Pixel Art Stuff

Different55 · Before February 2015

Pixel art is awesome. This topic is a bunch of resources for people who want to get better at pixel art. Programs, tutorials, examples from other forum people, etc.

What is pixel art?
Quoted from The Pixel Art Tutorial over at Pixel Joint.
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.
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.
You'll often hear people going around 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.

Tutorials
Here's a list of pixel art tutorials gathered from around the internet.
Collection of 30 pixel art tutorials
This list of pixel art tutorials covers everything from drawing an isometric cube to dithering to texturing.
Drububu's pixel art tutorial
The pixel art wizard drububu teaches pixel art.
Antialiasing by gas13
A very good tutorial on antialiasing by gas13.
So you want to be a pixel artist?
Another good pixel art tutorial by gas13 with a little emphasis on stuff you could use in games and whatnot.
Swords, shields, potions, trees, whatnot
A lot of short pixel tutorials on inanimate objects.
Shading tutorial by Mark
A good shading tutorial that properly enforces the idea of PIXEL SHADING IS BAD DON'T DO IT.
The Pixel Art Tutorial
A pixel art tutorial covering pretty much everything you would ever need to know about pixel art.
Pixel Art Ramblings
A thread with a lot of ramblings and discussion on pixel art, and a major source of info for The Pixel Art Tutorial above.
If you have any good tutorials, share them with the rest of us.

Resources
Programs:
MS Paint - Comes free on every somewhat recent Windows OS.
Grafx2 - An old-looking painting program that works ~~great~~ AMAZING on pixel art. Available on every system that can handle it (that's a lot)
Paintbrush - Basically MS Paint for Mac
Other
Circle chart
Shows perfect circles. Thanks to ravatroll for the link.

Examples

By Arceus64.
A cube that has 5 shades of green.
Different55 wrote:
EDIT: Removing this because I really can't allow it to be seen anymore >_____>
I started drawing and then this happened... I'm sorry >_> Made with Grafx2

A mug drawn in only 4 colors.

Pixel cat drawn in Grafx2.

By Brushfire.
A very nice 16x16 basketball.
sensei1 wrote:

I made this apple

A guy with headphones.
0176 wrote:

A simple vase.

A simple present, a bomb and a rock.
Bobithan wrote:
Apple:
Grape:
Orange:
Daft Punk:
Fluttershy:
Crying Skull Thing:

By Cola1.
A dice, pop-tart and whats supposed to be a firework but I failed >_<

By skullz16.
It's a 32x32 evil skull thingy.

By HappyKat.
I made some Trilobite Sprites a while ago on a program for Mac called Pixen
If you make any pixel art that you want included here post the image and a short description.

Last edited by Different55 (Feb 5 2015 7:38:18 pm)

Sensei1 · Before February 2015

:O
Just what i needed, thx

Arceus64 · Before February 2015

Using the first link, check out this masterful cube I made:

Description: A cube that has 5 shades of green.
Thanks!

Last edited by Arceus64 (Dec 28 2012 8:38:49 am)

Different55 · Before February 2015

Updated OP to show two new examples and corrected the info about Grafx2 because apparently it's also available on Mac and Android.

Sensei1 · Before February 2015

I made this apple

Tachyonic · Before February 2015

Define "pixel art". Do you want isometric or non-isometric pictures?

Though I assume pixel art is anything that is low-definition.

Last edited by Tachyonic (Dec 29 2012 4:33:55 pm)

Brushfire · Before February 2015

Different55 wrote:

Pixel art is awesome.

That's very true.

I made a basketball in about four minuets using MS paint:
It's a small 16X16 pixel art.

Last edited by Brushfire (Dec 29 2012 5:52:18 pm)

Different55 · Before February 2015

www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299.
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=8110.0

this topic contains tons of info, including a definition of pixel art. everything will be added to the firstnpost when i get home

EDIT: OP has been updated with everything, including a definition of pixel art.
@GadgetGeek: It doesn't matter. Pixel art is pixel art, isometric or not.

EDIT: I made a mug using only the 4 colors that the original gameboy had:

Last edited by Different55 (Dec 29 2012 8:46:32 pm)

Before February 2015

I like making this type of stuff. Had no ideas, so I drew a simple vase:

Yes, this was made in EE because it's not as annoying. I'm going to make more stuff later

Last edited by 0176 (Dec 30 2012 9:53:37 am)

Bobithan · Before February 2015

I made a few things over the days. All of these are 12x12 pixels.

Apple:

Grape:

Orange:

Daft Punk:

Fluttershy

Crying Skull Thing:

Not sure if it counts as "official" pixel art though.

Last edited by Bobithan (Dec 30 2012 2:29:13 pm)

Cola1 · Before February 2015

A dice, pop-tart and whats supposed to be a firework but I failed >_<

skullz17 · Before February 2015

It's a 32x32 evil skull thingy:

Last edited by skullz16 (Jan 2 2013 3:27:58 pm)

Glitcherkid · Before February 2015

I have a TON of pixel art on my computer, so if I get some free time, I may just post some of it here on the topic.

**SPOILERS**
Black colored text -----> One of the 16x16 things I've done is the Taj Mahal

Sensei1 · Before February 2015

A guy with headphones

Cola1 · Before February 2015

Him ->

Different55 · Before February 2015

@Cola1, are you submitting both of those?

First post is updated.

HappyKat · Before February 2015

I made some Trilobite Sprites a while ago on a program for Mac called Pixen

Link: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/13363/pixen

Pixen has a simple animation feature as well.

Trilobites:

Last edited by HappyKat (Jan 8 2013 10:10:24 pm)

skullz17 · Before February 2015

Bobithan wrote:

I made a few things over the days. All of these are 12x12 pixels.
Apple:
http://i.imgur.com/hkf8K.png
Grape:
http://i.imgur.com/idhYY.png
Orange:
http://i.imgur.com/cH5yb.png
Daft Punk:
http://i.imgur.com/sTLby.png
Fluttershy
http://i.imgur.com/9tOBK.png
Crying Skull Thing:
http://i.imgur.com/OFnow.png
Not sure if it counts as "official" pixel art though.

What did you use to make those? They look like they were made on http://www.minershoes.com/ or something . The actual size of the images are much more than 12x12. However you still did square by square which added up to 12x12.

Last edited by skullz16 (Jan 9 2013 11:37:24 am)

Before February 2015

I drew some more things, in EE again.

A simple present, a bomb and a rock.

(could've used more colors, but meh)

Edit: Just realized the shading on the present looks bad in some spots, I don't care.

Last edited by 0176 (Jan 10 2013 6:02:29 am)

Different55 · Before February 2015

First post is updated.

Bobithan · Before February 2015

skullz16 wrote:

What did you use to make those? They look like they were made on http://www.minershoes.com/ or something . The actual size of the images are much more than 12x12. However you still did square by square which added up to 12x12.

I had no idea that existed, but yeah I did it all in MS Paint from scratch.

Sensei1 · Before February 2015

ritsu tainaka :3

AzurePudding · Before February 2015

A bubbly bubble.

For a game I am planning. I'm aiming for an 8-bit style, which I think this follows as it uses 4 colors, including transparency.

EDIT: Actually.. gonna make the transparency color actually transparent.

EDIT EDIT: So the animating program I use doesn't support transparency.. so here's one using black background.

Last edited by AzurePudding (Jan 11 2013 11:53:48 am)

Different55 · Before February 2015

Grafx2 supports animation and a custom 256 color palette.

Different55 · Before February 2015

Something I made while messing around with layers in Grafx2. The more I use it, the more I love it.

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