Top-Down Pixel Art Town and Q+A Session!

[Music] hello there my name is Brandon and I make pictures out of tiny squares and in this video I've got a few different things to cover but before that just the time lapse footage that we're gonna be watching here is a new top-down piece featuring my monkey avatar who by the way I finally decided to call him nano it's getting a little bit tiring just calling him my monkey avatar every time and kind of feels like he deserves a name so there we go he's called nano and I started here by just creating the top-down sprite first so that I could use it as a size reference when building out the rest of the scene in this case I designed the sprite within a 16 by 16 size I think it ended up only being about 13 pixels tall actually and then the canvas size of the full scene is 256 by 256 and at least half of that when I came over with a little bit more than half of that was just doing the line work alone luckily the line work is kind of my favorite part of the whole thing and I treat it with the idea that it should kind of be able to stand on its own like without relying on color with this kind of style if you do a good job defining all the objects and details with just the outline alone it usually translates into something that reads even better once it's filled with color but we'll get into the color later because there's actually quite a bit of work until that point so while the time-lapse version of me is working away at the line work on this scene I thought it'd be nice to take some time and answer a couple common questions I receive about pixel art in general and some about me and the way that I approach pixel art actually before that let me just say in some semi-official way like thank you to everyone who's been watching the channel and showing support all that kind of stuff I've only been doing this for about seven months at this point I don't know why I just instinctively looked at the time like that would help me figure out but yeah pretty much exactly seven months and I didn't really know what to expect jumping into the world of art videos like this and the response has been like overwhelming and positive and it's great to see messages from people enjoying the videos and sharing their own pixel art and their own experiences so really you know thank you for watching all right so the first question and one of the ones I see the most often is just sort of like how do I get better at pixel art and I think the boring answer that we're all used to hearing is like well you just got to keep practicing and you'll get better and that's absolutely true but it's only part of it the way you actually go about the practice is the key thing and when it comes to pixel art one of the fundamental skills to learn is like the power that a single pixel can have for example in the right context a single pixel can be like an eyeball on a sprite or a button on a controller or just use to build texture in a scene one of the best ways to get practice with that kind of pixel level attention to detail is just to do work in a really small scale so there'll be things like creating the icons and characters or little objects maybe in like a 16 by 16 size and it's great for learning how to simplify things enough so that they can work within that limited space and then you also learn the importance that a single pixel in the right spot can make for the longest time I didn't even really know like how to make a full illustrated scene and I don't just mean composition wise like I just didn't know how to fill out all of that available space with interesting detail if it needed it and really the reason was just that I didn't know what detail even looked like I find that the secret to larger full scene pieces though is that they're really just a collection of smaller individual components and so that's really what needs the attention when practicing so I guess my advice there is to play around with the sizing to the point that you're feeling that restriction for individual characters and objects I found that 16 pixels works really well maybe up to about a size enough 32 pixels is also good and for larger scenery like a full kind of piece even a hundred by a hundred is a decent enough canvas size to create something that's restricted but can still achieve some nice interest with that small sizing there's kind of this weird dichotomy of it being like really quick and simple but also kind of difficult at the same time like it's sort of this puzzle to figure out that you know the correct placement of squares that best resembles whatever you're trying to make and then the great thing about it though is that once you're comfortable in that small sizing you can try a larger canvas size on the next one and you'll probably find that you're more capable of handling that extra space and maybe even have more of an appreciation for what details are capable of that large size that's kind of what I find anyway it probably differs from artist to artist but just speaking on my own work and the improvement that I felt during my time with this that's kind of how I see it the other thing is to keep challenging yourself like maybe try something new that's a little bit more difficult with each piece you make or to try out different styles and I don't think it's really something you have to like constantly be working on every single day but certainly having regular little projects and ideas does help if you're the kind of person who can adhere to self-imposed deadlines as well like making a new thing every week or every two weeks is just a great way to keep the ball rolling and over time you'll see that improvement the complete other half the idea of getting better at pixel art though is actually just to study art in general like taking in references and tutorials from a variety of sources both pixel and non pixel art kind of teaches you like all fundamentals of art like composition and shading and use of color all that fun kind of stuff and you can take that knowledge and then apply it to your pixel art so like for example something like shakiness fear is kind of gonna be the same no matter what medium you're working in just with pixel art there's the necessary step of deciding how the rendering should look for your chosen resolution or style all right that kind of felt like a big question to start with maybe the length of that answer qualify me for that being a TED talk I don't know anyway I hope some of that insight was useful but let's move along to an easier question when I get off on actually which is do you use a mouse or a tablet to draw pixel art and the answer is actually neither of those because I use the trackpad on my laptop unless that technically counts as a mouse but I think it's safe to say it's kind of in a of its own so let me explain this though because I think it requires a bit of context I actually don't have a desktop computer I just have a MacBook laptop because I like the portability and I used to use a mouse like an actual Mouse because I would station my laptop at a desk and connect an external monitor and a keyboard and all that and somewhere along the line I just got in the habit of changing scenery a little bit with the laptop you know like working in the kitchen or sitting on the bed or on the couch so before I knew it I just got used to working on the laptop on its own and I honestly don't recall like any major shift or adjustment to using the trackpad exclusively I think it was just the right timing that I adapted it while simultaneously getting more and more involved with pixel art so if you're wondering about just having the right tools for the trade or something like that I don't think you're really gonna have an edge with one option over the other it really just comes down to whatever feels natural and comfortable for you personally I imagine that having a tablet would be more natural if you want that kind of feeling like you're drawing by hand well you would be driving by hand literally I didn't come in to pixel art from that skill set though so I'm more of a point-and-click guy myself I guess like sometimes it feels a bit different than what I think drawing should feel like which is why it's partially a joke but like I say at the beginning of these videos I really feel like I do just make pictures out of tiny squares all right next question I get a lot is do you make games or will you be making a game and the short answer is kind of just no question mark so this is one of those things that I don't know maybe a lot of pixel artists also have their internal debates about this but when you get into pixel art you do tend to see a lot of people around making games and the debate for me was like okay so I do pixel art now like so I I guess this means I need to work towards making games and really the real reason I got into pixel art was just because I like the look of it and I like the understood association with retro games there's definitely like that nostalgia fueled attraction to it for me and so I do enjoy studying different pixel art styles and making art that leans towards having that authentic quality where it kind of looks like it could be a real game but it actually isn't I think it would be something I'd like to pursue at some point though to be honest prior to starting this channel I was at a bit of a crossroads point where like I felt like I did want to take on some kind of larger project and that could have been a game project but that was kind of how I ended up here so the stuff with this channel is kind of where my focus lies now but I mean I can't rule out games down the line though like let's say for example hypothetically Capcom was like hey we'd like to lend you the keys to the Mega Man franchise to make a modern but retro pixel art entry similar to Sonic mania but for Megaman I probably you like listen fellas let's go make Mega mania alright so at this point in the time-lapse the line work is getting close to the end and I wanted to talk about a little bit of the coloring and the shading for this one or actually sorry the line work footage is almost done the next part of it there were a lot of finer details and I was kind of zipping all over the screen so it's not easy to watch so I'm gonna go ahead and I'll play back the individual layers from adding those details and then come back and talk about color I guess so here's the rest of the line work okay since there are a lot of areas within this scene I began by adding solid gray scale tones just to kind of break everything up and basically decide which areas would be dark and which would be light because there's already the line work foundation there I use the magic wand tool to select multiple areas and then fill them in with solid gray tones the other trick with line work here is that you can create a layer underneath it and then just kind of paint in below the line work which really helps for areas where you would have had to make a lot of selections into like the textured foliage here so even if the painted layer underneath is a little bit messy as long as it gets covered up with a line work above it and as long as you stay within those outer edges you're good for the color I got this idea to combine two palettes from existing pieces that I made and I really thought the colors could suit this one and the combination of them would just give me a lot of options to use so I brought those two palettes in and then I just started assigning colors to each of those grayscale tones that had already been laid down I end up using various shades of pink and green and some blue actually seeing it again here I kind of do like this restricted look with just a few colors as well though it has sort of this like NES v to it I guess from here though I continued adding more colors and I like finding ways that certain colors can be repurposed like in this case I use a blue as the shade tone for the green but then also the blue becomes its own main color and that has like a purple tone for the shading so there's really like a full spectrum of colors present even though there's only a handful of colors actually used that makes sense the last step for the coloring on the town here is just to add some shading and highlights to everything and the goal here is to create like somewhat plausible and consistent shadows and highlights to these objects and this is going to accomplish two important things firstly it's just a good way to pack more color into the art so it makes the are more vibrant and it also helps with cohesion of the color palette like since those colors are now constantly being paired with each other in different ways across the entire piece and secondly it's a great way to reinforce the geometry that we have here with the top-down look by adding shadows to certain elements over the street it can convey information about their height or first hour knobs X maybe their depth and over the course of doing this to all the individual little objects there's a sort of additive effect that I think just helps everything look like it's in the right spot in relation to everything else so to kind of illustrate what I mean here's just a quick comparison of the town before and after adding the highlights and shadows and I just like the way that the colors feel a little bit more unified and the objects have a bit more dimension to them after applying this kind of shading and highlights of course you'll notice that the town is still empty so the last step here is to add in a bunch of like NPC type characters and to keep it simple I just took the Nano sprite and then created a few variants based on that sizing mostly sticking to the black and white look but sometimes adding an accent color for a bit more personality and then I got the idea to name their town nano Park City which just I think sounds kind of fun and futuristic and it abbreviates as npc so let's go ahead here and take a look at the final artwork for nano Park City [Music] and I didn't mention it yet but one of the reasons I made this piece was actually to celebrate the opening of my online shop a hub so if you'd like to get prints and shirts and other stuff of my work I'm making them available on RedBubble they're a site that handles like production and shipping and I've ordered stuff from there I've had good experiences with the quality and the shipping so I'm hoping that it works alright for mine as well I do kind of like the idea of having pixel art in a printed form like it's sort of this real tangible form that's kind of nice so if you don't want pixel prints to decorate your home I'm gonna be adding stuff on there now and that includes the new piece from this video okay then let's go ahead and finish out with some CRT time I hope you enjoyed the more a Q&A style for part of this so thank you for watching especially if you're still here at this point and take care and keep it square [Music] [Music]

Channel: Brandon James Greer

Views: 82,050

Keywords: pixel art, top down, canvas size, tutorial

Id: jKTOGz3XAcc

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 28 2020