Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how to
make pixel art kind of like this in Adobe Illustrator. Alright, let's get started!
Ok, so I'm here in Adobe Illustrator, and I'm just going to Create a New File.
We'll come up here to Print and then Letter and Create.
Now, to keep my bright colors, I'm going to change it to RGB by coming up here to File > Document
Color Mode > RGB Color (and actually, I could have done that in the last step).
Next, we'll import our artwork, and this can be a JPEG or PNG,
and you can also actually use just Vector artwork, but you'll need to rasterize it first.
So, I'm going to come up here to File > Place, and this is the one I want, so I'll place that.
Now, some things to note about the artwork that you choose: It's best to pick a simple
image without outlines, and that's really only if you're looking for a low number of pixels in your
art. If you don't mind having a lot of pixels, having like black outlines on them is okay,
and I'll show you both ways. And I got both of these images from Vecteezy, so they're not
something that I own or anything like that. I'm going to go up here to Object,
and normally I would choose Create Object Mosaic, but unfortunately, this is grayed out,
and the reason for that is it needs to be embedded art. Right now, it's linked. So,
if I open up my Links panel under Window, I can see here that it's got a little link icon right
here. I'm going to go up to these three little lines and choose Embed Images, and now this
image is embedded. So now when I come up here to Object, I'm able to select Create Object Mosaic.
When I click that, I'll get this dialog box. My current size is 342 by 381.
That's about the right size that I'm looking for, so I don't need to make a new size here. I'm going
to change the number of tiles to 30, and when I do that, the height does not update, but I can choose
Use Ratio right here, and it'll automatically update to match the actual width and height ratio,
which is what I want because I want each of my little pixels to be a square. And by the way,
when I say pixels, these aren't going to actually be the size of a pixel; it's just a style of art.
Now, if you decide to have a lot of tiles, maybe you want your width to be 150 tiles.
That takes a long time, even on a really nice new computer, unlike this one. So,
be careful of that. It can sit here and make your computer think for a long time. Alright,
so we’ve got 30. And then we'll say Okay. This is my result, and I'm not really liking
it because I'm not getting the detail I want, so I'm going to undo. We'll come back up here and try
again. I'm going to choose 40 this time. This will give me a little more detail in the face,
and I'll choose Use Ratio, which changes the height to 45, and I'll choose Okay.
And this is much better, so now we have to kind of clean this up. I don't want
these white pixels out here. I want it to have kind of a transparent background. I'm going to
use my Group Selection tool. That one is right underneath your Direct Selection.
I'll click one of those and then I'll choose Select > Same Fill Color,
and it's going to select all of the other squares that are exactly the same white color,
and I'll delete those. Now you'll see I've got a box behind here. That's my original image, so I'm
just going to click and drag it over, and this is really nice because you can kind of see what
you're aiming for. I've got a keyboard shortcut set up for Select > Same Fill Color. For me that
is Shift + Command + F, but that's something you have to set up. So, if you want to do that,
you can go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, come over here to Menu Commands and go to Select > Same
Fill Color and then click right here and type whatever you want it to be. I like
Shift + Command + F because it doesn't take up another keyboard shortcut that I use a lot. And
then we'll say okay. And then you'll probably be prompted to save your keyboard shortcuts, which I
recommend you do that. Okay, so I'm going to click this one with my group selection, I'll hit Shift
+ Command + F which is Select > Same Fill Color, and delete those. Since these are all in the line,
I can also just select them all and delete. I'll hit Command + Y or Control + Y to see what I'm
left with and we're getting pretty close. Now I'm going to go ahead and draw a box around him,
I'll make it black and send to the back with Shift + Command + Left Bracket or Shift + Control + Left
Bracket, and we can see what we're left with. I don't like all these white pieces out here, so I'm
going to hit Y on my keyboard, and that'll give me the Magic Wand tool. Now, if I click one of those,
it's going to select all similar pieces, and that includes this pink. So, I don't want that. I'll
double-click my Wand tool and lower my tolerance to about 10. And then I'm going to try again.
Okay, and this is much closer to what I want. I've selected all the white pieces that don't
look quite right, and I'll delete all those. Now that it's more of what I want, I'm going
to go ahead and delete that black box. I'm going to change the whites of his eyes to actual white.
Also, if you're not seeing any of these panels, they're all underneath "Windows". So,
"Window" > "Color" is right here, if you're not seeing your color panel, for example. We lost his
smile almost completely, so I'm just going to copy and paste some pixels so we bring his smile back.
So, I'm going to click on this one. I'll get right on that corner, click and drag, and hold "Shift"
and "Option" to make a copy, or "Shift" and "ALT" on a PC. And you can see my cursor is changing,
and that's because I have "Snap to Point" on. "Snap to Point" is under "View" and then "Snap to
Point", and that's really useful. So, if you take one corner, hold "Shift" and "Option" or "Shift"
and "ALT" on a PC, and drag, you'll make a copy, but you'll also have it snap to that other one.
And then we can hit "Command + D" or "Ctrl + D" a couple of times to transform again. That's
what you're doing when you do that. It's basically making a copy and sending it the
same number of pixels as you just did. It just remembers what you did last. So, in this case,
we made a copy, and we also dragged it a little ways, and so it repeats that same motion.
Now, sometimes when you make your copy, it'll be behind the other piece, so bring it to the front
with "Shift + Command + ]" or "Shift + Control + ]". I'm going to select all these with my Group
Selection and then I'll use the Eyedropper tool and select a pink color to change these to pink
too, to the darker pink. Now, I like his hand over here better than this one, but I like his
foot over here better than this one. I'm just going to copy that arm by selecting all those
pieces with my group selection tool, and then I'll hit "O," which is my Reflect tool, and I'll hold
Option and click right in the middle, or Alt on a PC. And then I'll get this Reflect dialog box.
It looks like it's just moving it over, but you can also make a copy with this button right here.
So now we've got a similar arm on the right side. I'm going to copy some of these up. I'm going to
delete these pieces over here, and then use my Reflect tool again. I'll hit "O" on my keyboard
to get to my Reflect tool right over here. Then I'll hold Option or Alt and get right in the
middle like this and make a copy there. Alright, and now I'm pretty happy with how the pixel art
looks. One option is to move his smile down so it looks more like a smile. So I'll try that,
and then I'll have to fill in that space. I'm holding Option or Alt and copying these,
snapping to point. I'm holding Shift too so they move along the same plane. Okay,
this looks better. I think we're done with this one. Now I'll open a more detailed image,
and we'll also make pixel art from that one. So I'll go to File > Place. Now you'll notice
here at the bottom it says “Link." I'm going to uncheck that, and that way it'll automatically
embed it. That way you don't have to go to your Links window and embed it. So we'll place this,
and I'll click and drag. Now this one's a little more detailed, so we'll have to do it a little
differently, if we're going to maintain all of that detail. I'll come up to Object > Create
Object Mosaic. This time for the number of tiles, I'm going to use 100, and we'll use Ratio.
This one's a perfect square, so it's 100 by 100, and we'll say okay.
And this might take some time depending on your system, and this one turned out okay. So if I zoom
in here, we're losing a little bit of that outline here, but by and large, it did pretty good. And
then I would go ahead with that same process of cleaning up the image, maybe making some of this
black. I'm also going to select all of these and delete them, move this out, and now you
can see we've got a little bit of cleanup here. So that is a somewhat easy way to make pixel art
in Adobe Illustrator. Alright, if you like this video and you want to see more videos like this,
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time a new video comes out. Alright, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!