Gimp Pixel Art Tutorial

all right digital imaging i'm going to show you guys how you can transform uh this image here uh using pixlr here so we're going to go through the whole process of creating your document and putting your image in and then going through the process of making uh making this pixel arc here so we're going to use this uh this drawing here of iron man and i'll show you here what that looks like um and we'll go through that process here so this is the one that i've made and i will go through and kind of walk you guys through this step here so first thing we're going to want to do is we're going to open up a new document so i'm going to go to file and then new and here we can select the size of our document here where do you do 100 by 100 but when you make your pixel art piece um we'll use different size here than this here um we're going to keep this uh we're going to keep our ppi and 72 remember if you want to go to your advantage options you can do that we're going to keep this at 72 and then use our default color space here so we're going to do that and that filled in with white i'm not really for sure why but we can change that we'll just fill that with that and then we're going to so i'm going to zoom in here first thing we're going to do is we're going to set up our tools that we're going to use the first tool that we're going to set up is we're going to be setting up our pencil tool now when we do this we're going to be using the pencil tool to draw all our individual pixels in we don't want to use our brush tool because when you use your brush tool for creating pixel art uh it creates a um it creates a kind of a feathering effect an anti-aliased effect which we don't want what we want is when we use our pencil tool for it to create hard um edges there okay so to do that what we're going to do is we're going to click on our pencil tool we're going to go to our tool options here yours should be over here down at the bottom for some reason over here not really sure why but that's okay here um so when we're setting this up we're gonna be using the pencil tool and we're gonna be using it um in one pixel so we're gonna set up our size to one remember you can always scale up the size of your pixel area if you want to use bigger size pixels for like coloring in a large area you can do that but generally you're just going to use the one pixel size we're going to set this up for one and then we want to set up our brush to the the square shape here so i'm going to click on that i'm going to go to the square shape we don't want to use the circle shape but the square shape there i did that by clicking on my brush here if i go back and double click and get back to my tool options here like that okay the other tool we're going to set up is we're going to set up our eraser tool uh same thing you're going to use the one inch pixel button so if i make a pixel here um with my whoops i use the wrong tool i use my uh brush so if i use if i make one pixel here i should be able to delete that one pixel by using my eraser tool to do that same thing we're going to set the size up for one one pixel and then i want to go down here i'm going to set this up for hard edge that way i've got a hard square pixel edge here okay next thing we're going to do is we are going to conf create our grid so if we go up to view and go to show grid i can go to that here now if you see this this grid is going to be too big these are what looks like 10 pixel size grids um we need to configure our grid so we're going to go to image and go to configure grid and then in here yeah so this is 10 by 10 so we want to set this up for one by one we can put in one here and that's going to create that and then i wonder if i can change my i don't think i can i was hoping to change my grid here um you can keep that on or you can keep that off to get rid of the grid you go back to view and you can go to show grid and you turn that grid off here you might not want that in there sometimes it can be a little bit distracting so that's how you can kind of toggle back and forth between putting that in there okay um next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to grab my image so i'm going to and you guys will have access to this image i'm just going to go ahead and drag this into my document now since our document size is so small when i drag this in it's going to be really really big so i'm going to want to scale that down so i'm going to grab my scale tool i'll click on my image i'm going to zoom way out you can see kind of how big it is and we're going to zoom that out or sorry shrink that down okay and then put that in there i might have messed up yeah something like that looks good okay now you'll notice that once you put that in there it's because the image resolution is so low once you put that in there it's going to keep that image down really low to be where you can actually see kind of the individual pixels there which is okay which kind of what we want here um so i've got two layers so far i've got my background layer which is white and then i've got this iron man image i'm just going to rename this to iron man now i want to create a new layer here and this is going to be the layer that i use um for my drawing so i'm just going to call this drawing i'm also going to lock this layer because the last thing i want is for this thing to move so i'm going to lock this layer so i'm going to click right here and lock that position here and that way i don't mess that up okay now first thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to create kind of your color scheme here so let me go back to mine i've got my color schemes you're going to do you're going to do a highlight a middle tone and then a darker tone and then same thing for the other parts of his suit i'm going to have a highlight middle tone and dark tone and it's kind of hard to see i also have my outline color and i did not use a black outline color i chose more of kind of like a purple and then i have this light blue here for my uh for this part of his suit and then this dark blue here okay and then i also have this background on here i'll kind of go over that here in the end here okay all right so first thing i want to do is i'm going to grab my eyedropper tool and you can so i kind of adjusted my colors here so my colors don't exactly match um the exact colors of the original image let me kind of show you what that looks like here so my colors don't exactly match here i found that when i used my eyedropper tool to kind of select those colors i had to adjust them a little bit here you can also change the colors you know of his suit so you don't have to do this yellow and red theme here if you want to change it up you could do that i think that could be really cool too um to kind of start off here so what i'm going to do is i've got this layer here which is my drawing layer i'm going to grab my eyedropper tool i'm going to use my eyedropper tool to kind of select this medium tone here um let's see how come that's not picking my color huh so there's that so then what i'm going to do is so what i was trying to pick my color here and so it wasn't working because i was on the wrong layer it's because there was nothing on this layer that's why i couldn't do that um so i did i for my color picker tool i took its sample average off i wanted to do uh i could do pick only or i could do set set a foreground color here i could just pick that color there then it's going to appear here so now i want to do is i want to create my swatches i'm going to create my swatches over here i'm going to grab my pencil tool and i'm just going to create a square so i'm going to raise this up to 2 pixels and that's going to be my medium tone and then i'm going to go back and grab my eyedropper tool and i am going to select this light color and then this is where i kind of adjusted a little bit more i'm going to make this just a little bit lighter so i'm going to bring this over somewhere like right around there like that i'm going to go back to my drawing layer and grab my pencil tool put that here like that and then grab my eyedropper tool again and then i want to try to find like a dark value so maybe something kind of like that and then i will make this just a little bit darker here so i'm going to go somewhere kind of like that and again you can adjust these cut to whatever you want oops wrong layer like that i might actually i think i am going to change this i'm going to make this just a tad bit lighter so i'm going to bump this up somewhere around there kind of like that and then i'm going to go back here and change that swatch that looks pretty good okay now the next thing i'm going to do is grab my eyedropper tool again a couple things you might want to do is you could also kind of memorize some of these quick keys going to be using these keys a lot or these tools a lot the tools you're going to use a lot you're going to be using the eyedropper tool um remember if you hover over the tool it'll show you what the quick key is so the quicky for the eyedropper tool is going to be oh the quick key for the pencil tool is going to be in and then the quick key for the eraser tool it's going to be shift e and you can toggle back and forth so if i click o i can go to that if i click in i can go here and then shift e i can go to the eraser okay um all right so now what i want to do is i want to grab my eyedropper tool and i want to select my yellows here so i'm going to do this as kind of my mid tone which i like so i'm going to do that and grab my pencil tool put that there actually it's a little bit too dark i'll make it just a little bit lighter like that okay now what i could do is i grab my eye dropper tool but since i already have this color here i can go here and then i'm just going to go kind of over like that and see what that looks like see that's a little too you go a little bit lighter than that i can always adjust this too so yeah maybe like that i'll grab my eyedropper tool select this color and then i want to shift this over to a little bit darker so you know maybe something like that okay i'll put that there we'll see how that i i don't like that i might go a little bit lighter i'm going a little too dark yeah i like that and the next thing i'll do is i'm going to grab my blues so i'll use kind of like this blue here i like that grab my pencil tool go back to my layer um this is going to be again it's a little too dark it's a little bit lighter like that and then i want to create a light light blue so i'm going to move over here like that and do something like that maybe a little bit lighter okay and then the last thing i'm going to do is i will create the swatch for my kind of outline of my image i'm going to try gray here and kind of see what that looks like so i'm gonna do kind of this cool gray and see if i like that i didn't like it with the black again so what i did was i went and did this kind of a purple i think i actually like that i think i will go with that so here's what i'm going to do i'm going to grab my eyedropper tool i'm going to use this kind of as my base and then i will shift my color um let's go more purple here something kind of like that remember you can always look at this here so i kind of like look at that and i want to go a little bit darker than that something like that we'll see what that looks like all right so it's a little bit too dark i'm gonna line it up a little bit okay all right so now first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to create the outline for my character um so i will start off here and a couple things when using the tool you can use your shift key so if i if i start here and then hold my shift key so if i go here and then hold my shift key and create a straight line i can also create a diagonal line um like that um so sometimes you'll use that other times you can kind of freehand it you can always adjust your lines too so we also want to try to make this kind of as symmetrical as we can but mine isn't completely 100 symmetrical which is okay here all right so i'm going to first just start off by starting off with his head and i'm going to go around here like that i made his head a little bit wider like that and then i want to kind of outline all i'm not going to get all these lines here i am kind of looking at i'm going to zoom in so zoom in here and there's some some stuff that i can kind of um erase so i can go back so if i want to erase um this square here i can do that and go back to my pencil tool and then i'm going to try to match this i kind of like this little bump here kind of reminds me of an ear so i'm going to go up like that and then i want to try to go straight across here like that then i'm going to go up and then i'm going to come over i might have gone over a little bit too much but that's okay i can make his head a little bit bigger it is supposed to look you know kind of cartoony drop like that and then did i do this right no i didn't go up like that then go over boy go up over up over like that i can also make this kind of stair-stepped and i might actually do that might go up like that and then come up that and then i'll grab my eraser tool shift e and kind of erase this here like that yep and then i got this little part here that's not quite right okay all right so so now same thing i'm gonna go in and you're also gonna remember when you're looking at this you're gonna be looking at it from really far away so when i'm zoomed in it's easy to get kind of freaked out about how stuff looks um with pixel art you're looking at things from far away all right so i got some this part here and so i'm just going to kind of outline that here like this come up around like that and the reason we're outlining this is for one it you know it gives this outline but also it's going to make it easier for when we start to fill in sections of his suit with color here because we're going to use our paint bucket tool so i'm going to go in like that go here like this remember you can always go back in and kind of clean some stuff up that you don't like and make it better later on this is kind of like our rough sketch for our guy here so going in like that i'm going to step backwards because i'm like i did that and then come in come out like that and circle this these circles are hard here that i might i don't like how i did mine on my original so i'm going to go over a little bit like that let's see i like that better i can clean this up here we'll see go back to my pencil tool and then if i wanted to create something like perfectly symmetrical the other thing i could also do is i could grab like my selection tool and i could select this i'll press ctrl c and then ctrl v and i could paste that i could rotate this and i cannot find my rotate tool and i can rotate this guy so i hold my shift key and rotate him 180 degrees and then grab my move tool and move him up like that to make a symmetrical circle like that okay then i can go back to my pencil tool oh it's because i pasted that that's why it's like that okay um i still don't quite do that right but that's okay so then i'll go back i'm gonna keep aligning this one go here and like this like that okay here's his thumb oh i and then i moved this shape over oops that okay it's kind of fun to draw these pixels like this just kind of see it sort of start to take shape stepping backwards if i'm not liking stuff i'm just kind of stepping backwards and trying it again here okay okay then i'm going to toggle back and forth kind of make sure that i've got everything so if i hide this back layer that's kind of my beginning part here um now let's see what else did i do i also did some other lines here so i can add some other lines for this so i will kind of outline parts of its boot here it's like this little part here it's got this little circle here and then lips like that okay um he also has these oops he also has these guys these little circles here too and then i could outline the these parts of this helmet but i'll let the color kind of delineate that too all right so now what we can do is we can start to sort of get an idea for filling in this in with color here before i do that i will paint in some white so i'm going to grab this i'm going to swatch this flip this over here i'm going to give him some eyes here i'm going to make sure these are up a little bit so i'm going to make sure that these are on the same line i'm going to do one two three four one two three four and then that okay and then now i can grab i'm gonna grab start to grab my colors here i can start filling this in with my bucket tool so i can grab my bucket tool first thing i want to do is kind of pick the color that i want to fill this i'm going to use this medium red and then i'm going to grab my bucket tool and kind of start to fill in some of these pieces here so i can click on my bucket it'll fill those in before i do that i'm going to outline this little part like that and then grab my bucket tool fill that in pull that in fill that in pull this in fold this in okay and then i can go back and i'm not going to fill in the head i'm going to whoops i'm not going to fill that in i'm going to use my pencil tool for that but i am going to now fill in with my yellow so i'm going to use this medium and then i'll fill all these other pieces like that then i forgot a little part did i do this i'll just make sure okay now that i've got this i can start to outline this part here so i'm going to go in like this like that and click on these individual pixels and fill in these individual pixels here i'm just going to go up and put a little bit of red there i can always go back in and use kind of a different red for some of these and now i need to do this part here so i'm going to go like that and then kind of come across like this grab this fill in this part okay and then now i can grab my eyedropper tool fill this part in with yellow here like that okay i can also before i do that let's see okay i need to add his mouth so i'm going to do this and then i'm just going to fill that in like that and then grab my eyedropper tool and fill in the rest of this okay okay so now and then i can also fill this in here too so grab my eyedropper tool and fill in these circle parts okay so now this is kind of the start part the fun part here so now i can kind of you know kind of toggle back and forth and kind of see where some of these highlights and shadows go and you can see that the shape of this kind of change and i can always adjust some of this so there's like these part like this part on the shoulder i don't really like so i'll probably go in and change that and then this part here i don't really like so i'll actually go in and kind of change those so i'm going to grab my yellow and then kind of come across here like that and then i'm going to grab my red and adjust let's see i want to bring this up a pixel like that and then i want to bring this up a pixel like that then i'm going to grab that blue again come up like this like that come out like that okay i'm not work so like right now i'm not super worried about some of my jaggies uh so remember jaggies are where you have um kind of pixels that are too close together so like this part i could fix there's like this one right here i could fix i can go back in and change those if i want the other thing too if you pick your colors and end up not liking those you can always use like your color picker too so i can use my selection color so if i don't like this purple so like let's say that i want to you know maybe i want to make this like a little bit darker or maybe i want to do like a completely different red so maybe i want to do like a really dark rad for the outline i can do that pretty easy and sort of see how that looks so i can go back to edit and then go to fill with foreground color and fill that in like that and see what that looks like i actually don't hate that but i kind of do like the purple so i'm going to keep that remember you can do kind of whatever colors that you want for this now what i'm going to do is now i want to start to put in some of my highlights and put in some of my shadows here so i can grab this color picker and i can go back and forth between kind of like looking at some of those shadows and highlights and adding some of those in there like that so i've got some you know highlights that are here oops did i pick the wrong color i did so now i can go in and just kind of draw those in here like that and after you after a little while you start to kind of stop looking at the original and then start to just kind of go off of your own drawing and see what you like so there's you know some highlights up here like this you want to think about you know where your light source is coming from you want to think about like his suit of armor you know if if the sun was shining on this where would be some of those spots where like the sun is shining off of this where would some of those shadows be you know so there might be like a little bit of highlight here might be a little highlight here i'm gonna fix that part and so i'll grab oops i could have actually toggled nope i could have toggled back and forth between my foreground selection tool but that's okay okay so now you know there's going to be some highlights up here so i keep picking the wrong color here there's going to be some highlights up here like that okay there's going to be some highlights like up here on the top of this helmet like that maybe there's some highlights over here okay i'm not going to do this whole thing but let me put in some shadows and kind of see sort of some things start to take shape as we do that so i'll grab my eyedropper tool and then put in some shadows let me see so you know maybe we've got some shadows like inside here maybe i also have like some shadows like her that are here some shadows like down here you know that a couple of things i miss i'm you know i'm kind of messing up here i'll go back i would go back in and fix those later on you know there's going to be some shadows here like that you know maybe there's also some shadows kind of coming across like this coming across here like that and step backwards i want to put the shadow on the inside here like that i'll put a highlight on the top of this boot you know shadow here okay it's really fun like once you start getting in some of those you know shadows and highlights you really start to see it really start to take shape here okay so yeah i would go back and forth kind of toggle back and forth with this you know where your shadows and highlights are and i put some highlights over here you know it's kind of kind of some shadows and highlights here some some highlights up here like that some of the islands going off like this okay all right and then once you do that next the last thing you're going to do is you're going to put in some sort of background um one other cool thing i could do you know maybe i want to make maybe i want to make him kind of flying off so maybe i want to grab like some oranges some reds you know kind of make some like flames coming out the bottom of his boots so i could grab you know i would grab like a different yellow but you know maybe i want to have like kind of him flying off so i can make some little flames coming across like that and he's kind of you know flying off something like that that's something you do other thing is you want to put in some sort of background if you wanted to change the scale of this i could go up to image and go to canvas size here if i want to make this a little bit bigger for like the size of my background right now we're at 100 so maybe i want to do like 150. okay and resize my canvas just something like that you know i could fill this again um i need to change this to white here oops how come that's not filling in like that edit okay this is being complicated i don't know why that's not working but we'll create a new layer okay so then i could do that you know if i wanted to move him i would do that at the very end remember you've got this other layer underneath here um like that so the last thing i want to do is i want to put in some sort of so mine i put in a dither pattern so i looked up did their pattern online and then did that let me show you how you do that i looked up like pixar dealer pattern you could just look up you know you could just do pixel r you know nature scene find something that you want to put them in you know i would try to find it looks like something cool i'm just going to go back to this other thing you can kind of spend as much time on this as you want i went for like a blue because i've got he's mostly red here so i think i found you know something like this that might have been the actual one that i did copy image went back into and then pasted that in there and then i want to scale that because remember we're working on a really small scale so i want to scale this down to fit remember a dither pattern is where you can show a gradient effect just using pixels so this is a gradient effect using pixels here like that okay and then anchor that guy in there like that and there we go okay remember you can change the pattern you can change the color of this suit add some highlights and shadows this is what mine kind of looked like in the end like that all right one other thing that i wanted to talk about guys is when i selected my image here and this applies to when you start looking for images for your pixel art project here is when i look for this iron man image i was looking for an image that was um more flat in vector and also had a lower amount of highlights and shadows here so let me kind of show you what i did when i looked for that so i looked for iron man whoops looked up iron man vector i looked for a vectors because a vector is going to be a more simplified version of actually like then working from like a photograph remember vector kind of applies to vectorize images like what we did when we were using inkscape here um so if i was looking for an image to kind of use you know something like kind of like that would work really well it has a low amount of highlights and shadows uh you know even something kind of like this would work this has a higher number of shots of highlights and shadows do something like that you know same thing if i was doing let's say uh maybe i wanted to make you know a bouquet flower bouquet i could look for a photograph and still use that and turn that into a pixel art or you could do you know vector the vector might be a little bit easier because it's going to again it's going to simplify those colors down you know so maybe i wanted to use you know something like that that would be really nice to use for my pixel art project here okay

Channel: James Meara

Views: 4,775

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Id: NJDAzJbXPn8

Length: 36min 24sec (2184 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021