How To Pixel Art - Beginner To PRO Tutorial

it's been four years since i picked up pixel art for the first time so let's talk about how you can become a talented pixel artist too i've learned quite a lot over the years but i don't want you guys spending four years getting to where i am when you learn a new skill you usually don't understand how to maximize your potential so sometimes your talents can develop very slowly if you aren't following the right advice or just don't know how to progress efficiently let's fix that and get you guys excited about starting or progressing your already existing journey on becoming an artist for my starting pixel artist i would like to begin with understanding how pixel art actually is created the fundamentals if you will pixel art is very different from most other art styles as you are not necessarily drawing with a brush or stroking a canvas you are placing down blocks square by square on a much smaller more restricted canvas it gives pixel art a slightly more technical approach where as long as you are understanding the concepts you can almost immediately replicate and start creating with those fundamental techniques for understanding pixel art we need to understand the principle of basic shapes and form you should start out by breaking real world objects down into shapes for example turning a bed into a square or a berry into a circle shapes are found everywhere so again try to envision these things straight away in your mind before bringing it onto a canvas beginners should also understand how outlining objects work in my last pixel art video i talked about the different kinds of outlines you might find in different pixel art styles but not on actually how to outline a sprite try and understand where you need to smooth off your pixel edging and where you should keep hard edges to keep things simple when you're using sharp and rigid objects you might find some hard edging other than that smoothing it off is much better i see way too many artists double outlining their edging where if they just were to get rid of all of the corner pieces it would make the image feel much more rounded and less flat we are trying to create 3d images on a 2d surface so the more ways we can fake depth the better our drawing is going to look when starting pixel art you should stick to 8x8 or 16x16 size canvases for your sprite work this will make the amount of space you have to work with and your artistic decision making very beginner friendly causing your art to be less challenging and actually achievable detail is the hardest part in any art style so do yourself a favor and don't stress yourself with the hard stuff in the early stages you'll progress faster mastering the basic concepts over failing to make masterpieces right off the bat and making yourself feel unaccomplished okay so you have a decent understanding of what pixel art is about and how to form basic shapes into tiny sprites my best tip i can give to intermediates is making sure that while imitating what other professional pixel artists do to achieve certain effects and styles you like make sure to find references from the real world as well when i was trying to get better at pixel art i would just follow tutorial after tutorial on how to create something i needed to know how to do but i ended up just basically copying their work without actually understanding what they were doing or why always question the artist why are they shading this object in the way that they are how are they casting light onto the object why are they a better artist than you are now i understand some people might take this as bad advice as every artist has their own style and no one is better than anybody else as it is all up to personal interpretation but to be honest when you are starting a new skill having mentors and people you look up to is not a bad thing when you get to an expert level of understanding you can branch off and do your own thing but any skill takes time to manifest so just don't take it to heart if somebody's style is objectively a bit better than yours find inspiration not jealousy a great technique for intermediate artists to start picking up would be to look into techniques like dithering and anti-aliasing these are techniques you need to know when starting to get into bigger canvases and adding more detail into your work as i said earlier being a good artist is all about faking something that isn't there making you feel there is a rounded aspect to your flat drawing or adding darker areas without actually using more colors to your art are perfect examples of this the main purpose of dithering is using the technique of pixel patterns to fake shading and darken an image in a smoother transitional way for anti-aliasing this is the technique of using pixels to help smooth out a curved object think of anti-aliasing as like a way to create in-between pixels without actually creating in-between pixels these can be used in lighter pixels when doing highlights and in darker pixels when shading this is just a technique that will really make your image feel detailed and properly shaped for those advanced curved objects here's some more example work i've done at an intermediate level of quality again just because something is made at an easier level of detail doesn't necessarily make it better or worse it's just a scale i'm using to distinguish easy from challenging tactics and skills needed to accomplish the work finally we have the pro tips for those of you looking to really bring your art to the next level and maybe even get paid as a professional in the field for those of you that are interested i actually do work from time to time as a freelancer it's one of my jobs i take on being a self-employed developer when i'm in need of some extra income so remember getting good at a skill is worth the grind as basically all of my skills allow me to find work and pay like a professional i never went to school for anything i'm doing in my life at this point so i mean you can do it too if you have the patience and the determination to succeed get educated but also remember that your actual experience and work is much more valuable when trying to find work in the internationally connected society of contract work and self-employment anyway for those of you looking to break into the gaming industry a super important skill is learning how to animate your pixel art for game characters particle effects and all the other elements that go into creating video game art i'll use an example of this little robot character i made a couple months back to start you guys off in the right direction animation is definitely not an expertise of mine but i mean at the end of the day you aren't aiming for perfection as a pixel artist your primary job is to portray a visual across to someone so they can interpret it as what you want them to see if you look at this role for example each frame of the animation looks pretty crappy but when you throw them all together it shows the interpretation of your character leaping onto the ground and into a rolling ball objective complete animation will require an entire video all on its own but just try looking into the concepts of squash and stretch to make your animations feel fluid and less robotic also try to just draw your keyframes first and fill in the extra frames when you have your main poses picked these are basic things you've probably heard many times but they are still super important so just make sure to keep it in mind next is on the topic of materials using different techniques to shade or highlight different materials will help you get the information across that something is smooth rough sharp furry or whatever other texture you can think of you get the idea my final tip for today is on understanding perspective perspective is everything when it comes to truly fooling people into believing your image has depth this piece i did a few weeks ago is a great example of me trying to have a consistent perspective and viewing point use grids and draw lines from points of interest to keep your perspective consistent and believable perspective and sizing is super key to having something feel realistic if you want to learn about proper color techniques different types of outlines and even more general tips for pixel artists i have linked my previous how to pixel art video in the carded video and in the description below the video is kind of blowing up right now and is definitely still extremely relevant for people looking to learn pixel art i wanted to make sure i didn't overlap too many tips and advice so just check out the other video if you need some more help like the video to help promote it to more aspiring artists out there and subscribe if you are enjoying the style of content feel free to check out my game i'm releasing on steam and hopefully consoles later this year anyone can become great if they put their all into their efforts don't accept anything less than your best and then shoot higher

Channel: Reece Geofroy

Views: 244,852

Keywords: Reece, Geofroy, learn, tutorial, tutorials, how, to, hd, gamedev, indiedev, devlog, pc, pixel art, pixel art tutorial, how to, beginner to pro, professional, artist, pixel artist, how to become a pixel artist, how to pixel art, beginner to pro tutorial, how to pixel art 2021, pixel art guide, guide, tips, tricks, advice, help, how to draw pixel art, indie games, game dev, indie dev, pixel art for indie games, pixel art for beginners, how to draw pixel art for beginners, aseprite, pixel art tips

Id: 0I_OZ4qQJfY

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021