iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

We've been handing put special packs of trading cards for the first 100 players of the demo at PAX East. It's been really awesome watching people trade them so they can earn a prize!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I'M at PAX east! If you're here, come say hello at the Dawnthief booth!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Somehow, I forgot to upload this piece I made a couple years ago. Rocket Knight Adventures is a game that I hold near and dear to my heart!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

We're going to have a demo in the Steam Next Fest! I'll be posting again once it's available, but I hope you'll be looking forward to it. If you are in a community or are a content creator that plays next fest games, I hope you will consider adding ours to the list! #indiedev #gamedev #pixelart

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Day 8 - Chime from Curse Crackers This ones isn't my best, hah. Metal texture with pen... I might need to try to do better woth this another time.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Day 7 - A chocobo This one took me a little longer. I got a little too ambitious with the pencil work, hah. I always liked the big Final Fantasy birds! #pencil #art #finalfantasy #chocobo

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Day 6 - Vernal from Vernal Edge Vernal Edge is a dynamic combat metroidvania type game a friend of mine made. You should give it a look when you have the chance! For this character illustration, I just used the three colors of ballpoint pens I had on hand. #art #illustration #ballpointpenart

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Some #pixelart of Nier Automata's 2B I made for a secret santa. I think it turned out nicely!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Day 4 - Courage the Cowardly Dog! This show was a little scary as a kid, but I liked its strange atmosphere. His head is a really specific shape though! Did you ever watch Courage? What was your favorite episode? #art #cartoonnetwork

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Day 3 - It's Pikachu! I've always liked the fat Pikachu more in Pokemon... It's cool that they animated him that way for the 30th anniversary! How about you? What's your favorite? #pokemon #pikachu #art #coloredpencil

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

These two pieces of art managed to land at the right time. The first hit twitter big during the height of JoJo Part 3's anime, and the second hit the front page of reddit during the height of the "it's all ohio" meme (before being deleted by a mod for self promotion because of my info on it).

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Day 2 - A little red #Pikmin. I think I stole this idea, but I can't remember from who! I tried colored pencil on this one. What do you think? I'm not so sure about it. For me, the first Pikmin game left a big impact as a kid. The 30 day time limit gave me a lot of stress! #art #fanart #nintendo

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Oops, almost forgot to post the sketch. You know, it's a little annoying how much more comfortable with physical art than I am with digital!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Day 1 - Rudy from the upcoming game "Nutty Dungeons"! Did this one with a pencil sketch first (which I'll post in the replies) and then inked it with a ballpoint pen. Let's see how many days of art I can do in a row! #art

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

In the full game, you won't see things so zoomed out, but these are some tiles I've made for the in-development game Curse Chapter: Dawnthief. These days, I'm not able to tile the levels, so I try to make them easy to work with! #pixelart #gamedev #indiedev

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Hey, do you want to buy ALL THE COLORGRAVE GAMES? What's that? You DO? Well do I have the bundle for you, then! With all but our newest game on sale, you can pick them up for cheaper than DIRT! ... Oh, I misheard you? You don't know who we are? Ah, well... store.steampowered.com/bundle/43168...

A screenshot of a Steam storepage bundle containing the following Colorgrave games: Prodigal, Curse Crackers, Veritus, April Grove, and Claire a la Mode.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

It's getting close... Just a little over 2 hours left! We busted our butts, so I hope people think what's at the end of this countdown is cool!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

In a week, we'll have something cool to show you... #pixelart #gamedev

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I just found out via a stranger DMing me that my old Midna pixel art got recreated on wplace somewhere in Germany complete with credit! Wow! #pixelart

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Holy cow, I wasn't expecting to hit it in 2 hours

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Although she has been cursed by the icy winds, and her heart rests locked in a block of ice, warm blood still flows through these veins. Hope still remains. #pixelart

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Hey, the April Grove demo is out for #SteamNextFest ! Go play it and chop down some trees! Wishlist it! #gamedev store.steampowered.com/app/3622260/...

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

For some reason, bluesky hasn't been uploading my photos when I post on my mobile browser!

My foot with a shoe on it. Alternatively, a shoe with my foot inside of it.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Working on sketching cutscene art today. This is what they usually start out as until I go to finalize them, haha.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

please enjoy this art made to shamelessly get attention.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

How about this? April Grove has a few animal characters NPCs! Finally, a break from anime style characters... The initial concept was done by another on the team @rouji.bsky.social and I built off of that to better fit the other portraits and sprites we have in the game! #pixelart #gamedev #indiedev

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

I don't usually have much reason to show off for #PortfolioDay, but I've been Lead Pixel Artist at @colorgrave.bsky.social for the past 5-ish years. Most of what you see in these screenshots I made, and the rest there's good chance I touched it up at some point! If these seem cool, check them out!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

I've been playing around in blender. This isn't work related, but since I had stuff laying around from Howling Crown, I wondered, "what would it look like if I slapped some pixel art and a 3D building together?" So if anyone has advice for doing textures, I'd love to hear it!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

So! Here are a number of trees you can cut down in our upcoming game April Grove! I'm most proud of the willow, since I think getting that one to looks right was the toughest. What about you? Any favorites? #pixelart #indiedev #gamedev (Also, if you have any pixel trees to share, I wanna see em!)

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Current WIP pencil. This is a friend's character. Next is ink and then watercolor again!

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Other than the thumbnail stage where I was just trying to get a pose and proportions down, the rest of it is pretty straightforward. Started with a light pencil sketch, did a darker pencil drawing on top to get details down, and then inked it with a dip pen! After that, I started painting.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Oh, and here's the linework if that's something that you wanted to see

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Alright, all done! Sybil from Pseudoregalia! Honestly I forgot how much I love traditional art! I've never really used watercolor before, so it was fun experimenting with different things. The only thing is that watercolor fades out the ink a little bit... Anyway, any tips or tricks for watercolor?

Sybil from the game Pseudoregalia drawn in pen and ink and watercolor. The character is stepping down onto a rippling surface with a cloud trailing behind.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

A friend of mine is a vtuber on twitch, and I drew her avatar! It's a little rough since I'm pretty rusty, so feedback and criticism is appreciated! If you'd like to check out my friend's streams, you can do it here: www.twitch.tv/ushimeimomoka

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Imagine if I made SNES style sprites for our games instead

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Super Nintendo Samus inspired by Tetra's very cool art.

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

Here's another Secret Santa piece I did this year! This one is some Persona characters. I don't know much about the series but it was fun using a low color count for these to keep the colors popping! (I also thought it was cool to have them pop out of a frame!) #pixelart #persona #persona4 #ドット絵

The character Chie Satonaka and her persona from the game "Persona 4"

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

My participation in the Pixeljoint Secret Santa! This is for @hby.bsky.social, who I've been a fan of for a while and was so excited to have drawn as my giftee! #pixelart

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Brendan Steppig @looloopaa.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Sadly, turn-based battles ended up getting "axed" from this currently on-the-shelf project, but I really hope I get to animate things like this again! Learning to be efficient with static sprites moving around really saves time when dealing with larger sprites. #pixelart #gamedev #indiedev

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