Cartridge

{subject}, drawn as 16-bit console role-playing game pixel art from the 1990s. Draw only what the subject names, with no extra figures. The whole picture is a coarse grid of crisp square pixels, about 180 across its width, each one flat colour, enlarged so every pixel shows. Every shape has a one-pixel near-black outline. Each colour has two or three flat shades in hard steps with light checkerboard dithering, lit from the upper left; never a flat icon. When the subject is a place, it fills the whole frame as one screen of a game map seen from a high three-quarter view, built from square tiles, with its open ground, paths and fields in the same flat golden yellow. Colour: {palette}. Everything takes these colours. {composition}. Show only the picture, flat and straight-on to every edge, never a photographed print or screen. No anti-aliasing, gradients, blur, vector lines, text or game interface.

Materials

Square pixels on a fixed grid, Limited flat palette

Techniques

One-pixel outlines, Two or three flat shades per colour, Checkerboard dithering, Tile-built places

pixel art, 16 bit, sprite, retro game, rpg

• Palette: one flat warm golden yellow for the empty ground (about half the picture, a single flat colour with no texture), near-black navy for every outline, then about twenty bright flat colours: deep royal blue, grass green, brick red-orange, warm peach, tan and wood brown, and pure white highlights; every colour at full saturation, never pastel, grey or muddy
• Composition: wide 16:9 landscape; a place fills the frame to every edge with no border; anything else is one sprite shown whole, large and centred, filling about half the frame, on the flat golden-yellow ground that reaches every edge, with only a small dark oval shadow under it