Making Pixel Art from Scratch

It's been a pretty text-heavy week, so let's get some colorful drawings in here. And a tutorial, no less! Today I'm going to show you my method for pixel art. I'll be using a recent icon I made for a friend to use on a Minecraft forum. Meet ChiefofPigs. This is the finished product we'll be working towards.

Let's begin. This is her skin in-game that I'll be using for reference. While we're on the subject, Miners Need Cool Shoes is a pretty good resource for looking up and editing Minecraft skins.

In Minecraft, you can attach carrots to sticks and use them to lead pigs around. This pose seemed fitting. Sketching your idea beforehand is useful to determine angles and detail.

If you've had a lot of experience designing sprites, it's possible to go straight to the pixel-drawing stage from here. But if you need some help, you can make a template to work off of. This is where you open the image editor of your choice and get your guidelines established. I use a vector editor like Illustrator (or PowerPoint, if that's your thing). Just as a side note, a hard black outline adds a lot of bulk at a low resolution, so if that's your plan try to make everything just a bit thinner than normal.

Add details. Keep in mind that you're going to be reducing the resolution quite a bit, so don't add anything too miniscule. To give you an idea of scale, in this instance the pupils ended up being only two pixels tall.



The specific colors you use aren't important, because you'll be drawing over them with new ones when you refine your pixel image. The important part of this step is making sure that you'll be capable of distinguishing all the parts of your image by color. For instance, the skin further away has a darker shade to separate it from the foreground skin. Stuff like that.

Resolution reduction results in a ridiculously ragged replica. The next step is fixing this. Scale your image down to the desired dimensions of your finished product. Finding the right balance is crucial: the smaller you make it, the more detail is lost. Always keep a backup of your source image. In the image editor of your choice, draw over your low-res image using the shapes and colors as a guide. MSPaint works well for this, but Photoshop with a one-pixel pencil brush has the added benefit of letting you work on a new layer to keep your reference and product separate.

A lot of what you do in the refining process is up to your judgement. You'll notice I added a bit of shading on the legs and arms, and used a less solid outline on the headdress to give it a more feathery look. This can be a little tedious, but I've had nothing but great results with this method.

And there you have it! Have fun making your own pixel art and sprites! I'm bad at ending tutorials! Say hi to the family I guess!