Pixel art has a lot of rules and guidelines. I thought I would try and compile as many
of them as I can into this video, because I think that it would be quite useful for
beginners. Honestly, this is the kind of video I wish
I could have seen when I was first starting out with pixel art. Welcome to the Do’s and Don’ts of pixel
art. Art is a subjective matter, so there’s no
right or wrong way to draw pixel art. These are just the tips I’ve seen around,
so use at your own discretion. If you’re going for a specific style that
opposes some of these rules, then that is completely okay. If you’re stuck and want some rules to follow,
these might be helpful. Do: Use Hue shifting Don’t: Use the same
Hue When selecting shades for your colour palette,
make the colours warmer as they ascend in brightness and cooler as they descend in brightness. This will make your palettes more vibrant
and colourful. Watch my colour palette tutorial for a more
in-depth explanation. Do: Use Anti-aliasing Don’t: Overuse anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing is a very useful tool that can have many powerful applications. I would recommend anti-aliasing, but only
in small amounts. If too much of it is used your art can become
blurry and convoluted, so it can be better to not use it at all than to overuse it. As always, it is a stylistic decision, and
will depend on the context. Do: Have a limited palette Don’t: Use lots
of colours Unlike a lot of artforms, pixel art uses a
very limited palette of around 2 to 25 colours. Sticking to a carefully selected handful of
colours will make your pixel art much cleaner. If you use too many colours it can often become
very messy and confusing. Do: Ease in and Out Don’t: Use linear animation
When animating a character or object, a tool to make your animations look much more alive
is easing in and out. When easing, you change the speed of your
movement exponentially, starting by moving the object 1 pixel, then 2 more pixels, then
4, 8, 16 and so on. If you do this, it appears that the object
accelerates, or speeds up. Easing in and out gives your animation much
more life and helps to emphasise movement. I’m thinking about making an animation tutorial
so let me know if that is something you’d like to see. Do: Pixel perfect lines and curves Don’t:
Make Jaggies or doubles One of the strictest rules of pixel art regards
‘jaggies’. The community has seemingly joined together
to collectively agree that these ‘jaggies’ look bad. Originally described as an anti-aliasing artifact
in images and video, the term jaggies has come to mean a slightly different thing for
pixel artists. Jaggies can be described as a misplaced pixel
that breaks up the pattern of a line. For straight lines, an example of a jaggie
is a 1 pixel segment placed between 2 pixel segments. At smaller scales, it is understandable how
someone would make a line like this. There just simply is no other way to draw
a line of that angle without making jaggies. Generally, to avoid jaggies in linework, make
all the segments of your lines the same number of pixels. For curves, the pattern is slightly more complex. The segment at the middle of a curve is one
pixel wide. Moving out, the number increases. It doesn’t matter how many segments are
the same size, just make sure they always increase as you go out from the centre of
the curve. Never place a small one between larger segments,
and the pattern will be something like 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. This mathematical approach assures the artist
of perfect circles or curves. Keep this theory in mind when creating more
organic linework too. Doubles are when parts of linework overlap,
leaving a small section of linework that is 2 pixels wide. To avoid doubles, remember that curving pixels
should always be diagonally touching. A really easy way to not make doubles is to
turn on ‘Pixel Perfect’ when using Aseprite’s brush tool. Do: Use a dark colour instead of black Don’t:
Use black for your outlines Dark purples, blues and browns just look nicer
than black. Making your outline colour a very dark version
of the colour your sprite’s made of can look very aesthetically appealing. This will also make your art look more real,
and less like a drawing. Do: Use contrast Don’t: Use close-together
shades I think this rule is similar to the limited
colour palette. In pixel art, each pixel has to be consciously
selected, and I think colours can play a major role in that aspect. If your shades are close together, it will
look muddy, like a gradient, blend or accident. If you have contrast in your piece, then the
audience will clearly be able to see your decisions and know that you chose to shade
there. Plus, it helps with sprite readability and
generally makes it look cleaner. Do: Shade with form Don’t: Pillow shade
or pancake shade When shading, making your shadows and highlights,
try to shade as if the object is three-dimensional. Think about the simple 3D shapes that would
make up your object and shade accordingly. Pillow shading occurs when you create highlights
and shadows as though the light source is coming directly from the viewer, front on,
which is almost never the case. Usually, light sources work better if they
are coming from the top and shining down, or off on an angle a bit. Pancake shading is where you shade the pixels
closest to the light source in your highlight colour and the pixels furthest from your light
source in your shadow colour. This creates a sort of bevelled look, like
the object or character is a thick 2D cut-out with rounded edges. If you want to make 3D characters and objects,
try to avoid this method. Embarrassingly, I unknowingly pancake shaded
in one of my tutorials, which happens to be the one that YouTube is promoting the most. At least now I know better. Do: Outline exterior lines when required Don’t:
Outline everything In traditional drawing, it’s common to draw
all the linework for everything and then colour or shade it in. In pixel art, not all the objects, shapes
and clothes have to be outlined. It’s good to have an exterior outline, but
even that isn’t necessary. Again, it is all up to style choice. Do: Use simple flat colours Don’t: Use a
soft brush, gradient, or blur tool When creating pixel art, never use gradients. Don’t use soft brushes or the blur tool,
because they will make your art look like a low-resolution photo, scaled down to the
pixel level. Do: Use a small canvas Don’t: Use a large
canvas Pixel art is supposed to be about selecting
little squares of colour, and more importantly for your audience to see those little squares
of colour and understand what image you are trying to say. Using big canvas sizes defeats the purpose
of pixel art and removes all the challenge. If you want to make successful pixel art,
limit yourself to a small canvas size. I’ve made a detailed video about this if
you want to learn more. And that’s all the rules I can think of. Most of the pixel art ‘pros’ have been
learning these tricks for years and deconstructing them hopefully made their process a little
clearer. If you were ever wondering how someone got
their colours to look so nice, well now you know. Just remember, do whatever you personally
think looks the best, and keep the style consistent. There are so many rules. And I don’t think I covered all of them,
so please let me and everyone else know in the comments if you remember some that I don’t. Have a nice day.
