road Day in … read more

SepPixel for September 30, 2023, prompt: “Treasure."
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SepPixel for September 29, 2023, prompt: “Contrast."
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SepPixel for September 28, 2023, prompt: “Workout."
👾 ʎʇʇᴉʞ ‘sǝʇnlƃ ǝsoɥʇ uɹnq

SepPixel for September 27, 2023, prompt: “Embrace."
👾 xɐɯ oɹd ϛƖ ǝuoɥdᴉ ʍǝu ɹnoʎ ʎoɾuǝ

SepPixel for September 26, 2023, prompt: “Beverage."
👾 ǝɯ ɯoɹɟ ɟɟnp ou ʇɔǝdxǝ

SepPixel for September 25, 2023, prompt: “Flare."
👾 spl ǝɥʇ uo ʎsɐǝ

Turning a small illustration into pixel art is still a lot of creative drawing besides tracing. Shown is the intermediate size-reduction step I made in Procreate with a 1-pixel brush, and the 4x even smaller version in Pixaki. It’s based on an illustration from an image search.
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SepPixel for September 24, 2023, prompt: “Belt."
👾 uǝʞoɹq sᴉ ʇlǝq ǝɥʇ