This is NOT a commission from the person who has been commissioning winter-themed fluffies, but I saw enough of that going around that I wanted to jump in on the fun. A lot of my pixel art has been inspired by old GBA game sprites or artsyles like Maplestory, and I’ve been wanting to dip deeper into a fantasy style for a fluffy. This was a good reason to give that shot.
A long time ago, I was a painter in high school and I was one of my teacher’s favorite painters. Today, over the course of about six hours this transitioned from “I’ll do that real quick for fun” to “…I feel like I’m painting the pixels with a brush right now, actually.” Something clicked and this really came to life in a way that I’m so much more proud of than my other pieces, granted I also gave myself much more resolution to work with than the other pixel pieces.
Writery Stuff:
The horn is animated at all times, like it has a snowstorm swirling around inside it.
This is the collective spirit of a few hundred foals who were born too close to winter and froze to death. The herd that brought forth this spirit has been wiser in recent years about births close to the cold times, but when they do make mistakes and have foals too late, they seem to cry much less and pass more peacefully. This is because she’s there to nuzzle them and comfort them as that cold numbness takes them much more gently than usual, and only the foals in question can see her.
At times, predator animals that would hunt the fluffy herd will turn away and flee. The smarties and toughies think it’s because of them.
During migration periods, foals will occasionally fall off of their mothers and bury into the snow, too muffled to be heard as they cry out for help. On one occasion, a mother paused because she felt like one of her foals were placed back onto her fluff again.
Actually no, I can’t see anything wrong with the shading or lighting in this picture at all. I asked my wife to have a look and she can’t see anything wrong either.
Congratulations on a job well done! I guess you were just overthinking it and just vibing it is the way to go.
Whoever thought this was AI-generated, please DM me and I will show you the progress pics on the photoshop pixel grid, I spent 6 hours on this. Few things feel as bad as being told that your work is AI-generated.
