FAN ART FRIDAY: “Tower of Heaven” by Cutlaska
When designing the protagonist for Tower of Heaven, I had just a few points in mind:
- Must fit within Game Boy palette & resolution
- Must be easily drawn & animated in MS Paint
- Must not be a human in a shirt and jeans
But what if I’d been a bit less lazy and more talented? I might’ve drawn something akin to Cutlaska’s breathtaking fan art that stretches the game’s signature green-and-yellow palette to its limits.
As a master of pixels and greebles, Cutlaska transforms Eid into a being of mottled metal and moss; I was immediately reminded of the robots from Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The thick clouds and overgrowth give the impression he’s been abandoned there for some time, the butterflies as the only living things he’s ever known.
The clouds themselves are a dazzling mural of stars and shapes. Some are impressionistic stacks of shapes begging for parallax scrolling. Others, foreboding miasma that chokes the foreground and even the tower itself–beyond a single window, there’s no hint how high Eid is or how much of it lies ahead.
It takes true artistry to use such minimalist characters to create art this evocative. Thanks for the submission, and see you next week.
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