Mascot Mashup 8-bit art project
Monday, September 12, 2011
Today marks the release of the 200th image I’ve created for my 8-bit art project Mascot Mashup. Every day I post a new famous character that I’ve translated into pixel art.
No. 200 happens to be Johnny Cash (because he died on this day in 2003). Even though I attempt to tie my daily characters into birthdays, death days, holidays and historical events, arbitrariness often prevails.
See 12 example characters below. Their body proportions, pigeon-toed feet and poses are due to their direct stylistic relationship to the primitive QBasic Gorilla, which inspired this whole project.
Mascot Mashup was born in 2009, but was often on hiatus for the first year of its existence. In April 2011, the site became a daily blog of 8-bit characters designed by me to be used in an ongoing Flash remake of the classic QBasic Gorillas artillery game (and possibly other 1980s-era games). Each sprite has four animation states. The first sprites drawn were all NCAA Division I college mascots, but the characters have since branched into randomness.
I plan to continue this daily art project through at least the beginning of 2012, possibly indefinitely? To be determined. See all characters at mascotmashup.com.