Pixel art character generation as an image-to-image translation problem using GANs

Asset creation in game development usually requires multiple iterations until a final version is achieved. This iterative process becomes more significant when the content is pixel art, in which the artist carefully places each pixel. We hypothesize that the problem of generating character sprites in a target pose (e.g., facing right) given a source (e.g., facing front) can be framed as an image-to-image translation task. Then, we present an architecture of deep generative models that takes as input an image of a character in one domain (pose) and transfers it to another. We approach the problem using generative adversarial networks (GANs) and build on Pix2Pix’s architecture while leveraging some specific characteristics of the pixel art style. We evaluated the trained models using four small datasets (less than 1k) and a more extensive and diverse one (12k). The models yielded promising results, and their generalization capacity varies according to the dataset size and variability. After training models to generate images among four domains (i.e., front, right, back, left), we present an early version of a mixed-initiative sprite editor that allows users to interact with them and iterate in creating character sprites.