30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial Active Topics Search Register Login [Bounce to the Pixel Joint Gallery] Resources and Support Pixel Joint Forum : The Lounge : Resources and Support Topic: The Pixel Art Tutorial( Topic Closed) Oldest Post First Author Message cure Topic: The Pixel Art Tutorial Commander Posted: 27 November 2010 at 10:04pm Joined: 23 March 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2859 Purpose: This tutorial is designed to explain what pixel art is, what pixel art isn't, how to get started making pixel art and how to make your pixel art better. It is an attempt to consolidate the information scattered throughout the "noobtorials" thread and elsewhere. For more advanced information on what makes pixel art tick, the reader is advised to read the less general tutorials found elsewhere, as well as the Ramblethread! found over at Pixelation, which offers a more in-depth analysis of pixel clusters, banding, and anti- aliasing, and is the source of much of the information found in this tutorial. Table of contents: I. What is pixel art? 1. Why not all digital art is pixel art 2. Why it's not just about the tools II. Where do I start? 1. Tips 2. Programs 3. File type 4. Beginning the image III. Terms to know 1. Anti-aliasing (AA) 2. Dithering 3. Pixel clusters IV. Things to avoid 1. Bad AA 2. Jaggies https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 1/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial 3. Bad dithering 4. Banding 5. Pillow-shading 6. Noise 7. Sel-out V. Creating a palette 1. When should I worry about colors? 2. Color counts 3. Saturation, hue, luminosity 4. Hue-shifting 5. Color ramps Edited by jalonso - 28 July 2014 at 6:31am IP Logged cure Posted: 27 November 2010 at 10:22pm Commander I. What is Pixel art? Judging by the name, we might assume that pixel art is any art that's made up of pixels. But not every digital image is pixel art. This photograph is made from pixels, but is not pixel art: Joined: 23 March 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2859 Alright, so no photographs. But if I make my art on the computer, then it's pixel art, right? No. Pixel art is a very specific sub-category of digital art. It isn't what it's made of so much as how it's made. For example, this digital painting is art made on the computer, and it is made of pixels, but it is not pixel art: If the pixel art loses the sense of the importance of the pixels https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 2/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial which construct it, then I don't think it can be called pixel art. It is when the pixels hold importance to the nature of the work which defines it as pixelart. - Alex HW Why not all digital art is pixel art Pixel art is set apart from other digital art forms by its focus on control and precision. The artist has to be in control of the image at the level of the single pixel, and every pixel should be purposefully placed. When pixel art is done purposefully, offsetting just a few pixels can have a dramatic effect on the image: The features of this parrot change drastically, but only a few pixels are different. Other digital art forms use many tools you won't find in pixel art. The reason pixel artists don't use these tools is because they place pixels in a manner that the artist can't predict. These automatic tools blur, smudge, smear or blend the pixels. Any tool that places pixels automatically (which means the computer makes decisions about the placement of pixels rather than the artist), is generally frowned upon in pixel art. Remember, pixel art is all about control. An automatic tool has been used to blur the edges of this grey blob You'll often hear people complaining "This isn't pixel art, it has too many colors!" This isn't because there's some unwritten rule in pixel art that says "It's only pixel art if it has [X] number of colors", you're allowed to use as many colors as you want. The main reason that people complain about color count is that a high amount of colors can indicate the use of dirty tools. Dirty tools create a lot of new colors in order to achieve their blurring, smudging, or transparency effects. People also mention high color counts because larger palettes are more difficult to control, but we'll get to that later. https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 3/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial Why it's not just about the tools So if I don't use any blur effects or filters or fancy tools, it's pixel art, right? Anything made in MS Paint will be pixel art? No. It's not the program that determines whether or not it's pixel art, it's how it is made. For example, this image was made in MS Paint, without any fancy tools: But it isn't pixel art. This is what we call oekaki. If you can create the image without zooming in, chances are it isn't pixel art. If you're using the line tool and flood-fill most of the time, you're not paying attention to the individual pixels, just the lines and shapes that the pixels make up. The same goes for rough sketches made with the pencil or brush tools. These methods ignore the importance of careful, deliberate placement of the individual pixels. While the most common misconceptions about pixel art are due to too loose of an interpretation of the medium, there are some who have too strict a definition of what makes pixel art. Every pixel does not literally need to be placed by hand The job of the pixel artist is not to manually place each and every pixel. You aren't expected to behave like a robot, filling in large areas with thousands of single-clicks of the pencil tool. The bucket tool is fine. The line tool is fine. What's important is that the artist has control of the image at the level of the single pixel, not that you create the image one pixel at a time. Edited by jalonso - 28 July 2014 at 6:35am IP Logged cure Posted: 27 November 2010 at 10:38pm Commander II. Where do I start? Pixel art is about the pixels- that's as simple as it gets. These tips share a common goal: to make sure your focus is on the pixels. Start small- The larger the image you're trying to make, the more time and work it's going to take to complete it. Don't make this tough on yourself, use a small canvas. Pixel Joined: 23 March 2022 art can convey a lot of information for its size, you'd be surprised how little room you Online Status: Offline need if you control the pixels properly. Posts: 2859 https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 4/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial Use a limited palette- If you can't make a good sprite in 4 colors, using 40 colors isn't going to help. Using a small palette is especially good for beginners because it forces you to focus on pixel placement and the relationships between groups of pixels. The original, 4-color GameBoy palette is a good choice for beginners, as you'll only have to worry about value, and not hue or saturation. Programs There are plenty of good programs out there for pixel art, many of which are free. I use Grafx2, but GraphicsGale, Pro Motion, Photoshop, Pixen, and MS Paint are all common choices. Some are more user friendly than others, which is why I choose something with keyboard shortcuts like Grafx2 over MS Paint, it has saved me many trips to the toolbar (and makes for much easier palette management). File type A common mistake that new pixel artists make is saving their art as a JPEG/JPG. While this file type might be fine for other types of images, it causes compression, which destroys the quality of a piece of pixel art. Never, ever save as JPG. Instead, save as PNG or GIF. Be careful though, as some programs (such as MS Paint) don't properly support the GIF format, and will ruin your image. In these instances, you'll need a file converter (such as Giffy) if you want to save your image as a GIF. But how do I start the image? It's completely up to you. Some artists prefer to create the line art first, then go in and add color: Other artist prefer to 'block-in' the major forms with a larger brush, then continue by refining the image until it has a pixel-level polish: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 5/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial Both methods are fine, it all depends on what you're comfortable with, or the specifics of the project. Line work might be a good method if you're tracing a scanned image (such was the case for the sea monster example above). If you're beginning the image in your pixelling program, and it isn't a tiny sprite, blocking in the forms with a larger brush may prove more useful. Edited by jalonso - 28 July 2014 at 6:37am IP Logged cure Posted: 27 November 2010 at 10:50pm Commander III. Terms to know Anti-aliasing (AA): [In addition to the information found in this section, check out this image by Ptoing.] Anti-aliasing is the method of making jagged edges look smooth. You may be familiar Joined: 23 March 2022 with anti-aliasing already, because a lot of programs and tools do this automatically. Online Status: Offline When we're talking about pixel art, however, anti-aliasing means manual anti-aliasing. Posts: 2859 Manual AA means smoothing the jagged areas by hand-placing pixels of a different color to ease the transition. Here's an example: without AA with AA added https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 6/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial There are several pitfalls often encountered when applying anti-aliasing, which are discussed in the "Things to avoid" section. Dithering: Dithering consists of different patterns of pixels. It's typically used to ease the transition between two colors, without adding any new colors to the palette. It's also used for creating texture. In the days of CRT monitors, dithering was especially useful as the screen would actually blur the dithered area and obscure the pattern. Now that crisp LCD monitors are the norm, the patterns are no longer as easy to hide, meaning dithering is not as versatile as it once was. Even so, dithering still has its uses. The most common form of dithering you'll see is a 50/50 dither, also known as a 50% dither or a checkerboard pattern. As shown in the example above, you can create various other patterns to further buffer between a full color and a 50% dithering pattern. These patterns are often easier to spot than a 50% dither though, so be careful! Stylized dithering is another technique, and is characterized by the addition of small shapes in the pattern. Interlaced dithering allows for two dither regions to hug each other. It is called interlaced dithering because the two dithers weave together at the borders. This type of dithering allows you to blend dithers together to form gradients. https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 7/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial Random dithering is a less-common form of dithering, and isn't generally advised, as it adds a lot of single-pixel noise to the image. While it has some usage in very small doses, random dithering is something you'll often want to avoid. As useful as dithering is, it's often misused by inexperienced artists. Bad dithering is discussed further in the Things to avoid section. Pixel Clusters: The cluster of pixels is made from single pixels. However, a single pixel is most of the time near-useless and meaningless if not touching pixels of the same color. The pixel artist is concerned with the shapes that occur when pixels of similar color touch each other and convey an opaque, flat, shape. Most of the defeats and possible triumphs of pixel art occur in that exact moment where the artist makes a cluster of pixels. -Ramblethread I stress the importance of placing individual pixels, but these are rarely independent pixels. A single pixel, isolated, is a speck on a screen- it’s noise. But pixels aren’t usually found alone, instead they exist as part of pixel clusters- groups of pixels of the same color that together produce a solid color field. While the single pixel is our basic building block and smallest unit, the pixel cluster is the unit on which much of our decisions about pixel-placement will be based. And while it’s important to realize individual pixels aren’t independent, it’s just as important to realize pixel clusters aren’t independent. Like puzzle pieces, the borders of a pixel cluster determine the shape of the pixel clusters it borders. Here is an example of how rearranging the shape of a pixel cluster can have dramatic effects on its neighbor clusters: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 8/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial While lone pixels often read as noise, a lone pixel of a color different than the field it touches, if used as a buffer (AA), reads as part of that cluster, and is thus unproblematic: Edited by jalonso - 28 July 2014 at 6:53am IP Logged cure Posted: 28 November 2010 at 12:01am Commander IV. Things to avoid Bad AA: Too much AA (over-anti-aliasing)- You only want to use as much AA as is necessary to smooth the edge. If you use too much, the edges can look blurry, and you lose the Joined: 23 March 2022 Online Status: Offline crispness of the line. Posts: 2859 Too little AA- Here the artist has used single pixels to ease the transition, but he has only succeeded in blunting the jagged edge a bit. He could have made a much smoother transition by using longer lines of pixels to show a more gradual transition: AA banding- When segments of AA line up with the lines they're buffering, AA banding occurs. For a better understanding of AA banding, be sure to read the section on banding. https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 9/25 30/11/2022 19:07 Pixel Joint Forum: The Pixel Art Tutorial Jaggies: Jaggies occur when a pixel or group of pixels are out of place, interrupting the flow of a line. Jaggies can also occur when a line lacks anti-aliasing. Jaggies get their name from the jagged lines that they create. More broadly, jaggies are the result of any bad pixel technique, but they are most often discussed in reference to line work, so that is the context in which they will be discussed here. How to fix jaggies: Changing the length of the lines often times the problem is just that a segment of the line is too short or too long, and it creates an awkward jump. Using a more uniform length of pixels to smooth the transition is the solution here. Anti-aliasing Unless your line is perfectly horizontal, perfectly vertical, or at 45 degrees, the edges of your line segments are naturally going to be a little jagged. https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139318#139318 10/25