Back again with another page from the kid's book I illustrated. After how well the last fox came out in my bonus special, I couldn't resist putting his friend through the pixel machine too. And I'm really glad I did, because this might just be my favourite conversion of the whole series so far.
If you've been following along, you'll know it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Some of my recent experiments, especially the photos, came out muddy, strange or just plain wrong. So two good results in a row from the same book has me wondering whether there's something about these illustrations that the tool particularly likes. More on that below.
A bit about the book
These illustrations come from a children's book I worked on a while back. It didn't exactly fly off the shelves (I think my family bought most of the copies!), but I've always been proud of the artwork. Each page was painted digitally, and I wanted the whole book to feel warm, soft and a little magical, the kind of pictures you could get lost in at bedtime.
The forest scenes were some of my favourites to paint. Rather than drawing every tree in detail, I built them up from loose vertical strokes of colour, letting them blur and glow so the forest felt like it was full of late afternoon light. The animals were the anchors. They got the most attention and detail, so a young reader's eye would land on them first.
Going back through these pages for Pixagram has been a bit of a trip down memory lane. It's nice to give them a second life, even if it's in a very different style from what I originally had in mind.
The original
This one is a close-up. A fox sits in the bottom right corner, looking back over his shoulder towards the left of the page. He has a thick ruff of orange fur around his neck, a pale creamy face, and dark tipped ears that stand up against the light.
Behind him is that glowing golden forest. The trunks are painted as soft vertical streaks of yellow, amber, peach and rust, fading in and out of the haze. There's no ground, no sky and no real horizon, just warm light and tall shapes. It's much more about mood than detail.
What I like most about this painting is the fox's expression. He's not startled, just quietly curious, like he's heard something in the trees and is deciding whether it's worth investigating.
The pixel version
My first reaction was honestly a bit of a "wow". The image jumped off the screen in a way I didn't expect. Where the original glows softly, the pixel version almost crackles. It feels sharper, brighter and more alive.
What changed
- The trees came through beautifully. This is the big one. My soft, blurry streaks turned into crisp, clearly defined trunks, rows and rows of them. There are lighter trunks in front and darker ones further back, which gives the forest real depth. A few even show hints of branches I never painted.
- The fox gained detail. His face is much sharper, with a clean white muzzle, a neat dark nose and individual strands of fur picked out in fine pixel strokes. The ruff around his neck is now a mix of bright orange highlights and deep red shadows.
- The eye came alive. In my original the eye is dark and soft, almost sleepy. In the pixel version it's a bright amber eye with a clear highlight, which makes him look much more alert and watchful. It completely changes his personality, from dreamy to "I know you're there".
- The ear got a makeover. The near ear now has a clean outline and a soft pink inner. The dark ear tips from my painting have mostly faded away though, which is one of the few details I miss.
- The colours warmed up even more. The whole palette leans further into rich oranges and reds. The pale yellows in the background are still there, but they read more like sunlight streaming between the trunks than haze.
- The ground appeared. There's now a darker band along the bottom of the image, which gives the scene a sense of a forest floor. My original just floated, so this grounds everything nicely.
Why this one worked so well
After a fair few experiments now, I'm starting to see a pattern in what converts well and what doesn't.
The tool is at its best when it's sharpening something, and at its most unpredictable when it's filling gaps.
This painting gave the tool exactly what it likes:
- Strong vertical shapes. Pixel art is built on a grid, and straight up and down lines sit perfectly on that grid. My tree trunks were already halfway to pixel art without me realising.
- A limited, harmonious palette. The original is almost entirely warm yellows, oranges and browns. When the tool reduces the number of colours, there's not much to lose, so nothing important gets squashed.
- A clear subject. The fox is obvious and well defined. The tool didn't have to guess what he was, so it spent its effort adding detail rather than inventing new things.
- No big empty spaces. Unlike some of my foggier paintings, where the tool decided to fill the gaps with mountains, spaceships and even a skull, there was no blank fog here for it to get creative with.
Compare that with my photo conversions from the last week or so. Photos are full of tiny details, noise, random colours and complicated lighting. The tool has to make a lot of decisions about what to keep and what to throw away, and it doesn't always choose well. A painted illustration has already been simplified by the artist, so the tool is starting from a much better place.
Is it still my painting?
This is the question I keep coming back to in this series, and this time I think the answer is a clear yes.
With some earlier conversions, I felt the tool had taken over and told its own story. Here, every tree and every strand of fur feels like it belongs. The composition is mine, the fox's pose is mine, the colours are mine. The tool has just given it a fresh coat of paint, or maybe a retro game costume.
If anything, it's made me look at my original with new eyes. I can see now how much structure was hiding in those loose brushstrokes.