A series of food pixel art I did for OC Night Market and the 626 Night Market‘s ad spots as well as their site reskins.

Background

The client's events are videogame-themed this year, so I was commissioned to make pixel art based on actual items available at their events, with animated effects to use on .gif ads, then apply them across a range of files.

Breakdown

The work consisted of the following food items, under respective effect categories:

  steam
- nori crab taco
- lobster
- magikarp taiyaki

    pop/sizzle
- food on skewers: meat skewer
- food on skewers: potato tornado
- food in basket: takoyaki balls

    sparkle/glean
- boba tea drink
- lightbulb drink
- totoro tarts
- dirty cookie

With the following iterations:

1. .JPG
    • 728x90, 40kb
    • 468x60, 40kb
    • 320x50, 20kb
    • 250x300, 20kb
   
2. .GIF
    • 970x90, 50k
    • 300x250, 50k
    • 300x600, 75k
   
3. Site Reskin
    • 2 versions of one design

All of the 1st and 2nd category needed to be exported with 2 different logo versions, one the OC brand and the second for the 626 brand, with versions for 3 different dates on the former, and 4 dates on the latter.

As a bonus I made blown up printable versions which are being printed into life-size standees (5-feet tall) for attendants to take photographs alongside at the events.

All in all this job ranked in at 332 files including works in progress and .psd sources.

Animation

Their budget was tight so for animation (billed per frame) I made each effect with 4 frames, the timing for which being interlaced across the finished image (consisting of 16 frames) to make the most of what was available.

Frame timing pattern:

Sizzle: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4,

Sparkle: 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4,

Steam: 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4,

Credits

The overarching concept is inspired by an older Grub Hub ad campaign which featured isometric food photography, which I always wished was done in pixel art. The Magikarp Taiyaki one was of course in reference to official art, but drawn up from scratch. I was provided a logo vector to use as part of folowing the branding style guide requirements for the job.

Job spanned 10 days.

Phew!