Easy Pixel Art Easy Heart Pixel Art 13in to 16in

INTRODUCTION TO PIXEL ART

Computer graphics and digital art equally we know them today take a root, and that is pixel fine art.

Back in the day, in that location wasn't a 'Pixel Fine art' style because every art fabricated on a estimator needed to be pixel-past-pixel artwork.

Every bit computers evolved, the adequacy to render images became more avant-garde, enabling digital artists to create without the limitations of erstwhile hardware.

Creating art with these limitations in mind is the core of pixel art as an art form.

While no longer a necessary approach, forcing yourself to create in the boundaries of an old engineering science or set of techniques can help you as an

creative person.

Beneath are some examples of my exploration with pixel art.

In this article, I'll highlight some characteristics, basic techniques and guidelines so you can get-go making your own pixel art.

All the information here can exist applied to any 'style' and any software. And that's the dazzler of this subject.

The technical side of this art form is important, especially if you want to brand an homage of a video game.

But remember that you don't need to force yourself to create a 32×32 pixel size artwork with just iii colors, if y'all don't want to.

It's beneficial to respect the fundamentals and the techniques of sometime-schoolhouse digital artists – but it's not obligatory to work like them.

LEARNING BY DOING

For this article, we'll work on an approachable challenge.

I want y'all to create a 64×64 pixel portrait.

That'southward information technology!

You lot tin depict yourself, make a fanart or invent a character.
The goal is to create an artwork that tin can be used used as a social media avatar.

Starting time with a minor (resolution) file size, so the pixel unit is visible. There's no point to making pixel fine art where the pixels aren't axiomatic.

SETTING Up YOUR CANVAS

For this commodity, I'll exist using Clip Studio Paint.
While in that location's great dedicated tools for making pixel fine art, you can use any cartoon plan to follow along.

• Create a 64×64 pixel certificate (1);
• Go to View > Grid/Ruler Settings (2);
• Configure as the following so you lot can see a grid with every unmarried pixel. You lot tin plough the grid on/off anytime using the Shift+Grand shortcut. (iii);

A skilful practice for working with pixel art is getting used to drawing zoomed while keeping an eye on the actual-size artwork (4);

To create a secondary view of your current sail, go to Window > Canvas > New Window and open a new instance of the current canvas.
Set it to 100% and place in your workspace (5).

CREATING THE PIXEL Fine art TOOLS

Time to introduce a basic concept.

Pixel art does not go along with automatic anti-aliasing.

Anti-aliasing is a useful algorithm that smooths edges of a shape.
This is made by adding an extra row of pixels closest to the aliased edge.

Equally you can see in the case, the anti-aliased edge (vii) has an automatic gradient of pixels to requite the shape a smoother contour.

The aliased border (half dozen) is what we're looking for when creating pixel fine art. Later, we can soften the edges by calculation anti-aliasing by paw (manually).

A rule-of-thumb when using any software to create pixel art is to disable the anti-aliasing setting in brushes, tools and transformations.

In Clip Studio Paint you have to plough off anti-aliasing in:

• brushes (viii);
• tools like Selection, Fill, Text, eg. (nine);
• and during any transformation using Edit > Transform (10);

In Clip Studio Paint yous already have a pixel art pen. It's called 'Dot Pen' in the Marker category (11).

This is the simplest drawing brush available. It has a fixed ane-pixel size, anti-aliasing turned off, and no option for stabilization or color mixing.

I propose you follow forth this tutorial using this brush merely.
Later in the game, you lot tin indistinguishable any of your 'common' brushes and use it for pixel fine art (as long y'all reduce castor size to lower values and disable anti-aliasing).

DRAWING THE LINEART

Since this will be a front-facing portrait, I'll start the drawing using the Symmetrical Ruler (12);

Place the Symmetrical Ruler on the Canvas and, to brand sure information technology'due south on the dead-heart, use the Object tool to select it and input values manually (13);

In this instance I changed the Center 10 and Eye Y values to 32, which is one-half of my total sheet size (64 pixels).

Now, select your Dot Pen once again and beginning drawing.
Since this brush can't exist resized, information technology's a good idea to zoom in on the canvas you're drawing (xv) and use the duplicate view as a reference (14).

I started my portrait drawing a initial sketch to find the structure of the head (16) and and then I started calculation details (17).

At that place'south no need to utilize a blue color. I just prefer information technology considering information technology helps my brain empathize that I'm creating a rough for my final cartoon.

If you're done with the sketch you can proceed with the linework.

Before calculation the final lines, let me show y'all a simple technique for cartoon lines and curves in pixel fine art.

In the example beneath, the linework (18) doesn't wait smooth considering there's a lot of duplicated pixels where information technology should be a unmarried pixel line.

You tin can ready those 'doubles' (it'south a term) past removing any adjacent pixels on the curve. In the instance (19), I removed all pixels marked in red.

I suggest you lot to return to your sketch and look out for those 'doubles' to clean your linework.

Exercise not worry if the curves don't feel right. Just remove the unwanted pixels.

TIP: if you need to erase a pixel, you can only switch to the transparent color (I take my shortcut ready to X);

In the instance below yous can run into the divergence of the initial sketch (20) and the cleaned-up version (21).

Ready for another technique?

Let'southward get-go fixing the drawing and adjusting some curves.

Seeing the example below (22), you lot tin can notice the distribution and spacing of pixels are not following a logical progression. (eg.: 3, two, 1, iv…)

While on this improved version (23), y'all can run across a better progression of pixels to create the curve. (eg.: ane, 2, two, 3…)

With that knowledge, I propose you to try the following exercise before standing on your drawing:

Try to draw some random lines and curves with the two concepts you merely learned so far: remove the doubles and maintaining the 'pixel progression'.

This volition give y'all a solid gasp in how to profile shapes in pixel fine art.

Beneath is my final linework (25).

I did some minor adjustments on the proportions and curves, and removed some unnecessary pixels to make the face more readable.

Take some time to compare with the original version (24) and try to notice where I applied the techniques.

COLORING Time

The number of colors used on a sprite (term used to describe an object in game development), depends past how much you desire to stay close to a specific limitation of an sometime technology.

While non necessary, yous can larn a lot about pixel art by limiting yourself to a small corporeality of colors to choose.

For now I suggest you start with a unproblematic colour palette. As a starting point, you lot tin can use the 56 colors of the palette used past the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) videogame panel (26).

The colour and tone choices on this palette are not perfect, but it provides a good starting point.

In the examples below you accept the PC-98 estimator colour palette (27) and a personal one I built in the past (28);

Later you tin can start building your own palette, just always remember to go on it tight and simple.

I beginning by filling my lines with some base colors (flatting).

I'm starting with 5 initial colors, including the black linework to pigment this portrait (29).

On this stage, remember to configure your Auto Select and Fill tools for the pixel art workflow, disabling Area Scaling and Anti-aliasing (30).

To shade (add shadows) the skin color on the portrait, you don't demand to only use the darker value of a specific color;

I can potentially use any color available as long the values read correctly.

Here's a tip – Create a new layer on top of your layer stack, fill it with blackness and set the layer mode to Color.

Now you can apply this layer to check the value relationship of your colors (32).

In the example beneath you can see how I managed to use the erstwhile background color (purple) every bit the shade color of my brown pare (31). I adopt to go with a black groundwork to salve ane color…

Over again, I don't need to – just I'd like to practise these limitations imposed by the NES color palette.

For the highlights on the skin and glasses (33), I don't needed to innovate whatsoever new colors because, while checking the grayscale values (34),

I noticed the color of the t-shirt could be used for that.

I wanted to add some manual anti-aliasing to smooth the border between the lit and shadowed areas of the skin (36).

Using the NES palette merely, I could not detect colors that I could employ to create this slope transition.

So here'south where I abandoned the 'virtual limitations' in favor of the artwork.

In the example I added two new colours (37), so I tin add together more details to the shading.

I can't stress this plenty, but it'south really of import that you make these decisions while looking the artwork through the existent, not zoomed-in, canvas size (35).

Using the two new actress colors, I increased the rendering on the face calculation more volume, wrinkles ('cause I'm getting old) and softening some  shadows on the lit side of the portrait (38).

On the blue jacket, I decided to use the dithering technique to create the sensation of a gradient without adding colors (40).

By breaking upwards the solid transitions on a checkerboard pattern I tin brand the illusion of an inbetween colour (39).

Dithering is an avant-garde technique and this is but a basic usage for it.

Every bit you tin meet, the outcome creates a textural effect that tin can be a problem if used on skin or smooth surfaces.

I found information technology appropriate to utilise in the jacket (made of cloth), considering I can benefit from the rough texture.

After some tweaking, I managed to fully paint the portrait.

I'k very happy with the concluding consequence because I could fit a lot of details for a 64×64 pixel size artwork with simply 7 colors.

ps.: I also had pixels and colors enough to fix those weird-looking cartoony eyes. Ten-D

EXPORTING

Last, just not least…
When saving and exporting pixel art, use the GIF or PNG format.

Avert using the JPEG format, especially with any level of compression.

This will destroy all the honey and intendance y'all used to create your pixel art.

Look at the examples below: a 99% compressed JPEG (41) may look ok from a altitude, just it adds some non-wanted colors.

A 80% compressed version (42) will make any pixel artist drain. And so please, don't practise that. 🙂

When it comes to posting on social media, you have to deal with the automated-compression of the platform.

For Instagram, you'll take no option considering the system automatically converts and resizes the image to a low-quality jpeg.

On Twitter, yous'll take a sharper, almost perfect paradigm if the exported file is 506 pixels wide in PNG format.

That'southward it.

I promise you enjoyed this tutorial and too hope you managed to create your commencement pixel art portrait.

Below y'all can notice my minuscule, nonetheless incredible, slice of art. 🙂

If you create yours, delight let me know.

– dado

Artist Profile

Hi. I'1000 Dado (Dadotronic) Almeida and I draw and paint 90'due south-videogame-inspired art. Every bit a freelancer artist I create concept and production art for games and animation.My indie career is devoted to personal projects similar Claws and Tusks (comic) and artwork that I make for fun or commissions. I too like to teach and share my discoveries well-nigh digital art, computer graphics, and mental health for artists.

https://world wide web.dadoalmeida.com/
https://twitter.com/dadotronic
https://www.artstation.com/dadotronic

hillwhight.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/161082

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