Creating Pixel Art

I’ve been finding that creating pixel art is a unique challenge that is actually pretty tricky to get right. Working in the lowest resolution possible means that drawing shapes that are consistent from frame to frame is extremely difficult, especially when you working with a limited palette. Whilst anti-aliasing is great for photos, it means hell when attempting to rotate small sprites. Here’s a few resources I’ve come across that might help you if you’re starting on your own pixel art.

• The Pixel Art Tutorial – This tutorial is designed to explain what pixel art is, what pixel art isn’t, how to get started making pixel art and how to make your pixel art better.  This tutorial is an attempt to consolidate the information scattered throughout the “noobtorials” thread and elsewhere. For more advanced information on what makes pixel art tick, the reader is advised to read the less general tutorials found elsewhere, as well as the Ramblethread! found over at Pixelation, which offers a more in-depth analysis of pixel clusters, banding, and anti-aliasing, and is the source of much of the information found in this tutorial.
• So You Want To Be A Pixel Artist – This tutorial has been published in Design and Content Creation: A GameDev.net Collection. The last update was on February 1st, 2007, so I wouldn’t count on it getting “finished” any time soon, but it’s buy the guy that originally created the first pixel art forum, Pixelation.
• Les Forges Pixel Art Course – This massive pixel art tutorial is written by Fil Razorback from LesForges.org. You can find the original tutorials here. A big thank you to Fil Razorback for allowing OpenGameArt.org to translate these tutorials and archive them here!
• Tutorials by Kiwinuptuo – A collection of pixel art tutorials on Kiwinuptuo’s Deviant Art page
• Favorite backgrounds in 2-D Fighters? – This thread over at NeoGaf has tons of beautiful backgrounds. SNK had some amazing freaking artwork.
• Dithering in Photoshop – Some great tips in this Pixelation forum thread on how to set-up a photoshop dithering brush
• Configuring Photoshop for Pixel Art – Actually, in general Photoshop’s a bit of an annoyance when you *want* to make things pixely.
• Game Sprites/Tiles – A great thread on how to help get rid of the grid pattern when making your own tileable backgrounds.
• The Recorded Pixel Art Project –  A series of community made videos demonstrating pixel art.
• Totoro WIP Animation – An animated gif that shows the development of a pixel painting

Hopefully that’s of some use to you! If you know of any other great resources, feel free to share them with us on Facebook or Twitter!

Also be sure to check out Part 2 of Indie Game Development, posted on Young Web Builder yesterday!