ZLG - Commissions

Shwack's Creeper Explosion

2026-06-26T00:00:00-07:00

My client approached me one day, asking "hey do you think you could do a Minecraft Creeper exploding?" At first blush, I thought "Well, it's already kind of pixel art, how hard could it be?" Well, it's a bit more complex than that, but I was essentially correct! My rendition is a little more saturated, and has less moss on it.

The big detail to get right in this piece is the smaller bits of smoke. I wanted them to look and feel close to the original game, complete with the multiple shades and going in multiple directions. The creeper itself simply expands a little while blinking before the big BOOM happens, just like it does in-game. I used multiples of the same animation to follow up the big blast, and then scatter tiny smoke pieces at the end.

We were both very happy with the result, and his community enjoyed it as well! The smoothness I think is what stands out the most with this one.

To see this emote in action, visit my client's stream!

Kay's Darth Kissing

2026-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

My client requested an emote for her stream that was Vader-themed and showing affection. I didn't have much to go on, but immediately had an idea. The reference showed Vader holding his hand out with hearts, and my first instinct was to focus on the heart, since Vader's helmet doesn't exactly scream "I'm lovey dovey".

The animation consists of Vader blowing a kiss with his hand, while a heart comes out and throbs as it floats upward. The heart's animation came out really well, and conveys the juxtaposition of Vader's imposing helmet and a silly heart. Another job completed!

This piece tested my ability to work with a monochromatic, complex shape that's shiny. It came out pretty solid, but I didn't quite capture the shininess I was hoping for.

My client's community enjoyed it when they went Affiliate and had emotes ready to go!

To see this emote in action, visit my client's stream!

HatBastion's Sleepy Hamster

2026-05-06T00:00:00-07:00

My client approached me looking to make a fun, reusable emote to signify sleepiness. Their community is big on cute, fluffy animals, and a sleepy hamster was the perfect way to go! Before details got sorted out, I had a sketch of the idea ready.

We spent some time deciding on a good pose for him. Midway through, the ears ended up looking "like mushrooms", which I thought was an amusing way to convey what was going on, but I understood and we straightened it out quickly!

In the animation, our hamster boy sighs, a bubble expands quickly, and it (somewhat slower) deflates in time for another breath. It was satisfying to work on something easy to animate and expressive!

In the end, my client and their mod team had no critiques at all and it was a hit in the community! Another awesome piece to bring fun to the screen!

Production of this emote was broadcast live on Twitch, with my client's permission.

This asset was originally animated, and I lack an easy way to watermark it in that form. Thus, only a static thumbnail for now. To see it in action, visit my client's stream.

HatBastion's Godzilla Holding a Heart

2025-10-26T00:00:00-07:00

This little guy was a lot of fun to put together! My client was looking for a cute, chubby Godzilla holding a heart for their community to use. I loved the idea, and after we pulled together some references and agreed on a few colors, I started pixel-pushing.

A few iterations were all it took to settle on lizard boi's head shape, tail arrangement, how he's holding the heart, and so on. The hardest part of this piece was figuring out the best way to dither it, to suggest the texture of his scaly skin. That's super hard at this resolution, so I opted to shade the dithering itself, once a good pattern was established. It's a rarely-used technique due to how hard it is to get forms correct, but it worked here.

The way he blinks and opens his mouth also brought a lot of personality to the emote, without a whole lot of rework! Since we ran out of vertical pixels to get a really big RAWR, I went with turning his head back a little bit, and shaded the teeth pixels in-place to give the illusion of depth in limited space.

This asset was originally animated, and I lack an easy way to watermark it in that form. Thus, only a static thumbnail for now. To see it in action, visit my client's stream.

ReaperFae's Super Metroid-themed Stream Layout

2025-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

Making stream layouts based on a game's original graphics can be difficult, depending on what you're aiming to do with them, and how you're gathering the graphics. Typically, this is done using emulators, which have ways to take screenshots, grant access to the emulated system's RAM, toggle graphical layer visibility, or show the current sprite and tile sheets.

My client wanted to make a layout based on Super Metroid, after seeing the Zelda II-based layout I made for myself. They wanted their username styled the same way as the game's title screen, too. After explaining a couple particulars and caveats to the contract, I got to work.

Planning and Preparation

Leveraging these technical features, I gathered the source data by painstakingly visiting every major area of the game that I needed to gather graphics from, and taking screenshots or exporting tiles as I went. I had looked on the Web for other sources of these tiles, but none of the collections I found were complete enough for my purposes, so I was forced to gather them myself.

I was mid-way through the project, when I noticed that the tilesheet also needed its palette selected correctly, or things wouldn't display correctly. Some tiles were animated via palette changes, as well, necessitating more screenshots and exports. "This is why there isn't a thorough tileset for this game," I thought.

Super Metroid is a technical marvel for the Super Nintendo. It employs a minimum of 4 layers of graphics, and supports things like gradients, alpha transparency, palette rotation and swapping, screen-wide palette changing, parallax scrolling, screen-wide wavy effects, the works. All this to say, gathering the graphics to build this was a huge task. I'm not sure I would have taken the job if I wasn't interested in building one for myself, due mostly to the sheer number of tiles that Super Metroid contains, and the unclear arrangement of how they fit together.

This was also only the second project I had put together using a new tool I was learning: Cosmigo's ProMotion NG. While a capable editor, it has some quirks and edge cases that made building this particular layout less ideal than a "normal" image editor, due in no small part to the limit in palette size.

Building

It took lots of experimentation to learn the "convention" of how the tiles went together in their world. The general goal was to create a microcosm of impactful or cool areas of the game (according to my client's taste) and make a new logo for their username, in the same style of the game's title screen.

When it came to the logo, I was excited to flex my pixel art muscles instead of moving a bunch of tiles around that I couldn't change. It was fun to learn how Nintendo designed their art, and to follow in their style to create a logo that represented my client and felt true to the feel of Super Metroid.

It was the Metroid series that made me appreciate the combination of red, yellow, and purple. So, building a look-alike logo leaning heavily into those colors was a good practice session. It's truly difficult to convey perspective and depth at that resolution, and it came out looking good!

Automation

I made this layout after the Zelda II-inspired layout, so I leaned on some new animation skills in Javascript and <canvas> to put together a few garnishes with the rest of our budget: the Baby Metroid inside the capsule, and Samus going up and down an elevator. They added a little dynamism to the layout that I'd like to build on some day, if we revisit it.

Much respect to the original Deer Force team (Intelligent Systems, today) who built the game. Over 30 years later, it is still a beautiful game to look at and study.

Conclusion

My client was very pleased with the result, as well as their community. It was a project that pushed my technical and artistic skills, which I always appreciate.

This stream layout has animated browser sources, which are not displayed in the thumbnail. To see it in action, visit my client's stream during a Super Metroid run!

DISCLAIMER: The original game tiles belong to Nintendo Co., Ltd. I was paid to make an original logo for my client in the style of Super Metroid's title screen. The only ownership expressed here is over the layout design itself and the original logo, made by me.