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In this video we will look at secret pixel art techniques that are guarded by the pixel
art elite. They can enable you to iterate at a much higher speed and achieve amazing results
in a fraction of the time. But why the secrecy? There is controversy at the heart of these
techniques. Some folks consider them corrupted, cheating, and taboo. While others embrace
their transformative power. Stick around for a surprising twist that challenges
the traditional notions of Pixel Art. Chasm is a game that is famous for using
this technique. I don't know about you, but I find that the pixel art in this game
looks amazing. HD Index Painting is a technique developed by Dan Fessler. The magic here is
the concept of manipulating higher resolution data than the end result. Instead of painting
directly with a reduced color palette you paint with a wide spectrum of tones which are then
transformed into indexed colors in real time. What's most important though is that the
indexing to the pallet is non-destructive all of the high resolution details are retained
allowing you to do things that are not possible when you are drawing with a specific limited
set of colors. Accordingly to Dan Fessler this can essentially makes your software into "the
most powerful pure pixel art tool in existence", since it gives you the power to use digital
painting techniques in pixel art. I used this technique in the art of my game Solus Sector.
Want to try it yourself? I got to covered. In Photoshop or Photopea have a layer where you're
going to draw things of a specific colors, like what we have here. First add an adjustment
layer of the type Posterize with the number of colors you want to have in your ramp. Let's go
with five. Then add another adjustment layer, now with the type Gradient Map. Choose your colors and
don't hesitate to use techniques like Hue Shift in this step. The beauty here is that you can
update the posterization dynamically increasing the number of colors in our color ramp. Also your
color ramp can be as sharp as you want it to be. Finally right click on the adjustment layers
and toggle Clipping Mask. Now it will only be applied to the original layer. You can do is for
each color ramp that you have in your art piece. If you're using Krita, here's how to achieve
HD Index Painting: Have the layer where you're going to draw things. Then add a filter layer
of the type Artistic Posterize then add another filter layer now with the type Gradient Map.
Choose your colors with Hue shift, for example. Finally select both Filter
Layers and our Target Layer, right-click and create a Quick Group. This
will make so that our filters only affect the target layer. similar to what we did in
Photoshop. You can do this for each color ramp you're going to have in your art piece. Now
Aseprite: Unfortunately it is not possible to do HD Index Painting in Aseprite. I'm
sorry. Non-Destructive Palletization. This is the technique that I use in my game
Awful Marco Bros. Just like HD Index Painting, it's all about mapping your image to a specific
set of colors in real time. The main difference is that there's no need to set up each color
ramp individually. It magically maps to the closest color on the palette that you chose. And
"Non-Destructive" implies that this process is fully reversible, without losing the original
origal HD image below it. This means that you can draw, edit, manipulate the underlying HD
image with a full range of colors, gradients, adjustments; Knowing that the end result will
always fall precisely into the target pallet. And you can also change the color palette without
permanently altering the original image. This is very useful. You can change not only the color
ramps but the number of colors in the ramp. So that you can use all digital paint techniques on
it. Let's take two color palettes for example. Let me download this from lowpec.com. I like
this one and let's go with this one as well. Here's how to make it happen in Krita: On top
of my layer I'm going to add a filter of the type Map Palettize. Then I choose my palette.
Let's import the one that we have downloaded. I like to rename my layer to the name of the
palette. And there you go! If we do the same thing for the other palette that we have we can
change between those palettes by just toggling the visibility of the layers. in Photoshop
and Photopea this setup requires a few extra steps. I got it working by making a custom LUT,
Lookup Table, using the pallets we downloaded. I used a color.io free LUT converter to make
the LUT file, then in Photoshop I just added an adjustment layer of the type Posterize and on
top of that an adjustment layer of the type Color Lookup with the LUT file that I just created.
Now Aseprite: unfortunately it is not possible to do Non-Destructive Palletization in Aseprite.
Let's go to our next technique: Non-Destructive Dithering. Dithering is a technique where
patterns of different colored pixels are used to create an illusion of additional color
shades. "Non-Destructive" dithering means that we apply dithering effects in a way that we can
easily adjust with dithering styles, limits, and patterns, or even remove them entirely if
needed. in Krita we can simply enable thether dithering in the palletization filter. There you
can choose a pattern and adjust the thresholds and all. And I find it mesmerizing to see the
effect happening in real time. In Photoshop and Photopea Non-Destructive Dithering
can be achieved by following these steps: An adjustment layer of the type Pattern Fill
with the dithering image that you want as a pattern. Then you have to set it blending mode to
Multiply or Overlay, and last adjust the opacity of the adjustment layer to adjust the intensity
of the dithering. Aseprite: Unfortunately it is not possible to do Non-Destructive Dithering
in Aseprite. Non-Destructive Pixelation: This basically involves reducing the resolution
of an image dynamically Non-Destructive means the same thing here: It means that this effect
can be applied and adjusted without permanently altering the original artwork. This allows you to
experiment with different levels of pixelization, which essentially changes the resolution of the
final output. You can also revert back to the original resolution as needed. And here's the cool
part: If you're into sketching before diving into the Pixel Perfection, Non-Destructive Pixelation
is basically a shortcut to the pixel-by-pixel stage. Meaning it allows you to transition from
the initial non-pixelated sketch to the pixel art much more seamlessly. This technique allow
you to achieve amazing results when us it in conjunction with Non-Destructive Palletization.
In this example I take this not so good looking tree and by combining these two techniques I can
achieve a pretty decent result in a fraction of the time. And when you are happy enough with
the results, you can resize the image and then do the fine adjustments per pixel. Here is how
to do Non-Destructive Pixelation. Aseprite: I'm sorry [something wrong?] In Krita there's a
specific filter layer type called Pixelate. I recommend you set the pixel height to even
numbers between 2 and 8 and that's it. Later you can merge the filter with the layers below
and resize the whole image to the same factor, like 50% if your pixels had size
two, and 25% if they had size four, and so on. Just make sure to set the resize filter
to Nearest Neighbor, otherwise the image will get bit blurry. In Photoshop it's not as simple. The
author of 2dWillNeverD made a tutorial on how to achieve some sort of Non-Destructive Pixelation
but it's not as good as Krita's. Check the link in the description to learn how to do it. These
techniques make it easier to get great results in a fraction of the time. I like pixel art, but what
I like even more is when pixel art is brought to life as a whole game using programming, logic,
and computer science skills. This might sound complicated but here's an easy and fun way to
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are used in artificial intelligence. So to try everything Brilliant has to offer free for the
first 30 days, visit Brilliant.org/Zizaco or click on the link in the description down below.
And the first 200 folks to sign up we also get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription. A big
thank you to Brilliant for sponsoring this video and supporting this channel. Layer Effects and
Blending Otions for Pixel Art. Layer Effects and Blending Options allow you to add outline, drop
shadow, inner shadow, bevel, textures, patterns, gradients and a a whole lot more. It is true that
some of these effects are a bit overused and too much can make your pixel art look like plastic,
but with subtle adjustments and in combination with the techniques we saw previously this can
be really powerful and make it easier to add some details to our pixel art. Once again the key thing
here is that with Photoshop, Photopea and Krita, unlike with Aseprite, the layer effects such as
outline are Non-Destructive. Meaning, you can play with your images in real time, making changes on
the fly without having to regenerate an outline at every step of the way. In Photoshop and Photopea,
just right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. In Krita it is very similar right click
on the layer and choose Layer Style. Once again this may look cheesy if overused, but when use the
moderation to add outline or subtle effects these are very powerful. And you can always rasterize
the effects later so that you can edit those pixels. There's a link in the description if you want to get the PSDs and Krita
files that I demonstrated in this video. In my last video a bunch of folks got angry
at me for just suggesting these techniques. So let me set the record straight this time: These
techniques don't replace traditional techniques. They simply allow you for a non-destructive
approach that adds layer of ease and speed to your creative process. And don't worry, if you're
all about per-pixel details, which you should be, you can still do fine details pixel-by-pixel on
top of all these techniques. Let me say it one more time: These techniques don't take the control
out of the artist. If you ever want to edit pixels individually, especially in the final stretch,
the power is still very much in your hands. Also I'm not implying that this or that artist is
using "non-pure" techniques like the ones I demonstrated here. My point is that there's no
way to tell. I admit to using these techniques, but I could very much do a live stream using MS
Paint and drawing pixel-by-pixel just to show off, which of course would take much longer. Think
about it. In general, people have no good reason to disclose this. It's like using a projector to
do Oil Painting [Alpay Efe] "Did he say projector? Yeah absolutely! I'm a professional artist.
I will use every tool that helps me create better art more efficiently!" I hope I didn't
offended the pixel art community by revealing these techniques. If you're not offended, leave
a thumbs up and let me know what you think in the comments down below. By the way, this is a small
channel so I answer all comments. If you want to learn which other tools I use to bring my game to
life check out this video right here. And if you are interested in Pixel Art and Game Development,
subscribe for more. See you next time! [Music]
