# Dead Cells' hero is 50 pixels tall, and nobody drew its shadows.

- Series: [How It's Clipped](https://miu.fm/howitsclipped.md)
- Published: 2026-10-24
- Page: https://miu.fm/howitsclipped/dead-cells-hero-is-50-pixels-tall-and-nobody-drew-its

## Story

Dead Cells' hero is 50 pixels tall, and nobody drew its shadows.

Pixel art usually has its light painted in: move the lamp and the shadow stays put. Dead Cells lights its sprites from a second picture you never see, saved with every frame "along with its normal map" (Thomas Vasseur, the game's artist). The idea goes back to Jim Blinn in 1978. Textured surfaces "looked like smooth surfaces with photographs of wrinkles glued on", until he looked at the embossed leather of his shoes and saw that what makes a bump look bumpy is not its height but the angle it turns to the light. So keep the surface flat and tilt the direction each point faces. Games store those directions as colours (right red, up green, toward you blue), which is why every normal map is lilac, and each pixel shines as much as it faces the light. Dead Cells measured its directions on rough 3D models. A flat drawing has nothing to measure, and calling the bright parts high turns every painted shadow into a dent. The answer: inflate the drawing, each pixel rising by how far it is from the edge, and let the slopes become the colours. Do it to every frame of a sprite sheet, and the whole animation turns toward the lamp. Blinn, when his first test worked: "I was literally dancing around the room."

Our own sprite, map and cast, computed here; no game art.

Which game made you notice light moving across pixel art?

Sources: Thomas Vasseur, "Art Design Deep Dive: Using a 3D pipeline for 2D animation in Dead Cells", Game Developer, 2018; James F. Blinn, "Simulation of Wrinkled Surfaces", SIGGRAPH 1978; Mike Seymour, "Founders Series: Jim Blinn", fxguide, 2012; Unity Manual, Normal map; Godot docs, 2D lights and shadows.
Sounds: our own, made in code (earshot, CC0).

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