If you live in Portland long enough, you learn that geekery is mighty and on-the-grow here in PDX. This year, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo is continuing that trend, by expanding the event into the Oregon Convention Center. And, with the help of everyone’s favorite barcade, Ground Kontrol, they’re also debuting their new “Mega-Cade”: 20,000 square feet of arcade and pinball machine excitement! Thanks to them, I had the pleasure of breaking into a new frontier in my work: designing pixel art to help promote this well-loved Portland gaming convention.
This is the Expo’s first year doing the show in the Convention Center, so we definitely wanted that to be a centerpiece for the art. I worked up an illustration in the low-res pixelated style seen in retro video games, and turned the iconic Convention Center towers into photon-firing defenders against invading space aliens.
Pixel art can definitely get time-consuming, too–I had to painstakingly fill in each little square “pixel” on the image, and although there are ways to speed up that process, it definitely needs a unique attention to detail. The final piece involved layers upon layers of pixels for the towers, the alien attackers, surrounding buildings and trees, and parts of the Portland skyline. It was a fun project, though, it was great to be helping out the Expo in what’s sure to be a big year for them!
The Portland Retro Gaming Expo lands on September 29th and 30th, for two full days of panels, tournaments, and old-school gaming good times. Get the details on their web site, and be sure to check out the show!
Portland graphic design – Portland web design – Upswept Creative
