in this video i'm going to be showing you how to design and make
a pixel art character in multiple different styles
for this i'm going to be using clip studio paint which is a general purpose odd program
you can use it for pixel art digital art digital painting comics illustrations animations really
whatever your creative mind can come up with i've been using clip studio paint for over six years
so i'm super hyped that they reached out to sponsor this video make sure you check out
the links in the description so you can try it out yourself let's get on with it to set up a new file
we go to file our new choose your canvas size here make sure you have record time-lapse on because it
will record your entire process we're good to go so this is my custom workspace you have tools down
the side you can see all of the sub tools within that and here i've got tool properties so i can
adjust the brush size opacity and other options for the tools below i have all my color selection
options here and also a color set so if you want to use and make custom palettes it's super easy
to do that here i like to have brush sizes all the way down the side over here we've got the
layers so we can add new layers remove them put them in folders so we can keep our work organized
and on the top i have a navigator so you can see or work in a zoomed out view and right at the
very top we've got our options bar you can fully customize your workspace by dragging things around
and putting them in different areas you can always reset the workspace to default by going to window
workspace and reset to default or register your new workspace like i've done here for pixel art
first off you're gonna need a character idea i had this idea to do this giant mech
or robot artist so i just started sketching out some designs the first design isn't always the
best one so it's good to keep exploring ideas try focus on the simple shapes to begin with making
sure the silhouette is readable i really like this one so i basically just copy and pasted it
changing little bits around and trying out new things it finally led me here to this design i
really liked the nice strong stance that it was in and how it was holding the pen weapon it is pretty
complex and has some details going on in there so i knew it would be interesting to translate this
into pixel art so for the first style i decided to go with something super simple and super small i
used a canvas size of 32 pixels by 32 pixels and then set up a grid inside of 24 pixels to change
counter size you go to edit change cover size and that can help you get more space if you need it to
enable the grid we can go to view and grid if we want to adjust the grid settings we go to view and
grid slash ruler sentence where you can use the options to customize the grid to however you like
for pixel art i use the pen tool specifically the dot pen sometimes i'll use the milli pen as
well if i want to get larger sizes if you want to use any other pen or brush you can just make
sure that the anti-aliasing is turned off in the two properties basically just kept trying
to simplify the shapes as much as possible to try and keep the essence of that original design
i increased the canvas size for this one and then used the shape tools to start mapping out the
character pose i was mainly focused on getting the silhouette as close to the reference as possible
and i carved out some of the joints and character sections with the eraser tool having more pixels
definitely made this easier but it's crazy how from a similar approach to just silhouettes and
shapes you get this really different look just because of the amount of pixels that you're using
so definitely consider the size that you're going to be working in because that can really influence
the style if you want to have reference to another image you can go to window and sub
view this allows you to upload a reference of any image you want for this style i decided to keep it
still within the one bit sort of two colors black and white but this time instead of focusing on
shapes and silhouette to define the character i'm focusing on light i raise areas and use the white
to help pop out some forms keeping some planes black to indicate that they're in shadow it really
is a balance between light and shadow here to really push that 3d form and i think it's a really
cool style even though it just uses two colors one of my favorite things about clip studio is
the quick action bar if you make a selection with ctrl a you'll notice this little bar pops up and
it has so many options like crop invert shrink the selected area delete and it's even customizable
click this button you can add any function you want i've added one for flip horizontal and
flip vertical because i tend to do that a lot you can even go to window and quick access to access
some functions you might use a lot this can be really helpful if you're new and haven't learned
the shortcuts yet for this one i decided to go for a retro game style using only four colors
i used the silhouette style from earlier as a base template and then just started working in
values it's nice to work in values first because you get to control the light and shadow of your
character without having to worry about the colors once i was happy with the values all i had to do
was put a green color on top i did this using a clipping mask layer and setting that layer mode
to color clipping masks are awesome if i add in a new layer and i fill that layer with yellow if i
click the clipping mask button it will only affect the pixels on the layer below i then adjusted the
colors using correction layers now a bunch of different options for corrections if you go to
layer and new correction layer let's say i want to change the hue i'll click this and then i can
adjust the hue to what i want notice how it adds it in a layer so you can easily adjust it at any
point without changing the pixels underneath so if you don't like something you can just delete the
layers on top or change them around as you want once i was happy with the colors i used this grid
like dither pattern to add some texture in the joints and transitional spaces for the characters
so really the focus for this style was the limits that i set myself limits are a good way to sort
of force creativity and come up with a really interesting style using color is another way how
you can change the style of a character so for this one i decided to go with a really simple
graphic cartoon style starting from the base design from before i just started to add the
color on top of that for cartoons it's typical to use these highly saturated vibrant colors so
that's what i decided to go with if you're going for a more realistic or gritty vibe you might want
to go with more desaturated colors if you're not happy with the colours that you've got it
can really help to tweak them quickly select the area that you want to change and put a correction
layer on top it will automatically mask the area for your correction making it super easy to make
some changes if you want to i decided to make some color variations for this style i think they look
like a cool mech squad or something rolling up to do some art together so up until this point we've
been using outlines and silhouettes so for this style i'm going to change up the technique and use
no outlines i use the base silhouette as a starting point and build out the forms
using the lighter tones i wanted this one to look really metallic with a sort of gray blue palette
so to get that really shiny metal look you have to use really strong white highlights and honestly i
think this is probably my favorite one of the lot notice how i keep the colors desaturated which is
very different from the saturated colorful cartoony one that i did before that's going
to help it look a little bit more realistic you can quickly create gradients like this have your
line work set as a reference layer and beneath have your color layer i'm just going to divide it
into sections of lightness now using the contour line paint tool you just click and drag very cool
for this one i decided to go a little bit crazy and try messing up the proportions so instead of
this really strong rigid and normal proportioned silhouette i decided to make it really thick so
it reminds me of the chibi or graffiti character style with the small but really chunky proportions
for the final character i wanted to have a little bit of fun so i made a 2d digit lot version too it
started with a new canvas of 1920 by 1920 which is pretty massive if you're used to pixel art
i took the silhouette from earlier and scaled it up just sketched over that using the pencil tool
once i was happy with the sketch i did some clean lines on top honestly this is one of my favorite
things to do in digital art because it is super satisfying if you haven't tried it you should
definitely give it a go and if you struggle to get nice clean lines there is a brush smoothing option
in the two presets it is super helpful so once we've got the nice lines in i put the flat colors
in i use new layers for shadows and highlights and effects to keep everything under control and added
in a little bit of backlight bouncing off the legs and it has this pixel heart on the chest which i
wanted to add a little bit of glow to so i used a soft brush and on a new layer painted in a little
bit of glow set that layer mode to screen and that really made it look like it was glowing so this
style might not be fully pixel art but i wanted to show you how you can use different mediums and
techniques to get a completely different style as well and i guess if you zoom in close enough there
is some pixels there so it counts so we've got a bunch of styles for this character but we're not
done yet because i'm gonna animate them setting up for animation is super easy go to window and
timeline make a new timeline this is where we'll control all of our animation but our layers are
separate we need to add an animation folder go to animation new animation layer and animation
folder we drag our layers into it we notice now they're on the same timeline if we right click
we can add them in but we don't want these to be separate to group them into one frame we just make
a group for them maybe call it frame one you can drag it around to change the length of the frame
to make a new frame you can right click and duplicate the folder add it to the timeline right
click and select then you can change it up let's make them blink just gonna add in frame one here
and there we go simple animation i wanted to make an idle animation for this first
small style that we did i duplicated the frame and then just use the selection tools to pull
and push areas around i wanted the body and head to sort of go down as the arms and the sort of
pen weapon went up giving it this little bopping effect that bopping i had this idea to do some
transition animations between each style as well so for this one it starts out as a single pixel
and then pops out into a full character but no spoilers here is the final result
which style is your favorite let me know in the comments and again huge thank you to clip studio
paint for sponsoring this video i challenge you to try this yourself design a character and make it
in a bunch of different styles make sure you share it with me on social media thanks for watching