I bet you wouldn’t mind something fun and absolutely unrelated to all of this (gestures vaguely around with arms) mess around us all right now? Of course, you would. You’re human. And, as a human, I suspect that you also have a special love for well-crafted pixel art and old Japanese Domestic Market Cars. If you weren’t aware, I’m pretty much a human myself, and find these things delightful, which is why I find this little tool (toy?) on the Retro JDM website so charming. I bet you will, too.
It’s pretty straightforward, really. There’s a grid of 25 old JDM cars from Honda, Mazda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Datsun, all rendered with great detail and care in a pixelated style that’s really more early 16-bit era than 8-bit.
Think Amiga or Super Nintendo or Atari ST or similar computers of the late 1980s and early 1990s — really, this may be the peak pixel-art era.
You can pick any of the cars and then see it enlarged, where you can pick the colour and rotate it all around. That’s pretty much it, but it’s all it needs to be.
You can see the hex code for the colour you picked in the upper right corner, and even enter your own custom colour.
Every car can be rotated all around (well, in eight separate images) which would make these cars perfect for sprites in some sort of wonderfully retro-looking video game. And, even better, you can! That’s because the artist, Andrew Zuku, has given us all permission!
Growing up in the 80s and 90s my first computer was an Amiga 600. I spent countless hours on DPaint IV drawing and making animations.
Lately I’ve been on a retro video game binge, and was inspired to get back into drawing pixel art.
Feel free to use these however you like*. Send me a message with a link through the Contact Page if you do anything cool 😉
* If you “tune” any of them, just give me credit for the base.
That’s fantastic. Andrew is similarly generous with a bunch of sticker art and other decals he’s given permission for people to use and print, and he’s also done some truly fantastic Arduino projects, like this vacuum fluorescent display dog simulator, which I think is absolutely delightful:
This guy is great! Mr. Zuku, you’re great!
Anyway, I highly suggest wasting time recoloring and spinning some old Celicas and maybe working them into a game.
(thanks to harshith for showing me this!)