Towards a Quiet Tower

For this year’s Pixel Art Jam the choice was given between four themes, each served in the rather unconventional form of a (titled) 2-bit colour palette. Eventually I’d chose »Forgotten Swamp« — a name so RPG-ish that I’d succumb the urge to further tread the insect-warrior path of my 2023 entry. Something like… aaaand here comes the long-awaited sequel for Game Boy Color… this Christmas’ssss gonna buzzzz.

The pixel church in this entry was already in the works before the 4 aforementioned palettes had a chance to unfurl any meaningful impact on me, though. The general theme of »color« initially turned my attention to an esoteric book (»Thought-Forms«) that I once found on the shelves at my paternal grandmother’s then-abandoned flat. The book came with a lot of colourful, abstract drawings, and closed with 3 images that combined such abstractions with illustrations of a particular (unspecified, though apparently existing) church. I’d use the first drawing as a guideline.

What followed when my two insect warriors entered the scene was a lot of experimenting with unsatisfying results – mainly because the Jam specification of a maxiumum of 192 unique 8×8 tiles prevented solutions that I actually liked. I began to consider other scenes to place the duo in… and then a happy accident with Aseprite’s filling tool would suddenly render my image into a rough nightly scene. And from there on things would fall quickly into place.