1-Bit Pixel Art Concepts for Tiny OLED Screens

This is a gallery of images designed for the inexpensive SSD1306 OLED display modules that are common these days.

There are a few different modules that share the SSD1306 driver. The most common variety is the 128x64 monochrome screen, but there are also narrow 123x32 versions, and a second version of the larger 128x64 screen that has a different color along the top 16 pixels. There are similar 64x64 modules that show up from time to time as well.

I wanted to explore artistic styles and the overall possibilities of artwork, interfaces, animations, characters, and environments at this specific resolution and color scheme.

Virtual Pet

I've wanted to work on a virtual pet using this hardware for a while. You can read a bit more about that in the related Virtual Pet project, and see more concept art.

Concept Art


Interface Concepts

Exploring how the UI might look for a game like this.


Mini-games

Small games for the player to play within the virtual pet world. The games can represent activities like gardening, shopping, or exploring. And the player's success might translate to the pet's benefit (such as improving stats after playing a cooking mini-game that produces particularly yummy food for the pet.)


64 x 64

There are some smaller 64x64 variants of the OLED modules, and this explores some concepts at that tiny scale.


Interfaces

Exploration of UIs elements, layouts, and graphics.


Characters

This is a collection of drawings that explore characters at this resolution, as well as combining them with environments and UI elements.


Games

Similar to the mini-games designed for the virtual pet project, but standalone games with their own theming.


Misc

Environments

Just some places.

Signature Experiments

Exploring ways to sign pixel art with more than just a name.

More 1-bit stuff

There are additional virtual pet images in the Virtual Pet Prototypes project.

There are additional interfaces in the OLED Charts project.

There are tiny fonts in the Tiny Pixel Art Fonts project.

Published: August 7, 2023

Categories: arduino, gamedev