i'm going to be teaching you everything you need to know to not only get started
with pixel art but to really kick start your journey as an artist
to get started with pixel art you'll need a computer tablet or mobile device to draw the
pixel art you can use a mouse drawing tablet or your finger whichever you prefer there's a lot of
software options to choose from pixel or specific ones and more general or based ones i use a sprite
which is pixel art specific and i highly recommend it but there are plenty of great free options too
use whatever is available to you most art software use the same tools and workflow so the skills
are transferable anyway if you want to get up to speed quickly i have this a sprite tutorial series
to help illustrate some of the things in this video i've created this little pixel art wizard
the process for creating this character was quite simple start with the silhouette then
define some features cleaning up the line work and adding color before refining even further shadow
line color refine has a nice ring to it using a silhouette is my preferred approach because
it allows me to focus on the simple shapes and readability and the silhouette can't change a lot
throughout as well but the key shapes pretty much stay the same notice how these little areas add
interest to what is essentially just a triangle this isn't the only approach to making picks a lot
you can start off with construction lines this is especially helpful for mapping out the proportions
of the character before adding any detail and it can save you a lot of headaches later on if
you watch our good friend brandon you'll notice he likes to use this technique a lot thanks for
the tip another process is to just go wild and lay down a really rough idea and clean it up as
you go i actually really like this especially for backgrounds because you can nail the vibe
early on and just relax as you clean it up though it can be a little bit chaotic especially if you
don't know which direction you're going so you may feel like it's not coming together for a
while but trust the process you can even design in 2d if you prefer and then shrink it down
this gives a nice starting point but the character detail can change a lot depending
on how far you shrink it and these aren't the only ways to make pixel law everyone's process
is unique i'd recommend watching your favorite artists to see their process and try out a bunch
of ways to learn what you find the most fun no matter which way you like to work you can always
arrive at the same end point canvas size is a tricky one because it really depends on what
you're trying to make the level of detail you need and the project you're working on a good
exercise for beginners is to try making the same thing in multiple different sizes like i did here
i probably could have went down at the 16 pixel size here because the silhouette translates well
and the style is really simple so you don't lose a lot of detail but this character is part of an
established project where size consistency will be key to make sure things don't look mismatched
if you're a beginner i would recommend working small to try and get used to the importance of
a single pixel a single pixel can change the way something looks entirely and this can easily be
missed if you work in larger sizes i have a challenge called september which is designed
to help you get used to the small size limits check out this video if you want to learn more
after i've done a silhouette in the right size i try and put down some basic line work to map
out the key areas here's some line work specific techniques one thing to be aware of is doubles
this is where pixels meet and make a right angle doubles can make the line work thicker and appear
darker or sharper in places for a single pixel outline removing this corner pixel can lead to
cleaner and more consistent lines you can use doubles to add shadow and having only doubles
in your outline can be a really bold style choice juggies are when pixels in lines or curves appear
well jagged this can create unintentional sharpness which can be fixed by removing
any out of place pixels or by giving more smooth progressions to lines or curves but jaggies can
be useful too i actually use a jagged line intentionally here to show off the shape of
the brow in the wizard's face remember this video is not about good or bad it's about the awareness
and the intentional usage of these techniques to help you achieve the look that you're going for
art fundamentals is a huge area so here are just some of the things i wish i knew when i
was starting out let's take a look at a standard hsv color picker where you select your colors in
most art software so you have your hues which are basically just your colors a red hue is currently
selected you have your saturation which is the intensity of the color this is increasing from
left to right from the neutral grays to the highest saturation and value is how light or
dark something is this is the most important thing which i'll get onto shortly but value is
generally increasing from bottom to top i say generally because there's one very important
thing to understand each hue has its own perceived value if we look at the hues in black and white or
grayscale you'll notice that the yellow has the lightest value while the blues and the purples
have the darkest value so how does this apply to the colour picker well we have four examples here
with different hues selected red yellow green and blue i've selected a colour in the same position
of all of them in the top right hand corner even though they're in the same position if we convert
this to black and white we can see that each of the values are very different this is important to
keep in mind when selecting your colours value is the most important thing to consider because it's
how you give your art a sense of 3d form and depth using light and shadow it really doesn't matter
what colors you choose if your value selections and value range is incorrect just won't look right
in art software you can quickly check the values of your piece by placing a layer filled with black
on top and setting that layer mode to color it's actually not a totally accurate representation
of the values but it's good enough for a quick reference too many saturated colors in a piece
can make the colors clash be difficult to look at and burn your eyes and a lot of desaturated
colours can look muted and washed out you can use saturated colours sparingly and intentionally
to add areas of interest and focal points but remember value is the most important i wanted
to show you this piece which uses really highly saturated colours but the value structure is still
on point so it works there lots of different types of contrast in visual art value hue
shape detail just to name a few high contrast between things means that there's a large
difference and low contrast means that these things are more similar you can use high
contrast areas to attract the viewer's eye and low contrast for areas of rest and repetition contrast
is relative though if everything is low contrast you get unity and pattern-like visual behavior and
for high contrast areas to stand out you need those low contrast areas to allow it to do so
if i was to put in a bunch of texture and detail into the wizard's beard for example the face would
stand out a lot less try and think how you can use contrast to emphasize important parts of your work
understanding how light and shadow works can help you shade things properly and use value
to show the 3d form if i shine a light at this ball we can see factors that make up a basic
light model the ball blocks the light to create a cast shadow and darken the side of the ball
the darkest part of the shadow is where the ball makes contact with the surface which is known as
the occlusion shadow on the lit side we have our mid tones and highlight we have our terminator
where the light transitions to shadow we also have bounce light which is the light reflecting
from the surroundings and back onto the object increasing the value of the cold shadow it's not
necessary to draw all of these factors in pixel art as this might be too complicated depending
on the size you're working in but it's up to you and the style you're going for one thing to
remember how shadow and light works really depends on the amount of light sources their strengths and
the surrounding environment if you want to deep dive into these topics i would highly recommend
james gurney's color and light one thing i see quite often is if you don't consider the form
and just shade around the outsides of the object you get this effect known as pillow shading which
doesn't aid in describing the form of the object making it look flat materials reflect light in
different ways too notice how the matte yellow ball doesn't have a strong highlight as the light
is diffused across the surface but the glossy 8-ball and metal object have stronger highlights
and reflect surfaces and objects if you want to portray a particular material like wood or gold
consider how that material reflects light and use a value structure and range that helps show that
you may hear or see colors being described as warm and cool if we look at these two colours
the central colour appears cool compared to the red and in this example the colour appears warm
compared to the blue it's actually the same neutral gray that appears differently because
of the surrounding colours if we look at the red and blue together in this example the blue is the
cooler color and the red is the warmer color but if we take that same red and put it against this
new red our original red on the left is now the cooler color the thing to take away here is that
colors are relative and will appear differently depending on the colors surrounding it the colour
of an object is massively influenced by the light sources and surrounding objects and environment
notice how the yellow balls colour changes as i change the colour of the light source and it also
takes on the red of my sketchbook because of the reflected bounce light hue shifting is a technique
i've seen a lot and i think it is a simplification of this it's also to try and make your colors more
interesting so when you add shadow for example instead of just shifting the value of the color
to make it darker you can shift the hue as well towards a different color like i did here when i
shifted the shadows towards purple and the lights towards yellow notice the difference between
a pure value change and the value and hue change let me know which style you prefer in the comments
another kind of common beginner thing i see is the random use of lots of different colours this
can make an image look unintentionally noisy and you can lose control of your colour palette and
value structure it can help to limit your colour range to try and get more cohesion in your work
if you struggle with colour selections and want to make your life a little bit easier you can use
predefined color palettes they're also great for getting a specific look like the game boy palette
there are lots of pre-made palettes on low spec or you can just pick colors from your favorite movies
or or whatever and make your own but a palette doesn't do all the hard work for you you'll
still have to consider the hue saturation value contrast and style you're going for when you're
creating art dithering is a technique where you create patterns to blend or give the illusion that
there are more colors than there actually are if we have a limited palette of only black and white
we can create this checkerboard pattern to create the midtone if we look from far away or blur it
notice how it appears great with varying pattern complexities we can create a whole value scale
from black to white you can be really creative with dithering and the patterns that you use
can have different effects this one looks more noisy and gritty for example you can even use
dithering to create new colours by mixing colours in patterns which is especially useful if you're
working from a limited palette dithering can look noisy and add unintentional texture especially in
smaller sprites so be careful with your usage i really like this little portrait i think it
uses dithering really well even in the smaller spaces anti-aliasing or a a is a technique used
to soften pixel lock to achieve this we choose a color with a value which is between the two
immediate colors here we see a circle with no anti-aliasing so it looks sharp the second has
some anti-aliasing which successfully softens the shape but the third one has too much which softens
the circle but also alters the shape by adding these corners you gotta be selective and make
sure it doesn't change the shape in this example we have internal and external anti-aliasing but
note that if the background changes the effect of the external anti-aliasing stops working because
of the value change as i've mentioned a lot the value is the most important so you can be creative
with the hue if you like it can even be used to alter the appearance of your linework making it
appear thinner in some parts looking at the wizard here's an example with too much anti-aliasing it's
really not required at all but if i was going to use any as a style choice i might use it to soften
the beard this is quite an advanced technique i think and you have to be careful with your
application but as some inspiration this is one of my favorite examples of using anti-aliasing
really well using shading or anti-aliasing techniques for the entire length of an outline can
lead to an effect known as banding this can make your image look immediately flat or noisy instead
of helping to build the form you can kind of see this with pillow shading which i described earlier
now a bunch of different outline styles here's a few that i can think of off the top of my head a
single black outline looks graphic or cartoony and it's great for animation a double outline looks
really thick as we saw earlier when we looked at doubles you can use a normal outline with a
different color this can reduce the contrast and sharpness of the outline there's a colored outline
which represents the area that it's outlining we have a light source outline which represents the
area it's outlining and the direction of a light source we have selective outline or sellout where
anti-aliasing is used in the linework to help describe the form we have broken outlines which
is a form of selective outlining where parts of the outline are left out completely again
to help describe the form you can even use no outlines if you want for the wizard i've used
a single pixel black outline because it fits into the style that i'm going for i've also broken the
outline a little in the hat to make that shape read more clearly doing pixel art with clusters
in mind is the technique of pairing up pixels or multiple pixels to form chunks to describe areas
generally avoiding single pixels a single pixel or orphan pixel can introduce noise or look out of
place amongst clusters but they can't be used to add details highlights especially in small pixel
lot and even introduce a noisy or gritty effect if that's what you're going for the wizard's eyes are
single pixels which is necessary because of the size of the sprite and also just because i like
the way it looks i thought this piece was really interesting because it basically only uses single
pixels while it may look noisy and gritty it works really well for the style of the piece
one thing to note when taking reference from retro game pixel art is the fact that some of
these games were being displayed on crt monitors which put simply blurs pixels if we look at the
raw pixels of rystar an old sega game we see the pixels very clearly might even be able to spot
some banding and jaggies but none of that matters if we actually look at how it was displayed on
the clt screens in a 2017 interview the creators of sonic and tails mentioned that once they were
aware of this they started designing everything to make use of the blurriness even using it to
create intermediate colors while i can't say for sure that all retro pixel art games were
designed intentionally for the crt blurriness it's something to keep in mind when looking for
reference or inspiration because today we mainly see the raw clean pixels without any filtering
using your knowledge of art fundamentals and pixelart techniques as well as your own
personal tastes there are an endless amount of styles you can come up with you might like the
way one thing looks while someone else doesn't there is no right or wrong style but remember
making informed and consistent style choices can be helpful to ensure everything you're
making looks intentional and fits into the world you're building there is a lot of information
in this video that i've been practicing for years and i am still learning so please don't
be discouraged if it seems like a lot the most important part is that you're having
fun and enjoying the journey because art is a lifelong process make sure you subscribe for
more art videos and if you're interested in supporting the channel further check out the
patreon and join the community on the discord i'd really appreciate it thanks for watching