Aseprite Tutorial For Beginners (Pixel Art)

in this video, I'm going to  teach you how to use Aseprite. To follow along with this tutorial  you'll obviously need Aseprite. A mouse or drawing tablet whichever you prefer. And having a keyboard for shortcuts  will definitely make your life easier. If you have any questions you can look  at the official aseprite documentation,   or come and join the discord where there's  plenty of people who are happy to help. I should now probably mention that  you work at a donut shop for this guy. so once you've opened aseprite it'll  look a little something like this. this is the home screen where  you'll see some of your recent   files and where we can set up  a new file, let's just do that. new file. if you're a beginner here I'd  recommend a canvas with a really small   size so that you can get used to  working with individual pixels. we're going to have 16 by 16-pixel canvas RGBA colour mode transparent background. you don't have to worry yourself  with any of the advanced options   or any of the other options if you're a beginner. so here we are inside of our document   this might look pretty daunting for a  beginner so to give a quick overview. we have the palette area here this is where you  can choose colors from a pre-defined palette. we have the color section here which allows you to   select colors for your brushes  or add colors to palettes. This here is our layers tab useful for  all of our layer options and controls,   you can hide it with the tab button for now. down the side here is where we have all of   our tools that we'll be using  to create some nice pixel art you can click on all the  options to see what they do and up here are our tool properties so when you  have a tool selected all of the properties for   that tool will be shown here you can see how  it changes with each tool that is selected these tabs up here are for project navigation  we're in our current project but we can go to   home and select different files or we can  duplicate and close our current project and right at the top here is our options bar   there are a lot of different option  menus which can help you in your project right in the middle section  here, this is your canvas   this is where you'll be drawing so  let's start with navigating the canvas I will be mentioning shortcuts as we go  through this as a beginner this is the   best time to start learning  and using shortcuts it'll help   you build up really good habits for  quick and efficient working later on you don't have to use all the shortcuts just for   the tools and actions that  you'll be using most often if you ever want a reference for the  shortcuts you can go up to help and   quick reference or if you want to view  and change them you can go up to edit   and keyboard shortcuts we can search for the  shortcuts you need like zoom for example as   you can see there's a lot of shortcuts here  but this is really the only one that I use   so you don't have to use all of them but feel  free to change them to whatever suits you best you can zoom in on your canvas with the scroll  wheel or you can use the zoom tool up here   which has a shortcut of Z I like  to use the scroll wheel for this you can pan around the canvas by holding down  the mouse wheel which gives you the hand tool   you can hold spacebar and click to do the  same thing or you can come up here click   on the zoom tool and you'll see the hand  tool which is exactly what we've just used so the main drawing tool that we have is  the pencil tool which has a shortcut of b   if you just click on the canvas  we'll start drawing things if you ever want to remove something you can press   undo which is in edit undo  or by the shortcut ctrl z you'll be using ctrl z a lot trust me so as I mentioned before if we take a look  at the properties panel at the top here we   can see all the different properties for the  brush tool a circular brush a square brush   and this weird sort of line brush thing I'm  just going to use the circle brush for now we have the brush size here which I'm  just going to set to one but you can   increase it by dragging on this bar  or by holding ctrl and scroll wheel we have the ink mode up here I wouldn't worry too   much about this as a beginner I  only really use simple ink anyway we have dynamics but this is for if you're using a   tablet with pen pressure I'm using  a mouse so this doesn't apply to me we have pixel-perfect up here so  this line on the left was drawn   with pixel-perfect off and this line on  the right was drawn with pixel-perfect on when we're talking about pixel  or linework there's these things   known as doubles which is where there  are perfect right angles in the outlines if I remove the doubles we end up with a much  more clean line like the one on the right this video is specifically an aseprite  tutorial if you're interested I can make   a video on pixel art tips tricks and techniques  in the future just let me know in the comments that's what pixel-perfect does I'd  recommend keeping it on for now and these buttons up here are for symmetry  but we'll come back to this later on so with your brush selected on a size  of one and pixel perfect turned on   pick a dark or black color from your  palette for the outline of the donut so I'm just going to draw it here remember if you  want to undo it you can use ctrl z and try again so there's my outline but  it's got some problems up here   I'm going to use the eraser tool which is shortcut  E found here on the tool just to erase those areas we can reduce the size just  like we did with the pencil tool   and there we go a bit more of a clean outline you can check out the rest of  the eraser properties up here   they're quite similar to the brush so I'm  going to add a middle line for my donut I want to fill the doughnut with the  bready color so I'll choose the bready   color and I could just painstakingly go in  and color it in but there's a better tool   for this you can select the paint bucket  tool over here or with the shortcut g so now I just fill in the donut but wait a minute  it's coloured it in the whole area let's undo that you want to make sure  contiguous is turned on for this this means that it will fill connected areas only  so with contiguous turned on we can just click   and fill those individual areas so now it's time for the icing I'm  just going to choose a pinkish color   like a Homer Simpson donut go back to the  brush and then start drawing in some icing can fill that area in with the paint  bucket tool bonk and there we go  we've got some icing for our donut kind of want to clean this area up a  little bit but instead of keep going   back and forth to select the colors you can  use the eyedropper tool which is found here   has the shortcut I or shortcut alt I use  alt for this hold alt-click on the color   that I want and then I can just start  clicking away cleaning up that outline yours doesn't have to look exactly  like mine choose whatever colors   and patterns you want it's your donut after all. now we've got the icing it's time to add  in some sprinkles I'm going to select this   bluish color and add in some sprinkles I think that looks pretty good if you want to see  a smaller preview you can open the preview window   by clicking this down here we can adjust  it so that it's a tiny bit bigger gives us   a better preview of what it  might look like further away when you have a single-pixel like this one  this is what's known as an orphan pixel and   it's really best to avoid these because as you  can see from the small preview they don't read   very well and with lots of them it can look  noisy so I'm just going to connect this to   make it a double sprinkle again this  is for the tips tricks and techniques   video in the future so definitely make sure  you let me know if you want to see that one it's actually probably a good time to save it we  go up here to file save as and then you can save   it into a folder of your choosing make sure  it's nicely organized so for the file name   I'm just going to call mine donut tutorial  and there's a lot of file formats down here   but I'm going to go with the aseprite files  which is basically an aseprite project format the shortcut for quickly saving  this as you can see here is   control and s you'll want to be pressing  that a lot so you don't lose any progress and there it is we made our first-pixel art donut okay, so we need to make some more donuts  open up the layers panel with the tab button   boom everything we've been doing so far has  been on this individual layer called layer 1. just to quickly run through it this eyeball tool  makes it so you can hide the layer you can lock   the layer so nothing can be edited on that layer  we have this button which is useful for animation   but we're not going to be getting into animation  today so don't worry about that and we have the   name of the layer I'm going to unlock it double  click on the layer to see the layer properties the name is layer one I'm going  to change that to donut one we have loads of different modes down here but  again as a beginner don't worry about these   just yet and we have the opacity of the layer  which as you can see makes it more invisible we do have some additional layer options up here   this here is for onion skinning  again it's for animation   we're not worried about that today we have this  here which gives us some more layer options you can change the position of the layers  panel here on the right on the bottom I'm   just going to keep this on the left and  you can add layer thumbnails if you want so if I do that increase the thumbnail size and  you can actually see what the layer has on it a   quicker way to change this is the same shortcut as  the brush size hold ctrl and use the scroll wheel I like to keep it like this so to add a new layer you can right  click and do a new layer or use the   shortcut as it says here shift  n so shift n we have a new layer   let's call this donut two because  we're gonna make more donuts we've got no space for a new donut so  we need to increase the canvas size   you can do this by going up to sprite and canvas  size or with the shortcut c you get this option   pop-up so our current canvas size is 16 pixels by  16 pixels I want to make another 16-pixel donut so I'll add 16 pixels to the right-hand  side as you can see it did there this trim content outside the canvas thing  if you have this turned on and something   is outside the canvas when you change the  canvas size again that thing is actually   going to be deleted so trim content outside  the canvas of 16 pixels to the right boom now we've got more space for our new donut might be wondering what's going on in  the background and yours might look   different to mine if you go up to edit and  preferences we can see here under background   checked background now you can change the  size of the checked background to one pixel   and now your checked background is one pixel this only works if you selected transparent  background when we first set up the file   or if you don't have a background  two pixels four pixels eight pixels   I'm going to keep mine on 16 pixels but you  can choose whatever is best for you apply okay so I'm going to show you some other methods for  creating donuts we have first the ellipses tool   if you click and drag you can create  an ellipse or a perfect donut outline we have here the line tool and specifically the  curved line tool you click and drag and then   move your mouse and then click and then move your  mouse again and you can and you can create curves   strange donut I'm not the best with the curve tool and another method is using symmetry with the  pencil so with the pencil selected remember I   mentioned symmetry before with these options to  move the symmetry we can use these white buttons   on the top and then just draw the shape and  it'll do it all over for us this is really good if you want to realign the symmetry you can  click the symmetry options button here and reset   symmetry to center you can do vertical only  or horizontal only whatever suits your needs so now it's time for your first   test what I want you to do is create three  more donuts using the tools that I've just   shown you I want you to make sure they're all  on separate layers and also that the canvas size   is big enough for all of them you can pause  the video here and try it out for yourself so well done if you completed that you now know  three new tools for creating pixel art but some   of mine seem pretty off-center and wonky so  here's how you can move them and change them. donut 4 has miraculously jumped off to the left  here so making sure that the layer is unlocked   I'll use the move tool which has the shortcut v  and then just move it back to the central position you can just move things about however  you want but I'm not too happy with the   shape of it we could go in and erase  and try and redraw it all but there   are some tools that can help us change  it quickly these are the selection tools so you'll find the selection tools right at  the top here let's start with the lasso tool   which has a shortcut of Q it actually looks  like a Q so it's quite easy to remember you can click and drag a selection area and  then just move it around I'm going to fix   the sprinkles on here then move it up a bit  with the move tool maybe even make this top   bit a bit smaller and there we go I've quickly  transformed it into a tiny weeny little donut to quickly go over the other selection tools  so with the rectangular shortcut m you can   just click and drag oh perfect little rectangles  or with the elliptical marquee tool here you can   click and drag a circle and take parts out  if you want and then we have polygonal lasso   tool allows you to click and drag then click  and drag and click and drag click and drag   click and drag and then click again  to get some more specific shaped areas so going back to the lasso tool there are some  helpful properties up here that you'll need   to know so you have replaced selection  so if I do this make a selection and if   I'm to try and make another selection  it will replace the previous selection but let's say I want to move this but also  I want to move the top left corner we can   use add to selection up here you can click  it here or you can hold shift as you click   and now you have two selected areas which  you can move and let's say we don't want   this selected anymore we can use subtract  from selection or alt and shift as you click and there you go you can quickly  start adding taking away areas   for your editing needs and you can also use some  transform tools you can go up here to edit and   transform and that gives you these little things  which allow you to shrink it increase the size you   can rotate the sprite as you see the little handle  thing changes here kind of gets messed up there   are different rotation options up here like rot  sprite and fast rotation but because we're working   in pixel art you might have to fix up a lot of  things because the pixels get all skewy and stuff so that brings us to my next challenge for  you the taste test so using the selection   and move tools that I've just shown you I  want you to take a bite out of your donuts   take out a little time now to get used to using  these tools and the subtract and add features of   them because they are really important so you can  pause the video here if you want to give that a go nice let's send them to the  manager to see what he thinks so it looks like we need to create another batch  of donuts but don't worry this is actually pretty   simple so we'll start off by grouping all of these  donuts together to make sure they're unlocked you   can click and drag to select multiple layers or  you can hold shift and click multiple layers right   click and new group or alt shift in n to create a  new group I'm just going to delete this one here   and now all of these donuts are in this group I'm  going to double click on it and call it batch 1. now we can close the group we'll  right-click and duplicate the group   let's call this batch two you can  easily drag these little windows   around if you need to so if we hide  batch one we've still got batch two let's increase the canvas  size c and then we need to add   16 pixels to the bottom now we've  got space for batch two making sure   batch one is locked use our move tool  with v and we can just drag them down if you hold shift while you're moving you can get  a nice straight movement instead of [inaudible] now we've got an entire batch two of donuts  so to quickly edit something it can help   to have it all on one layer so you could  select all of these layers right click and   flatten or you could click on this  layer and do merge down merge down but I'm just going to click on the group  right click and flatten and then we have   all of our donuts on one layer so  going up here to the palette area   let's choose a new palette so the default  palette is db32 you might have a different   one selected doesn't really matter choose  a new palette for your new donut colors I'm gonna go with game boy color type one there  we go a whole new palette is selected one of the   selection tools that I didn't show you before was  the magic wand tool which can be found up here or   with the shortcut w you can select entire areas or  colors and edit them really quickly with this tool so as you can see if I click the pink boom  all of those shades of pink are selected   and remember this has contiguous turned  off so if I have contiguous turned on   it only selects these pink ones because  these are the connected pixels magic wand   tool also has the same properties as the other  selection tools so you can add to the selection   and subtract from the selection if you want so  with the magic wand tool selected and contiguous   off I'm going to choose this pink here and I'm  going to select this color with paint bucket   tool selected got to make sure contiguous is off  and that will replace all of the pinks with that make sure you move the preview window up so  you can see all the changes that you're making that brings us on to the next challenge  I want you to change the color palette   in the palette menu and then I want you to change  the color of all of your donuts in batch 2. and there we go some useful tools so  you can quickly change your pixel art   finally we must be done now let's prove this guy wrong by  making the ultimate final donut this section uses some more advanced tools and  techniques that I use every day for pixel art   so don't worry if it's a bit too much for you  right now but you've done so well already and   with enough practise you'll easily get there the  first thing I'll do is add a new layer ultimate   donut you see to increase the canvas size and  I'm going to add in 32 pixels here on the right   and I'm going to change this background  pattern as well so I'll go up to edit   preferences background pattern custom  32 pixels by 32 pixels apply and okay another useful tool that I use often is  the grid tool so you go up here to view   and show grid or use control and  the app button I guess to hide and   show the grid and you can easily edit the  grid with view grid and grid settings I'm   going to change the palette up for this  one I think i'll go with bubblegum 16. so I like to work with silhouettes  when I'm designing things so I'll   increase the pencil size with control  and scroll wheel I'll use the editing   tools and the move tools like I've showed  you just try and clean up this silhouette one useful thing you can do to check the spacing  is to hold control and you'll see the extent   let me just hide the grid it's eight pixels  away from the top and seven pixels away from   the bottom six pixels away from this  side and 70 pixels away from that side if I want to know how far away it is from  this part draw a single line click and   there you'll see that the length of  the line is six this gives you some   properties of the lines and things that  you create it's actually super helpful so I'm just going to choose a bready color   with the yellow I guess fill that  in with the paint bucket tool and you can quickly add in an outline to this if  you go up to edit fx and outline or by using shift   or you can't see it because the outline color is  yellow here I'm going to choose the darkest color   from my palette you can mess with these settings  to get whatever you like best I'm going to make   sure everything on the inside is selected and  I'm going to make it a circle outline apply I want to round this off a bit you see down here  this is your left click and your right click   so my left click is an orange color and  my right click is currently set to an   alpha of nothing it's just transparent this is  actually really useful because you don't need to   select the eraser so what I can do is click this  and add this background color to the palette so   now I've got an eraser on my brush so I can just  right click boom boom without needing the eraser it can be useful to flip your drawings to give  yourself like a fresh perspective you do that by   going up to edit and flip horizontal or flip  vertical the shortcuts are shift h and shift   v so shift h it's gone all the way over there but  that's okay and shift v you can flip it let's add   some icing I'm going to use the pink I'm going  to use the lasso tool here actually and just   g for the bucket tool and add in the  icing I want to round these off a bit let's add in some white sprinkles  doesn't matter if it's perfect by the way, if you're drawing with the brush  tool and you realize that it's doing this you've   got snapping to grid on but you can disable  snap to grid here or by pressing shift and   s and you can draw properly again I'm going to  fill in this middle section here with the purple let's try shading the bread in with a  darker color so I'll select it with a   magic wand tool select the yellow make it  darker or you can edit the color directly   in these little box things and then I can  just see if that works is that nice now I'm   going to add that color to the palette so I've  always got that as a selection I'm imagining   the lights coming in from the right-hand  side so that's why I'm shading it this way I'm going to do the same for the icing select  the darker color there we go it's sold but it   works I'm going to add that I'm going to add in  a new layer I'm going to call it to highlight   i'm going to take the white color here what  I'm going to do to select this entire donut   if you hold ctrl and then click on the  donut layer all of that donut layer   is selected you see the little wormies  walking around that's a very nice trick and on the highlight layer I'm just going  to add in a white highlight here if I go   on to the layer properties and change the  mode from normal to something like lighten   change the opacity gives it a bit of glow  maybe overlay would be nice I'd recommend   messing around with all of these  by the way they're super good I'm going to actually use soft light here  because I think that looks really nice   bit of a glazed donut look very cool I'm going to merge this down merge down boom  I'm actually going to add that highlight to   the palette as well just in case I want to add  you know maybe a little bit of highlight there   I can add a bit of dithering in here makes  it look a bit more textured so I'm pretty   happy with that donut looks pretty good a  little bit noisy in areas but it's enough   to be perfect so I want to make a little  bit of this centre bit darker and how do I   know which one's darker well you can sort the  palette which is useful brightness luminance   all that stuff so that's a darker colour  let's try drawing this in a bit rubbish we can actually edit that colour if we take the  lock off I will press a edit the color and let's   just make it a bit brighter that's a bit better  but I actually don't really like that at all so   I'm just going to change it back and delete it but  that's a useful thing you can do with the palette   if you want to edit the colors and now let's  add in a nice little background border thing   to finish it off so i'm going to create a little  frame here so i use the pencil tool i'm going to   click hold down shift and that gives us a little  line just make a little border you can do that   with a rectangle tool as well but i thought  it was important to be able to show that off let's add in a background blue is quite nice   now i'm going to add in a little bit of  a dithered background so if you click   on the paint bucket tool you'll see the  gradient tool here let's go with the 2x2 a little bit of gradient there at the bottom  that's quite cool i'm going to take this   ctrl c ctrl v to copy paste shift v to  flip it vertically and boom there we go   there are some fancy things you can  do if you want to change the colors so what i'm going to do is extend the canvas again  duplicate it the ultimate donut you can go up here   in edit adjustments hue saturation brightness  contrast change the hue you can go crazy really so to export your work you go to file export  click these little dots to choose the output   i'm going to call this donuts for discord  there are lots of different file types for   images but i'd recommend the png file because  there's no compression like there is in a jpeg so we'll export this as a png if you  are exporting game assets you might   just want to keep that at 100 percent  because it doesn't really matter for   your game engine but if you're exporting  for something like social media or discord   or something maybe increase that size to  like 800 so people can actually see it i'm going to export all of the visible layers  and i'm going to select all the frames this only   matters if you're doing animation which we'll do  in another tutorial and there we go export sorted you can also export a sprite sheet for your games  but we'll do that in another tutorial when we   focus on taking our assets made in aseprite and  then putting them into a game engine like unity and we did it. I want to see your donuts so make sure you join  the discord to share or tag me in a post on   social media definitely try out some of these  tutorials in the meantime good luck and goodbye

Channel: Saultoons

Views: 713,856

Keywords: aseprite tutorial, aseprite tutorial for beginners, aseprite, pixel art tutorial, pixelart, pixel art, beginner, beginner tutorial, aseprite tutorials, pixel art tutorials, how to use aseprite, pixel art for beginners, pixel art easy, how to do pixel art, aseprite tips, aseprite unity, saultoons, easy pixel art, how to draw pixel art, how to pixel art, pixel art tips, pixel art guide

Id: tFsETEP01k8

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021