8 Bit Art? or Not?

My characters Paige and Webb were created to help teach simple HTML concepts. Since I’ll be using HTML in the book, I’m exploring illustration styles that will say computer. An 8 bit drawing will yell computer. As I was working on refining Webb’s character design, I researched how to make a sketch look like it belonged in Oregon Trail. It took me a few tries. I scanned in a painting and turned it into pixels in photoshop by changing the contrast and then changing the image size to small and back again to large.

I got some pretty cool grunge texture. It wasn’t what I was looking for though.

I pulled out some graph paper and tried making a sketch of Webb on top of the graph paper. I got some interesting texture, but it is still not what I am looking for.

I went down a rabbit hole where I found some cool texture in photoshop that I might use someday , but again, it wasn’t what I was envisioning. I even opened up a 100px x 200 px photoshop file, drew the image with a 1 pixel brush and then changed the image size back to a larger size. That one screamed, “I don’t know how to control my pixels.” So, nope.

Then I found Pixel Art. At pixilart.com you can draw in just pixels and then dump color into the pixels. You can even add an image that you can use to trace. I mocked up a sketch of Webb and bingo, this is what I was looking for:

I love the way this sketch looks organic. Her eyes are different shapes and sizes, so are her ears and even her straight mouth has character. It was time to see if Paige would look good in this style as well.

I tried different sized pixels. Some were really chunky and left me guessing at the character’s emotions and others were pretty small and made the whole drawing looking 1986-esque. I’m still wondering if I am barking up the wrong tree. What do you think? Does this pixel art work? What would make it work better?