@jalonso - The problem is that they award plagerism more often than they know because while small artists' works aren't as recognizable as large properties like Mega Man and Castlevania, they are still registered and can fetch as much in a settlement if taken to court. It's a misconception that only big comapnies can sue or be sued for a large sum of money.

This is why I hate design contests like this. There are be at least 12 entries that violate copyrights - some that use art directly from the source (recolored Mega Man sprites, I'm looking at you). The people running the contest are partially to blame for basically condoning the use of copyrighted material "as long as they are approved". These 'amateur pixel artists' (only an assumption based on the quality of work I see there) don't know the first thing about copyright law and 9 out of 10 times with these sorts of contests, someone gets sued. Moral of the story, if you want a t-shirt design, PAY A PROFESSIONAL TO DO IT. Otherwise, they're going to get as many crappy designs as they get entries, and possibly more than they bargained for.

Okay, my rant is over. I just hate these sorts of abuses of the art community. You would never see this in another career field, it's degrading to the craft and turns it into a cheap commodity. How are professional artists supposed to make a living when hundreds of talentless wannabe's are working for free for the 'chance' to get some money out of it?

I've wanted a Calvin & Hobbes game since I was a kid! I imagined it being more like Mario 64 but this looks amazing. Such great and perfect representation of the style at such a small resolution. Hobbes can't be taller than 32 px and that's impressive!

I approve of this 110%.

I personally like the jagged look. It is pixel art afterall; if you can't see pixels then why not just draw the characters in vector format? I think a lot of people assume that the challenge of pixel art is making it not look like pixel art and while I agree that is a challenge it's like making an oil painting look like a screenprint. Yeah, it'd cool, but what would be the point?

I whole-heartedly disagree that the lines need editing. If you were going for a NES-era creature drawing, you succeeded! This is finely drawn to show the pixels and still maintain its aesthetic appeal, and also nostalgic for me as they remind me of bosses from Final Fantasy.

My only suggestion is based on the assumption that you resized the creatures and did minor cleanup on the outlines for them. If I'm correct then I would only recommend drawing them by hand at the smaller sizes with more intention in the shading and arrangement of the pixels. If I'm incorrect, you may kindly disregard my opinion on the matter.

All around good job!

Yes, that is the "I am Error" screen. Good eye, my friend!

Almost! Life Force instead of Gradius.

Nope: http://www.doctoroctoroc.com/bsf/takiComparison.gif

This is something I've been doing lately, not for animation necessarily, but since I generally pixel for beading purposes with the fuse beads, I only require stills. I am working on a set of "Where the Wild Things Are" sprites right now, which I'm pixeling from scratch, using the MacFarlane toys as a reference.

Antifarea, that's correct.. As I say in the description, they are "converted" to a color palette associated with Perler fuse beads. Some people use conversion software or a custom palette index, but I pixeled these by hand using the original jpegs as the resized base image. After I have the initial trace done, I make edits to each sprite by using the original sized image as a reference, so it's not complete "noise".

I'm with Darth on this one, the nostalgiameter is through the roof!