Beginner Pixel Art Tutorial – A Complete Guide

making your own game art can be extremely difficult like downright painful especially if never done it before which is why so many indie developers have come with pixel art because it's so much easier to get started with than any other art forms and it's far easier to get proficient with it than any other art forms that's not to say that it is an easy art form because all art is a struggle forever always not to worry in this video I'm going to be sharing an entire pixel art framework broken down into ten tips starting with the technicalities and ending with tips that you've never heard before but first allow me to introduce myself I'm Alvin I'm going to be telling you how to become a pixel art master I'm also not a pixel art master I'm sorry if that's disappointing however a lot of the tips that I'm going to be sharing in this video are gonna be shared in a way that I wish that they were presented to me and when we go past the technicalities I'm just gonna go into tips that I was just never told before especially ones about how to find enjoyment with pixel art because let's face it most of us do not want to torture ourselves for hours on end at the mouse and keyboard and by the way in my defense the actor that played mr. Miyagi knew zero karate so there are no rules so before we really really dive deep into this why do you even want to learn how to do pixel art in the first place so number one if you're watching my videos you're probably very indeed like me you're either doing this as a hobby again like me or you're doing this with the hopes of becoming the independent developer at some point okay an indie developer and which case you need to be practical pixel art is super practical it's easy to pick up and amass a lot of the not arty abilities of a person because it's so low resolution and covers up some of the bad art especially bad animations and is actually way easier to make snappy good animations because it's more framed by frame and you have a lot more control over what's going on as a bonus to this games are more about gameplay than they are about the best graphics so if you have a really great game that has great gameplay your average person that doesn't like pixel art might end up still loving that game because they're like and the graphics kind of suck but the game's amazing and which means it keeps you focused on the thing that's actually important for your game which is the gameplay so let's get into software pixel art is just filling in a graph so you would think that you could just do that with anything and you can that's the wonderful thing about pixel art but if you're trying to get to the point where you can actually create game where the pixel art then you're gonna want to learn the best tool for the job however picking software is a video with himself but the outcome of the video is almost always the same basically a sprite is the best overall tool out there it has a disgustingly good timeline that combines frames and layers making an ideal tool for animations a great alternative to it is pixel edit which uses an intuitive tile system making it ideal for creating tile sets using a sprite frame animations and pixel edit for tile sets is the best workflow that I personally use a sprite is about 15 dollars while pixel out is nine dollars so even combined they are less than $25 however not everyone can afford both so a sprite is my overall pick if you can't afford either of them then my favorite free software is fiscal app tying this back in to the framework discussion that we've had at the beginning of this video you could argue that becoming a pixel art master is just the art of mastering your pixel art software so choosing your pixel art software is almost like 50% in the battle so even though that was just a singular tip it's by far the biggest one and it's why it took so long inside of this video from here we'll go into the couple basic skills that you need to utilize any pixel art software and then from there we'll go into the path of mastery what tutorials to use where to find the different tutorials and color palettes and finally we'll finish off with the mindset required for mastery she talked about the technical skills required basically you just need to be able to create shapes and color them in right so for the creating of the shapes portion of this talk about how to create an outline in the general rule of thumb in the low-resolution world that pixel art there are different rules for creating shapes I have two main ones that I follow to showcase these rules we'll jump into a sprite and create a head from the top-down perspective similar to Zelda so we end up with something like this as you can see the outline is really messy and the shape makes no sense at all however when we first lay down a shape this kind of result is not uncommon in order to clean up a bit we should talk about the pixels and outline having personal space issues in other words they only like it when two other pixels touch them much more than that and they get overwhelmed every pixel has eight slots four pixels touching them a pixel that is part of the outline can have two other outline pixels touching it so the pixels and read here should not be used as part of the outline you can break this rule to create specific looks but it's best to start off by following the rule then breaking it where things don't look right taking that zelda head let's give some color to the hair so that this makes more sense I'm going to make all the pixels that are touching too many others red now let's remove all the red and as you can see it's a much cleaner image my second rule is concerning the pattern of pixels generally speaking gradual is better over here there is one pixel followed by two horizontal then back down to one then to three horizontal the problem there is that the two horizontal pixels breaks the pattern between the two sets of ones the brain digests that information and because so our character has a cone head in other words we need to maintain the pattern to maintain it let's take into account the side of the head which is just a vertical line and realized that we're trying to utilize a pattern to move us towards a horizontal line from the top of the head so we follow up the vertical line that forms the side of the head with a shorter vertical line that will then utilize a single pixel to transition us over to horizontal lines then we'll use a two pixel line then another then we will fill in the rest of the top in other words we work gradually now gradual works for round shapes and drastic changes works for corners from there all you need to do is reap rapport ssin everything until you end up with something like this and that's 99% of everything you will need to do to create shapes with pixel art color theory is an in the deep well of opinions that you can gain there is a lot to color theory that is beyond the scope of this video however the biggest thing to learn when you are starting out and pixel art is huge shifting you shifting is - changing of color when you are either shading or highlighting the reason we do this is because our brains associate light with sunlight in other words I thinks it is yellow and it's right the implications of this is that when you are shading you don't just add some black to darken up the color you shift the color away from yellow towards blue when you are highlighting you don't just add white you shift the color away from blue towards yellow let's go back to the earlier zelda ish example first let's make a shadow under the hairline moving away from yellow towards blue we end up at this reddish color this color already looks like a shadow compared to the normal skin tone saturating it a little more and darkening it up completes the effect and we have a nice shadow under the hairline for a highlight we can take the hair color move it away from blue and towards yellow ending at this light blue color desaturate the color and move it towards white and we have a highlight honestly mastering color theory right off the bat is a big ask that's why I brought it up at this point because although this is a useful technical skill it is more important to just have it in your mind than it is to master it because a lot of people create color palettes that are free to use out there and using those palettes will teach you a lot more about color theory than any article but to get the full benefit you have to understand huge shifting first and that's it for making shapes and choosing colors in other words we finished the basics the next few tips are all about building on that foundation with different resources out there starting with number 4 low spec is the home of color palettes by googling low spec you'll end up at this website click on color palettes and this screen will pop up then you'll be able to scroll through and see different palettes I recommend looking through them and finding a sample image that fits within your art style I like this one as an example it's not your usual bright color palette for retro style games which is so stereotypical nowadays the blood and they're combined with the D saturated dark colors creates a song atmosphere just like in real life where cloudy days can impact our moods ad saturated dark day for an entire video game can really change the tone of the entire experience a bright color palette reminds us of those bright games from our childhood and can speak about sunshine and adventures but a dark palette speaks about hiding away and discomfort it reminds us that we need to stay inside and seek shelter or you're like me and the sunshine makes you want to hide too regardless of our preferences we react emotionally to saturated colors with thoughts of sunshine fun and joy while we react 2d saturation and darkness with thoughts of somber horror and surreal Ness similar to unicorn flatulence the right colour palette can bring Beauty to the grotesque so choose your color palette carefully and really enjoy the experimentation as you're getting a feel for the colors remember the hue shifting when you are using the palette so that you can get the most out of the learning experience and most of all have fun so now that we talked about trying to create the outlines and then trying to fill it in with color and so basically used that color palette along with the outlines while keeping huge shifting in mind does talk about references and so whenever you're trying to do something just look up mini-bosses pixel art tutorials he has tons of them up there he believes in free tutorials they're amazing guys this is one those guys that usually like support on patreon he's so good the thing I like the most about his tutorials is how concise / condensed they are because our artwork functions as an example to the teachings on each image they work perfectly as references while also giving instructions each one has a subject that you can learn off of your sword swings don't look like they can kill a goblin mini-boss can help with that your pixelated characters believe in the Second Amendment mini-boss can help with that meteor bird headed camel donkey to be able to walk with him forelegs yes mini-boss can help the point is that every artist uses references and if you need your reference to also be tutorials aka you are not an expert pixel artists okay you're you and I then I highly recommend using mini-boss number six is the video tutorial channel that I recommend using however I do want to talk about video tutorials first I recommend using them sparingly and only when you are trying to create something specific I've heard of many an inspiring pixel arts getting stuck in a tutorial loop never creating their own art in other words the ideal goal is to create art with the help of references which is why I brought up mini-boss first because he is a great compromise between tutorials and references however if those are just not cutting it and you learn better with some video since this guy named pixel Pete especially when you're first beginning he has like a lot of cool little tutorials like what he talks about for how to do with water it's what I thought was pretty cool he also talks about grass and making tile sets I don't know he does some pretty cool things so I have enjoyed his tutorials and I watch them sometimes when I'm just chillin that is it for resources to enhance your pixel skills from here on out let's go into the mindset required for mastery basic principle that I believe in following for pretty much all of game design is simple to complex I believe that you need to start simple go complex and this includes when you're building up your skill set as a pixel artist you start with something like this link right here and very flat no shading not that many pixels inside of him very standard and start animating something like this that skill set of animating this will translate to animating this and even to animating this monstrosity however the higher resolution you go the more difficult animating becomes not only because it takes more time to place that many pixels but because the imagination stops filling in the gaps for you simple sprites like these look amazing despite the simple animations these are 2 to 4 frame animations with one of the frames turning the sprite white trying to pull off a similar level of polish on a higher resolution image requires upwards of four times the number of frames however starting simples and inching towards complex doesn't just apply to choosing your resolution it means creating the silhouette then working towards getting the outline right then filling in the image with color it's that step by step process it means getting the bare minimum art for your game made then trying out the gameplay with just a few key frames before fully animating all of your images which when that is applied brings me to number 8 focus on gameplay first too many people spent hours making amazing art that never becomes part of their game as any developers we just don't have that much time to waste therefore focusing on gameplay first is key I'm going to make an entire tutorial on a pixel art workflow for unity so that I can demonstrate what I mean however a summarized version of it is to make simple 1 frame animations that represent the states of the character idle run attack her death etc in other words just the keyframe poses then build gameplay around those 1 frame animation to get the game to feel the way you want it without drawing too many images don't even finalize these initial images you need the bare minimum to represent what is going on in the game according to what your brain will understand with those images you can get the gameplay to feel right and then finalize the art to enhance that feeling everything inside of a game is meant to enhance gameplay the gameplay is what makes a game a game if it doesn't enhance the gameplay then it needs to get cut too many people create a running animation that looks like this before even building up the gameplay however that running animation although good might not be the best one for your game and it might have been wasted work creating finalized artwork before you get done prototyping is like proposing on a first date it's pretty mature and it has a high chance to end with emotional trauma please don't do it moving on a successful mindset isn't limited to the concept of simple to complex it requires motivation and passion which brings us to number 9 find the fun there is a lot of confusion out there about people wanting to create something they like to consume just because you'd like getting a massage doesn't mean that you want to touch somebody else's Chewbacca back the same thing can be said for becoming a pixel just because you love the looks of the animations in hyper light drifter doesn't mean you'll like the process of making those animations creating tiles has it's intricate and detailed like putting together a puzzle while making animations requires timelines and actually feeling the game feel within you to express it the mindsets are so different that the work feels like different jobs especially when you are first getting started trying to tackle all these different styles it's a mistake that I made when I first got started so I recommend trying everything from animations and tile sets to user interfaces and backgrounds and then through trial and error find which one is the most enjoyable then focus on that as you get good at that particular skill you'll find that many of the sub skills transfer mastery of the art software and color theory are examples you'll also find that getting good makes everything more enjoyable for instance I did not like creating user interfaces at first I found it tedious but when I needed to find ways for my user interface to work with the rest of my palette and art style and one from tedious work to art and became so enjoyable finally how to have fun with this is so important because you'll have an overwhelming amount of art work to do for your game so completing the bare minimum prototype art first and practicing was most enjoyable will really help boost your motivation and date pixel art from a necessary skill to learn to a beloved pastime for you to master working towards mastery in any art form touches upon something sacred within us which brings me to number 10 the inexplicable or as I like to sometimes call it the human element that we all share but what do I mean by bad after all there's a lot of things that we all share I believe it was Dane Cook that said we all lie we all cry and we all take painful dumps there's also a humanity wide shared love of McDonald's which is probably tied into at least one of those things I also like Taco Bell unrelated but I thought I chair going beyond that there's something that crosses language barriers about a good anime Mona Lisa's smile is universally perplexing and I've seen Korean dramas make grown men cry the point is there is something shared within us that some art forms have been able to express and it goes beyond language borders distances and words you might be able to describe it in a one word feeling like yearning or perseverance but doesn't truly capture the full humaneness of it and by humaneness I don't just mean the quality that makes us humans but the trade of art that captures the beautiful side of humanity is the redeeming quality of us all and it's the purpose of art every video game we make every movie we produce every novel that is written every painting that is brushed every human that exists wants to taste that inexplicable trait that transcends humanity and redeems us from being animals into something indistinguishable yet undeniable capturing it is the purpose of what we do whether it is pixel art or making a video game or any other form of creation that we aim for mastery with to become a master is to express it it is why experiencing art is not a waste of time and it is the most fulfilling thing you can touch upon as you create it it's too abstract to be described yeah to real not to try to grasp it it's the goal all art tying this all together pixel art is just using a piece of software to fill in a grid it's probably a really big drastic change from hearing me talk about art but all the same it is true you can artistically do it but it's best not to over complicated in your head as you're starting out when you're starting I recommend a combination of a sprite and pixel edit mastering a sprite first then pixel edit figure out what you want to try first and then pull up the appropriate mini-boss tutorial start as simple as possible then polished until you've created what you wanted and have fun with it all but beyond all that try to find the one word that describes what you are trying to capture with your art an example would be joy create a rough version of it at first then make your gameplay your art your music your sound effects all expand upon it until it becomes inexplicable so when someone plays your game they'll feel loved even if they can't explain why thanks so much for being here with me for all this time it really means a lot to me please like subscribe and most of all I love to talk with you all a comment down below will mean the world to me have a great day bye

Channel: Alvin Roe

Views: 501,865

Keywords: tut, pixel, pixelart, drawing, art, tutorial, dev, development, how, game, vid, artwork, gif, animation, outlines, color theory, shapes, hue shifting, pixel art tutorial, beginner, novice, easy, pixel art workflow, indie, indie games

Id: o_EKrg2fIuc

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2020