An introduction to pixel art for games. Pixel art (pixel art): the best works and illustrators Where to draw pixel art

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Pixel art or pixel graphics is digital painting that is created in pixel-by-pixel raster editors. Pixel (pixel) - the smallest graphic element of the image. In other words, it's a point. And all pixel drawings are made up of countless clusters of dots, resulting in slightly uneven, as if poorly traced. But that's the beauty of these pictures.

A bit of history

Which programs can create modern pixel art

There are many free raster editors out there. But more often than others are called Microsoft Paint and Adobe Photoshop. True, Paint is considered a less convenient tool for creating pixel art than Adobe Photoshop. Why? In this program:
it is very difficult to achieve evenness and symmetry of images;
when saving them in jpg format, there is a strong color distortion;
difficult to draw shadows and highlights.
Therefore, they try to give preference to Adobe Photoshop. This program has a lot more working options than Paint. What allows you to draw not individual characters with a simple design, but whole pictures. In addition, the pixel art itself is easier and faster to edit. Yes, and you can transfer color transitions in Adobe Photoshop smoothly and naturally.

How to Avoid Kinks in Pixel Art

Pixel art is a collection of pixels that are square or rectangular "dots". When an image is drawn from such “points”, then it becomes angular, the smoothness in the lines disappears. On the one hand, this is the calling card of Pixel Art, and on the other hand, I want more smoothness, which will make the picture neat and attractive to the user. This problem in the language of pixel artists is called kinks or "jaggies".
Jaggies are pieces that give any lines a jagged look. They are usually disposed of in one of the following ways:
increase the outlier line segment by 2, 3 or more pixels in length;
reduce the length of the pixels themselves in the prominent area;
a new section of the line is built from several single pixels;
add single pixels to the jagged area between the longer "dots", and so on.
To properly eliminate kinks, you need to remember the main rule: the length of the elements of a curved line should decrease or increase gradually. You also need to remember that shifting a line segment by two or more pixels in height leads to the destruction of smoothness.
Therefore, constant drawing practice is needed. And as a simple and visual aid to help avoid kinks, you can use a set of oblique straight lines.

How to get a shadow in Pixel Art

Another important point in pixel art is their volume. It, as in other graphics options, is achieved through highlights and shadows. To create a shadow in pixel art, you need a smooth transition from light to dark tone or from one color to another. To achieve this effect, mixing technology is often used - dithering or dithering. In other words, on the border of two colors, they are mixed in a checkerboard pattern. This method arose against the backdrop of a shortage of flowers. With the help of chess mixing of two colors, it was possible to obtain a third one that was not in the palette.
However, after the palette expanded significantly, dithering technology still remained in demand. But you need to remember that the transition from one color to another with a width of one pixel does not look good. It turns out just a comb. That's why
the minimum blending area must be at least two pixels. And the wider the transition, the better.
Also, when creating a shadow:
it is important to determine at what angle and from which side the light will fall on the object. This will make the drawing "live", as well as understand where to draw the shadow. For example, if the light falls on the right, then the shadow areas will be located on the left, etc.;
you need to use colors much darker than the base ones. Those. the shadow should be depicted using darker colors than the shaded area itself. For example, if the object is red, then its shadow will be burgundy or dark brown;
don't forget the penumbra. For this purpose, a hue is selected that, according to the palette, is between the base color and the shadow color. This shade is placed between the layers of these two colors. As a result, the effect of a smooth transition from a dark area to a lighter area is created.

How to get glare on pixel art

Highlight, like a shadow, gives volume to the drawn objects. It is always located on the side where the light falls. But if the object is supposed to have a glossy surface, for example, a porcelain cup, a sword made of steel, etc., then a highlight will also be needed in the shaded area.
To create a highlight in the area where the light falls, you need to take a paint that will be much lighter than the main one. Just do not need to be zealous in the brightness of this spot - it may not turn out naturally. Very often, the glare is depicted in white without transitions. This does not happen in nature. Yes, and the object will look flat.
To create a highlight from the side of the shadow, you need a color that is lighter than the one that the shadow itself is applied with. And in this case, a smooth transition is also needed, which can be obtained by using several shades at once.
To realize all this, of course, practice is needed. And it's best to start with simple objects.

If you liked to play with Lego as a child (or continue to play with it even as an adult), you will surely be interested in isometric pixel art. It may depend on technology and be more like an exact science than an illustration. But in such art there is no 3D perspective, you can move the elements of the environment with maximum simplicity.

We'll create the character as a logical point of reference for the pixel art, as it will help determine the proportions for most of the other items we'll probably create. However, first you need to learn some basics of isometric pixel art, and then move on to character creation; if you don't want to learn the basics and draw a cube, skip to step 3. Now let's get started.

1. Pixel lines

These lines are the basis for the most common (and interesting) style of isometric pixel art, the style we'll be using in this tutorial:

They are two pixels long for every pixel down. Such lines look relatively soft and are used for square surfaces:

The most commonly used line structures (as in the figure below) will work well, but the drawing will get more angular and rough with each step increase:

For contrast, here are some unevenly structured lines:

Very angular and do not look

nice. Avoid using them.

2. Volumes

Our character won't follow isometric rules exactly, so let's first create a simple cube to figure out the proportions.

Create a New Document in Photoshop with Resolution 400x400px.

I like to open an additional window for the same file using the menu Window > Arrange > New Window/lessons.(Window > Arrange > New Window…). This allows, working at an increase 600% follow the result in the zoom window 100% . Using the grid is up to you, but sometimes I find it more annoying than helpful.

Let's zoom in on the document and create one of the lines 2:1

I prefer to use 5% gray instead of black, so that later I can add shadows (black and low opacity) and be able to select each color separately with a magic wand.

There are several ways to draw a line:

1. Using Line tool(Line Tool) with Mode Pixels(Pixels) unchecked Smoothing(Anti-alias) and thickness 1px. As you draw, the tilt angle tooltip should show 26.6°. In fact, the Line tool can not be called convenient, it creates jagged lines if the angle is not accurate.

2. You need to create a selection 20 x 40 px, then choose K pencil(Pencil Tool) 1px and draw a dot in the lower left corner of the selection, after that, while holding down the key Shift click in the upper right corner. Photoshop will automatically create a new line between the two points. With practice, this way you can create smooth lines without selection.

3. You need to draw two pixels with a pencil, select them, click Ctrl+Alt, then drag the selection to a new location so that the pixels converge at the corners. You can also move the selection using the arrow keys on your keyboard while holding alt. Such a method is called Alt offset(Alt Nudge).

Here we have created the first line. Select it and move it like in step 3, or just copy and paste, moving the new layer down. After that, flip the second line horizontally through the menu Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontally(Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal). I use this feature so often that I even made a keyboard shortcut for it!

Now let's combine our lines:

Then, Alt-Offset again, flip the copy vertically and merge the two halves to complete our surface:

It's time to add a "third dimension". Alt-shift the square surface and move it to 44px down:

Tip: If you hold down the arrow keys while moving Shift, the selection will shift to 10 pixels instead of one.

To make the cube look neater, let's soften the corners by removing the leftmost and rightmost pixels from the squares. After that, add vertical lines:

Now remove the unnecessary lines at the bottom of the cube. To start coloring our figure, choose any color (preferably a light shade) and fill the top square with it.

Now increase the brightness of the selected color by 10% (I recommend using the HSB sliders on the control panel) to draw lighter corners along the front of our color square. Because we've cropped the cube a bit, these lighter lines will look prettier over the black edges (instead of replacing them) as in the image below:

Now we need to remove the black edges. Use the trick from the second line drawing method for the eraser (which should be set to normal eraser tool(Eraser Tool) Mode Pencil(Pencil Mode), Thickness 1px).

Select the color of the top square with Pipettes(Eyedropper Tool). To quickly select this tool, while drawing with a pencil or a fill, press the key alt. Use the resulting eyedropper color to fill in the vertical line in the middle of the cube. After that, reduce the brightness of the color by 15% and fill the left side of the cube with the resulting color. Decrease the brightness further 10% for the right side:

Our cube is complete. It should look clean and relatively smooth when zoomed in. 100% . We can continue.

3. Add a character

The style of the character can be completely different, you are free to change the proportions or elements as you wish. As a rule, I make a thin body and a slightly large head. The lean body of the character helps keep the lines straight and simple.

It would be logical to start with the eyes. If we were strict with isometric angles, then on the face one eye should be lower, but on a small scale we can neglect this feature to make the faces of the characters more pleasant. This will make the drawing neat even despite the size.

We make the character small, because after a while you may want to add a car, a house, an entire square or even a city to it. Therefore, the character should be one of the smallest elements in the illustration. Graphical efficiency should also be considered; try to make the character as attractive as possible with as few pixels as possible (large enough to represent facial features). In addition, small objects are much easier to draw. The exception is when you only want to show the character, their emotions, or their resemblance to someone.

Let's create a new layer. The eyes only need two pixels - one for each eye, with a blank pixel in between. Skip one pixel to the left of the eyes, add a vertical line:

Now add another layer and draw a 2px horizontal stripe, this will be the mouth. Use the arrows on your keyboard to move and when you find the perfect position, move the layer down. Do the same with the chin, it should just be a longer line:

Finish the hair and the top of the head, then soften the corners. You should get something like this:

Now leave a blank pixel next to the second eye, add sideburns (which will also help draw the character's ears) and a few more pixels above them until the hairline. Then leave one more empty pixel, this is where the ear will start and the line that marks the end of the head. Go ahead and soften the corners of the lines:

Add a pixel for the top of the ear and reshape the head if you like; heads are usually drawn already in the neck area:

Draw a line from the chin - this will be the chest. The beginning of the neck will be at the ear, a few pixels down and a couple of pixels diagonally so that our character's shoulders are visible:

Now in the place where the shoulders end, add a vertical line with a length of 12 pixels to make the outer side of the arm, and the inner side will be two pixels to the left. Connect the lines at the bottom with a couple of pixels to make a hand / fist (in our case there is no detail, so do not pay attention to this element) and just above the place where the hand ends, add a line 2:1 , which will act as a waist, then draw the line of the chest and get a finished upper body. The character's other arm is not visible, but it will look fine as it is covered by the torso.

You should end up with something similar to this:

Of course, you can use any aspect ratio you like; I prefer to draw different options side by side before deciding which is best.

Now for the lower torso we will add some more vertical lines. I like to leave 12 pixels between soles and waist. The legs are very easy to draw, you just need to make one leg a little longer, which will allow the character to look more voluminous:

Now we will add color. Finding a good skin color is always difficult, so if you want to use the same one as in this tutorial, its code is #FFCCA5. Color matching for the rest of the elements shouldn't be a problem. After that, determine the length of the sleeves, the position of the cut of the shirt, its style. Now add a dark stripe to separate the shirt from the body. I prefer to make all decorative elements lighter than black (especially when many elements are on the same level, for example from a shirt to leather or pants). This allows you to get the necessary contrast, while the image will not be too rough.

You can add light effects to almost every color zone. Avoid too many shadows or using gradients. A few pixels more ( 10% or 25% ) a light or dark color is enough to make the elements look three-dimensional and take away the flatness of the illustration. If you want to add a vibrant color to an area that already has 100% brightness, try lowering its saturation. In some cases (for example, when drawing hair), this can be a good way to change the shades.

You can try many hair options. Here are some ideas:

If you continue to create characters, little things like clothing style, sleeve length, pants length, accessories, clothing, and skin color will come in very handy for variety.

Now all that's left to do is put both elements together and evaluate how they look in the same setting:

If you want to export your creation, PNG is the ideal format.

That's it, job done!

I hope this lesson is not too confusing. I think I've covered the maximum number of tips and aesthetic tricks. You can freely expand your isometric pixel world - buildings, cars, interiors, exteriors. Doing all this is possible and even interesting, although not so easy.

Translator: Shapoval Alexey

Pixel Art is very popular for gaming even these days and there are several reasons for that!

So, what captivates Pixel Art:

Perception. Pixel art looks amazing! There is a lot to be said about each individual pixel in a sprite.
Nostalgia. Pixel Art brings back a great nostalgic feeling for gamers who grew up playing Nintendo, Super Nintendo, or Genesis (like me!)
Ease of learning. Pixel art is one of the easiest digital arts to learn, especially if you're more of a programmer than an artist ;]

So, you want to try your hand at Pixel Art? Then follow along with me and I'll show you how to make a simple yet effective playable character that you can use in your own game! Plus, as a bonus, we'll look at how to integrate it into iPhone games!

For successful learning, you will need Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have it, you can download a free trial from the Adobe website or torrent.

What is Pixel Art?

Before we get started, let's be clear about what Pixel Art is, it's not as obvious as you might think. The easiest way to define what is Pixel Art is to specify what it is not, namely: everything where pixels are created automatically. Here are some examples:

Gradient: Select two colors and calculate the color of the pixels in between. Looks cool, but it's not Pixel Art!

Blur Tool: detecting pixels and replicating/editing them to make a new version of the previous image. Again, not a pixel chart.

Smoothing tool(mostly generating new pixels in different colors to make something "smooth"). You must avoid them!

Some will say that even auto-generated colors are not Pixel Art, as they require a layer for blending effects (mixing pixels between two layers according to a given algorithm). But, since most devices currently deal with millions of colors, this statement can be ignored. However, using a small number of colors is good practice in Pixel Art.

Other tools like (line) or paint bucket tool(Paint Bucket) also automatically generates pixels, but since you can set them to not smooth the curve of filled pixels, these tools are considered to be Pixel Art friendly.

Thus, we found that Pixel Art requires a lot of attention when placing each pixel in a sprite, most often by hand and with a limited palette of colors. Let's get to work now!

Beginning of work

Before you start making your first Pixel Art asset, you should know that Pixel Art cannot be scaled. If you try to reduce it, everything will look blurry. If you try to scale it up, everything will look acceptable as long as you use a scaling that is a multiple of two (but, of course, there will be no clarity).

To avoid this problem, you must first understand how big your game character, or game element, should be, and then get to work. Most often this is based on the screen size of the device you are targeting and how many "pixels" you want to see.

For example, if you want your game to look twice as big on an iPhone 3GS (“Yes, I really want to give my game a pixelated retro look!”), which has a screen resolution of 480x320 pixels, then you need to work at half the resolution in this case it will be 240x160 pixels.

Open a new Photoshop document ( File → New…) and set the size to be the size of your game screen, then select the size for your character.

Each cell is 32x32 pixels!

I chose 32x32 pixels not only because it is great for the selected screen size, but also because 32x32 pixels is also a multiple of 2, which is convenient for toy engines, (tile sizes are often a multiple of 2, textures are aligned multiple of 2, etc.

Even if the engine you are using supports any image size, you can always try to work with an even number of pixels. In this case, if the image needs to be scaled, the size will be better divided, resulting in a better performance.

How to Draw a Pixel Art Character

Pixel Art is known to be crisp and easy to read graphics: you can define facial features, eyes, hair, body parts with just a few dots. However, the size of the image complicates the task: the smaller your character, the more difficult it is to draw them. To approach the task more practically, choose what will be the smallest in size of the character traits. I always choose eyes because they are one of the best ways to bring life to a character.

In Photoshop select pencil tool(Pencil Tool). If you can't find it, just press and hold the tool brush tool(Brush Tool) and you will immediately see it (it should be second in the list). You will just need to resize it to 1px (you can click in the tool options bar and resize it, or just hold down the [ key).

Also you will need Erase tool(Eraser Tool), so click on it (or press the E key) and change its settings by selecting from the dropdown list Mode:(Mode:) Pencil(Pencil) (since there is no dithering in this mode).

Now let's start pixelating! Draw eyebrows and eyes as shown in the image below:

ey! I'm pixelated!!

You could already start with Lineart (where drawing is done with lines), but a more practical way is to draw a character's silhouette. The good news is that you don't need to be a pro at this stage, just try to imagine the dimensions of the body parts (head, body, arms, legs) and the character's starting pose. Try to do something like this in grey:

You don't need to be a pro at this stage

Note that I also left some blank space. You don't really need to fill the entire canvas, leave room for future frames. In this case, it will be very useful to keep the same canvas size for all of them.

Once you've completed the silhouette, it's time to . Now you have to be more careful with pixel placement, so don't worry about clothes, armor, etc. for now. To be on the safe side, you can add a new layer so you never lose your original silhouette.

If you feel that the Pencil tool is too slow to draw, you can always use (Line Tool), just remember that you won't be able to position pixels as accurately as you would with a pencil. You will need to set up like below:

Select by pressing and holding Rectangle tool(Rectangle Tool)

Go to the tool options panel, in the dropdown list Pick Tool Mode(Outline Draw Mode) select Pixel , change Weight(Width) by 1px (if not already done) and uncheck Anti-alias(Smoothing). Here's how you should be:

Please note that I did not make the bottom outline for the feet. This is optional, as the feet are not such an important part of the legs to make them stand out, and you save one line of pixels on the canvas.

Applying colors and shadows

Now you are ready to start coloring our character. Don't worry about picking the right colors, they'll be very easy to change later, just make sure each one has "its own color". Use the default colors on the tab Swatches(Window → Swatches).

Color your character as shown below (but feel free to get creative and use your own colors!)

A good, contrasting color improves the readability of your asset!

Note that I still haven't done any outlines for the clothes or the hair. Always remember: save as many pixels as possible from unnecessary outlines!

Don't waste time painting every pixel. To speed things up, use lines for the same color, or paint bucket tool(Paint Bucket Tool) to fill in the gaps. By the way, it will also have to be configured. Select paint bucket tool in the toolbar (or just press the G key) and change tolerance(Tolerance) to 0, and uncheck Anti-alias(Smoothing).

If you ever need to use Magic Wand tool(Magic Wand Tool) - a very useful tool that selects all pixels with the same color, then set it up the same way as the "Paint Bucket" tool - no tolerance and anti-aliasing.

The next step, which will require some knowledge from you, is lightening and shading. If you do not have the knowledge of how to show the light and dark sides, then below I will give you a little instruction. If you don't have the time or inclination to learn it, you can skip this step and go to the Spice Up Your Palette section, because after all, you can just make your shading look like my example!

Use the same light source for the entire asset

Try to give the outlines as you want / can, because after that the asset starts to look more interesting. For example, now you can see the nose, scowling eyes, mop of hair, folds in the pants, etc. You can also add some light spots on it, it will look even better:

Use the same light source when shading

And now, as I promised, a small guide to light and shadows:

Spice up your palette

Many people use the default palette colors, but since many people use these colors, we see them in many games.

Photoshop has a large selection of colors in the standard palette, but don't rely on it too much. It's best to make your own colors by clicking on the main palette at the bottom of the toolbar.

Then, in the Color Picker window, browse the right sidebar to select a color and the main area to select the desired brightness (lighter or darker) and saturation (juicier or duller).

Once you find the right one, click OK and reconfigure the Paint Bucket tool. Don't worry, you can then simply uncheck the 'Contiguous' checkbox and when you paint with the new color, all new pixels with the same background color will also be painted over.

This is another reason why it's important to work with a small number of colors and always use the same color for the same element (shirt, hair, helmet, armor, etc.). But don't forget to use different colors for other areas, otherwise our drawing will be too overcolored!

Uncheck "Contiguous" to fill selected pixels with the same color

Change the colors if you like and get a more glamorous character coloring! You can even recolor the outlines, just make sure they blend well with the background.

Finally, do a background color test: create a new layer below your character and fill it with different colors. This is necessary in order to make sure that your character will be visible on light, dark, warm and cold backgrounds.

As you can see, I turned off anti-aliasing in all the tools I have used so far. Don't forget to do this in other tools as well, for example, Elliptical Marquee(Oval selection area) and Lasso(Lasso).

With these tools, you can easily resize selected parts, or even rotate them. To do this, use any selection tool (or press the M key) to select an area, right click and select Free Transform(Free Transform), or just press Ctrl + T . To change the size of the selected area, drag one of the handles located along the perimeter of the transformation frame. To resize the selection while maintaining aspect ratio, hold down the Shift key and drag one of the corner handles.

However, Photoshop automatically smoothes everything that is edited with the Free Transform so before editing go to Edit → Preferences → General(Ctrl + K) and change image interpolation(Image interpolation) on Nearest neighborhood(Nearest neighbor). In a nutshell, at Nearest neighborhood the new position and size is computed very roughly, no new colors or transparencies are applied and the colors you choose are kept.

Integrating Pixel Art Drawing into iPhone Games

In this section, you will learn how to integrate our pixel art into an iPhone game using the Cocos2d game framework. Why am I only considering iPhone? Because, thanks to a series of articles about Unity, (for example:, or Game in the style of Jetpack Joyride in Unity 2D) you already know how to work with them in Unity, and from articles about Crafty (Browser games: Snake) and Impact (Introduction to creating browser games games on Impact) you learned how to embed them on a canvas and create browser games.

If you're new to Cocos2D, or iPhone development in general, I suggest you start with one of the Cocos2d and iPhone tutorials. If you have Xcode and Cocos2d installed, read on!

Create a new project iOS → cocos2d v2.x → cocos2d iOS template, name it PixelArt, and select iPhone as the device. Drag the created pixel art, for example: sprite_final.png into your project, and then open HelloWorldLayer.m and replace the initialization method with the following:

-(id) init ( if((self=)) ( CCSprite * hero = ; hero.position = ccp(96, 96); hero.flipX = YES; ; ) return self; )

We position the sprite on the left side of the screen and rotate it so that it faces to the right. Compile, run, and then you will see your sprite on the screen:

However, remember, as we discussed earlier in this tutorial, we wanted to artificially scale up the pixels so that each pixel is noticeably different from the others. So add this new line inside the initialization method:

Hero scale = 2.0;

Nothing complicated, right? Compile, run and... wait, our sprite is blurry!

This is because, by default, Cocos2d flattens the drawing when it scales it. We don't need it, so add the following line:

This line configures Cocos2d to scale images without anti-aliasing, so our boy still looks "pixelated" Compile, run and... yes, it works!

Note the benefits of using Pixel Art graphics - we can use a smaller image than what is displayed on the screen, saving a lot of texture memory. We don't even need to make separate images for retina displays!

And what's next?

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned a little more about pixel art! Before parting, I want to give you some advice:

Always try to avoid using anti-aliasing, gradients, or too many colors for your assets. This is for your own good, especially if you are still a beginner.
If you REALLY want to emulate retro style, check out the art in 8-bit or 16-bit console games.
Some styles do not use dark outlines, others do not take into account the influence of light or shadow. It all depends on the style! In our lesson, we did not draw shadows, but this does not mean that you should not use them.

To a beginner, Pixel Art seems to be the easiest graphics to learn, but in fact it is not as simple as it seems. The best way to improve your skills is practice, practice, practice. I highly recommend posting your work on the Pixel Art forums for other artists to give you advice - it's a great way to improve your technique! Start small, practice hard, get feedback and you can create an amazing game that will bring you a lot of money and joy!

Pixel Art (Pixel Art) - translated from English as pixel art. A pixel is the smallest graphic element in a digital image.

So Pixel Art literally means the art of painting with pixels.

For clarity, let's take a look at this example:

Owlboy (pixel art game)

This is what pixel art games look like.

Very often, such graphics are used in indie games because they have a very recognizable computer game style.

However, Pixel Art is not only graphics, sprites and pictures for games, this is a whole direction of digital and graphic art.

Beautiful pictures are drawn with the help of pixel art:

You will not confuse this retro graphic style with anything.

Some paintings in this style are quite worthy to take place on your desktop.

There are also very cool artists who work in this style.

Look at this picture. Each pixel here was drawn separately and manually. It's like putting together a mosaic, as they used to do, and they do now.

If we enlarge this picture, we can see how everything is done up close:

The unique style of pixel art is that there are fairly sharp color transitions and no anti-aliasing. For example, let's take another job in digital graphics of a fairly average level, check out this one drawing of a girl with glasses(18+) on the blog www.econdude.pw.

This is a drawing with a computer mouse in the SAI2.0 program.

However, if you zoom in on this picture, you can see the dithering:

There are no clear transitions of colors and shades, but in pixel art the transitions are clear.

For an example, see how you can make transitions between colors in pixel art:

This is an approximate image, if you look at it from afar with a high resolution, the color transition will be quite smooth, but here you can see the clarity and consistency of the style.

Here's another example, this is a pretty classic picquel art drawing:

http://www.gamer.ru/everything/pixel-art-dlya-nachinayuschih

When you zoom in, the pictures don't look very pretty, but if you look at the pixel art from a distance, at a higher resolution, it can look wonderful.

Can you imagine what a great job these artists do?

Sometimes they say that Pixel Art is made because it is cheaper, they say that indie developers simply do not have the resources to create modern 3D graphics, so they use the simplest thing they can think of, drawing in basic graphic editors pixels.

However, anyone who has ever drawn anything in the Pixel Art style will tell you that this is almost the most resource-consuming (time-consuming) style of graphics.

Animation in the style of Pixel Art and generally a hell of a job.

http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/

Therefore, it still needs to be proven that Pixel Art is a “lazy style”, I would even say that on the contrary, this is not the most NOT lazy graphic style.

However, everyone can learn how to draw something simple in the Pixel Art style, and you don’t need any special programs, a simple graphic editor is enough.

If you want to learn how to draw in this style, you, like in any other case, need a lot of practice, and you can start, for example, from articles on Habré: Pixel art course

There you will also find the basic principles of pixel art.

Here is one example of how to draw pixel art (accelerated video - speed drawing) at the beginner level, you can learn how to draw like this in just a week:

Pixelart:: spaceship drawing

Sometimes some absolutely crazy drawings are made in this style, I can’t even believe that a person drew it and I want to know how much time was spent on it. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vChMzRnw-Hc

See this picture of Sarah Carrigan from StarCraft? What is it according to you and how is it done?

This man built from blocks in the game minecraftb, the work took 23 weeks.

In the approximation, you can see that all these are separate blocks.

Formally, this is no longer pixel art, but even “minecraft block art”, but the essence of the style remains the same and this is the largest pixel art drawing and a world record, according to the author.

In fact, if you analyze any photo or picture in an approximation, it is obvious that it also consists of pixels, like any image in general. But the whole difference is that pixel art is created by hand for each pixel.

For another example, artists and animators Paul Robertson and Ivan Dixon created this:

SIMPSONS PIXELS

It feels like a gigantic work, and even with the use of some additional tools (there are filters that turn pictures into pixel art), it would take a very long time.

Personally, I think that Pixel Art pictures are the real modern art in the best sense of the word.

Each Pixel Art picture has a very clear value and you can see it, you can feel it.

This can be appreciated even by a person who does not understand this well.

However, unfortunately, this genre of art is not very popular and is now considered obsolete, and the return to it in recent years in the form of many games from steam in the style of pixel art is also starting to annoy people. Although personally I think that this retro style of graphics is already a classic, and a real classic will never die.

pixel art(written without a hyphen) or pixel art- a direction of digital art, which consists in creating images at the pixel level (i.e., the minimum logical unit that an image consists of). Not all raster images are pixel art, although they are all made up of pixels. Why? Because in the end, the concept of pixel art includes not so much the result as the process of creating an illustration. Pixel by pixel, and that's it. If you take a digital photo, greatly reduce it (so that the pixels become visible) and claim that you drew it from scratch - this will be a real forgery. Although there will surely be naive simpletons who will praise you for your hard work.

Now it is not known exactly when this technique originated, the roots are lost somewhere in the early 1970s. However, the technique of composing images from small elements goes back to much more ancient forms of art, such as mosaics, cross-stitching, carpet weaving and beading. The very phrase "pixel art" as a definition of pixel art was first used in an article by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal in the journal Communications of the ACM (December 1982).

Pixel art has received the widest application in computer games, which is not surprising - it made it possible to create images that are undemanding to resources and look really beautiful at the same time (at the same time, they take a lot of time from the artist and require certain skills, and therefore imply good pay) . The heyday, the highest point in development, is officially called video games on consoles of the 2nd and 3rd generation (early 1990s). Further progress in technology, the appearance of first 8-bit color, and then True Color, the development of three-dimensional graphics - all this eventually pushed pixel art into the background and third plans, and then it completely began to seem that pixel art had come to an end.

Oddly enough, but it was Mr. Scientific and technological progress, who pushed pixel graphics to the last positions in the mid-90s, and later returned it to the game - revealing to the world mobile devices in the form of cell phones and PDAs. After all, no matter how useful a newfangled device is, we all know that if you can’t at least play solitaire on it, it’s worthless. Well, where there is a screen with a low resolution, there is pixel art. As they say, welcome back.

Of course, various retrograde-minded elements played their role in the return of pixel graphics, who love to nostalgize over the good old childhood games, while saying: “Oh, they don’t do that now”; aesthetes who are able to appreciate the beauty of pixel art, and indie developers who do not perceive modern graphic beauties (and sometimes, though rarely, simply do not know how to implement them in their own projects), which is why they sculpt pixel art. But let's still not discount purely commercial projects - applications for mobile devices, advertising and web design. So now pixel art, as they say, is widespread in narrow circles and has earned itself a kind of art status "not for everyone" . And this is despite the fact that for a simple layman it is extremely accessible, because in order to work in this technique, it is enough to have a computer and a simple graphic editor at hand! (the ability to draw, by the way, also does not hurt) Enough words, get to the point!

2. Tools.

What do you need to create pixel art? As I said above, a computer and any graphic editor capable of working at the pixel level is enough. You can draw anywhere, even on the Game Boy, even on the Nintendo DS, even in Microsoft Paint (another thing is that drawing in the latter is extremely inconvenient). There are a great many raster editors, many of them are free and functional enough, so that everyone can decide on the software on their own.

I draw in Adobe Photoshop because it's convenient and because it's been a long time. I won’t lie and tell, mumbling my false teeth, that “I remember Photoshop was still very small, it was on the Macintosh, and it was with the number 1.0” This was not. But I remember Photoshop 4.0 (and also on a Mac). And so for me the question of choice never stood. And therefore, no, no, but I will give recommendations regarding Photoshop, especially where its capabilities will help greatly simplify creativity.

So, you need any graphics editor that allows you to draw with a tool in one square pixel (pixels can also be non-square, for example, round, but we are not interested in them at the moment). If your editor supports any set of colors, great. If it also allows you to save files - just great. It would be nice to know how to work with layers, since when working on a rather complex picture, it is more convenient to decompose its elements into different layers, but by and large this is a matter of habit and convenience.

Shall we start? Are you probably waiting for a list of some secret tricks, recommendations that will teach you how to draw pixel art? And the truth is, there isn't much of it. The only way to learn how to draw pixel art is to draw yourself, try, try, don't be afraid and experiment. Feel free to copy other people's work, don't be afraid to seem unoriginal (just don't pass off someone else's work as your own, hehe). Carefully and thoughtfully analyze the work of masters (not mine) and draw, draw, draw. Several useful links are waiting for you at the end of the article.

3. General principles.

However, there are a few general principles that are worth knowing. There are really few of them, I call them "principles" and not laws, because they are rather advisory in nature. After all, if you manage to draw an ingenious pixel art bypassing all the rules - who cares about them?

The most basic principle can be formulated as follows: the minimum unit of an image is a pixel, and if possible, all elements of the composition should be proportionate to it. I will decipher: everything that you draw consists of pixels, and the pixel should be read in everything. This does not mean that there cannot be elements in the picture at all, for example, 2x2 pixels, or 3x3. But it is still preferable to build an image from individual pixels.

The stroke and in general all lines of the picture should be one pixel thick (with rare exceptions).

I am by no means saying that this is wrong. But it's still not very pretty. And to make it beautiful, remember one more rule: draw without kinks, round smoothly. There is such a thing as kinks - fragments that are out of order, they give the lines an uneven, jagged look (in the English-speaking environment of pixel artists they are called jaggies):

Kinks deprive the drawing of natural smoothness and beauty. And if fragments 3, 4 and 5 are obvious and easily corrected, the situation is more complicated with others - the length of a single piece in the chain is broken there, it would seem a trifle, but a noticeable trifle. It takes a little practice to learn to see and avoid such places. Kink 1 is knocked out of the line because it is a single pixel - while in the area where it is wedged, the line consists of segments of 2 pixels. To get rid of it, I softened the entry of the curve into the bend by extending the top segment to 3px, and redrawing the entire line in 2px segments. Breaks 2 and 6 are identical to each other - these are already fragments of 2 pixels in length in areas built by single pixels.

An elementary set of examples of oblique lines, which can be found in almost every pixel art manual (mine is no exception), will help to avoid such breaks when drawing:

As you can see, a straight line is made up of segments of the same length, shifted by one pixel as it is drawn - this is the only way the effect of linearity is achieved. The most common construction methods are with a segment length of 1, 2 and 4 pixels (there are others, but the options presented should be enough to implement almost any artistic idea). Of these three, the most popular can be safely called the length of the segment of 2 pixels: draw a segment, move the pen by 1 pixel, draw another segment, move the pen by 1 pixel, draw another segment:

Easy, right? It just takes a habit. Knowing how to draw slanted lines in 2 pixel increments will help with isometrics, so we'll take a closer look at it next time. In general, straight lines are great - but only until the task of drawing something miraculous arises. Here we need curves, and a lot of different curves. And we adopt a simple rule for rounding curved lines: the length of the curve elements should decrease/increase gradually.

The exit from the straight line to the rounding is carried out smoothly, I indicated the length of each segment: 5 pixels, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, again 2 (already vertical), 3, 5 and beyond. Not necessarily your case will use the same sequence, it all depends on the smoothness that is required. Another rounding example:

Again, we avoid the kinks that spoil the picture so much. If you want to check the learned material, here I have a skin for Winamp drawn by an unknown author, a blank:

There are gross errors in the picture, and just unsuccessful rounding, and kinks are found - try to correct the picture based on what you already know. That's all for me with the lines, I propose to draw a little. And don't let the simplicity of the examples fool you, you can only learn to draw by drawing - even such simple things.

4.1. We draw a bottle with living water.

1. The shape of the object, while you can not use color.

2. Red liquid.

3. Change the color of the glass to blue, add shaded areas inside the bubble and a light area on the intended surface of the liquid.

4. Add white highlights on the bubble, and a 1 pixel wide dark red shadow on the liquid areas bordering the bubble walls. Looks good, doesn't it?

5. Similarly, we draw a bottle with a blue liquid - here the same color of glass, plus three shades of blue for the liquid.

4.2. We draw a watermelon.

Let's draw a circle and a semicircle - these will be a watermelon and a cut out slice.

2. Let's mark the cutout on the watermelon itself, and on the slice - the border between the crust and the pulp.

3. Fill. Colors from the palette, the average shade of green is the color of the crust, the average red is the color of the pulp.

4. Denote the transitional area from the peel to the pulp.

5. Light stripes on a watermelon (finally, he looks like himself). And of course, seeds! If you cross a watermelon with cockroaches, they will spread themselves.

6. We bring to mind. We use a pale pink color to indicate highlights above the seeds in a section, and, laying out the pixels in a checkerboard pattern, we achieve some kind of volume from the cut out slice (the method is called dithering, about it later). We use a dark red tint to indicate the shaded places in the section of the watermelon, and dark green (again, checkerboard pixels) to give volume to the watermelon itself.

5. Dithering.

Dithering, or blending, is the technique of mixing pixels in a distinctly ordered (not always) pattern in two bordering areas of different colors. The simplest, most common and effective way is to alternate pixels in a checkerboard pattern:

The reception was born due to (or rather contrary to) technical limitations - on platforms with limited palettes, dithering made it possible, by mixing pixels of two different colors, to get a third one that was not in the palette:

Now, in an era of limitless technical possibilities, many say that the need for dithering has disappeared by itself. However, proper use of it can give your work a characteristic retro style that all fans of old video games will recognize. Personally, I like to use dithering. I don't know it very well, but I love it.

Two more options for dithering:

What you need to know about dithering to be able to use it. The minimum width of the blending zone must be at least 2 pixels (those same checkers). More is possible. It's better not to do less.

Below is an example of bad dithering. Despite the fact that such a technique can often be seen on sprites from video games, you need to be aware that the television screen significantly smoothed the image, and such a comb, and even in motion, was not fixed by the eye:

Well, enough theory. I suggest you practice a little more.

Pixel art can be drawn in any raster graphics program, it's a matter of personal preference and experience (as well as financial capabilities, of course). Someone uses the simplest Paint, I do it in Photoshop - because, firstly, I have been working in it for a long time, and secondly, I am more comfortable there. Somehow I decided to try the free Paint.NET, I didn’t like it - it’s like with a car that recognizes a foreign car with an automatic transmission in Zaporozhets is unlikely to sit down. My employer provides me with licensed software, so I have a clear conscience before Adobe Corporation ... Although the prices for their programs are unthinkable, and they burn in hell for it.

1. Preparation for work.

Create a new document with any settings (let it be 60 pixels wide, 100 pixels high). The main tool of a pixel artist is a pencil ( Pencil Tool, invoked by hotkey B). If the toolbar has a brush enabled (and an icon depicting a brush), hover over it, press and hold LMB- a small drop-down menu will appear in which you should select a pencil. Set the pen size to 1 pixel (in the top panel on the left, a drop-down menu Brush):