I loved doing these 100 little hints of what Illustrapedia is supposed to be: a nicely illustrated collection of knowledge bytes done in casual, easily understandable style.

Retronator as a company is today exactly 1 year old, but in reality I earn my living as a game developer at Dawn of Play. I do projects like Illustrapedia in my free time and it’s just one of the interesting things I want to work on. But it’s my growing wish to make a living out of it, which would mean my work creates real value for the world. And the world - is you!

I’ve narrowed down my ideas to 3 projects and behind door number 2 is exactly this one:

Illustrapedia

I would love to hear if you’d like to see Illustrapedia become a real illustrated encyclopedia. I’ve talked about my vision for it and if this project is chosen, I will create a prototype with the first few entries to exactly present how this would all look like. I’m talking big pixel art illustrations and text that really explains what’s going on there. So a lot of neat pixels that teach real knowledge. If this is your thing, please let me know.

Or:

• See what’s behind door number 1
• See what’s behind door number 3

I’ve put up a voting box on my Facebook page, or reply on my main blog.

We’re almost there. Tomorrow is the day when this beginning comes to an end. Because the day after tomorrow is the start of the real Illustrapedia.

If you haven’t figured by now, Illustrapedia is supposed to be a real illustrated encyclopedia. These small pixels are only a tiny hint of what I want to create. But why create an encyclopedia? We have Wikipedia, How Stuff Works, Encyclopædia Britannica. And the answer is: because they focus on text while I (and a lot of people out there, especially kids) work best with images.

Nicely illustrated encyclopedias were where my head was at throughout my childhood. They fueled my imagination, broadened my horizons and gave me a million ideas of what kind of computer games I want to make. But not all educational children’s books are the same. I’ve developed a taste for them and when I browse through many on today’s shelves I don’t find the same charm that were in the ones I had.

Let me illustrate what I am talking about.

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Shit, the days are coming down fast. Today I wanted to share something more personal. Don’t worry, I obscured my naked pictures so it’s totally safe for work!

Here’s a little something from my creative process. After getting an idea for an object I would usually start by finding reference photos on Google image search. Even though it might seem that you can’t get any details into a 30 by 30 pixel art image, having a real life reference makes a big difference. Sometimes, however, I would get inspiration directly from things around me and draw them with the object directly in front of my eyes. These are 4 such sources of inspiration.

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When I decided to take on this project I had to choose the right tool to do it. If I wanted to be serious about keeping the daily schedule I needed to have the option to draw at any free time of the day. I don’t have a computer at home so this was a great excuse to use my iPad.

I already fantasized about creating my own pixel art program (I make iOS games for a living), but thankfully got to my senses when I found an absolutely amazing app that was all I hoped for: Sprite Something.

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