Pixel Artists: Where Do You Start?

[vulpix]

I am currently feeling a bit embarrassed to only have others' assets or random PNGs slapped on my website. I want to change that. I have attempted to create pixel art in the past, but I have never really succeeded. My mind struggles to work with the more blocky shapes... if that makes sense?

What I would like to say is, I don't really know where to start with my pixels. I want to create "chibi" (or just small I guess) pixels of the characters I like (especially Barbara since my site is based around her) to decorate my pages with. Except I don't know where to start. Do I sketch a normal drawing and go over it with pixels? I have Pixaki btw.

Thank you in advance ^^

[NinAcTi0N]

I'll say: You can start off by freehandedly sketching with the pixel brush, and then cleaning the lines so that they're only one pixel wide. You gotta pay attention to the jaggies when they're very harsh, but getting rid of too much of them can give an unnatural appearance to the pixel art. Just shape the pixels as the contours of your drawing go-


Tutorial by pixelarttutorials on Tumblr

This is the main tip I can give ^^ Also learning how to dither can lead to some very interesting effects! ★

[pom]

Just practice! I know it can be overwhelming at first when you're unfamiliar with a new medium but really it just takes time and practice. The more you do it, the more naturally it will come to you.

I think the first rule to making clean looking pixels is to not have your lines overlap. do a sketch and then in a new layer do your lines.


the blue spots are where removed the overlapping pixels to get to the final lineart

[PAINTKILLER]

I've just been working in Photoshop on a pixel level. I know there are better/easier mehods, but if I find myself doing better work when I gotta actually WORK.

[pom]

Also to add, with practicing. Trying to jump into something complicated your first time is hard to get what you envisioned in your head onto the canvas. Start small, not necessarily in size of the drawing but in scope. Try something easy for your first time, like to get a feel of how the pixels connect together, how the shading works. Do like a lollipop, a hello kitty head, a donut, a mario mushroom. Just something simple to get a feel for it. The more you practice, the more it will make sense to you.

[floral-tears]

My favorite piece of advice I've heard is to start with the smallest detail you want visible. IIRC, in the context I heard it, it was more about deciding the actual scale/size of your drawing but it personally helps me a lot.

keyboard2.png (406 Bytes) Viewed 4009 times

For example, when I made these little keyboards I decided I wanted each key to be proportional/correctly placed to each other, so my workflow was 1 key -> 1 row -> all other key rows -> border. People can be really complex for pixel art because it's both organic shapes and a ton of detail smooshed into something so little. It may help to break it down like "I want the mole on their cheek to be 1 pixel, that'd be cute" or "I want the eyes to be this big so you can see they're hazel" and then build around it.

Personally, I find it easier to do a "normal" sketch (as opposed to just immediately "painting" with pixels) for anything larger than about...100px maybe? Like all of my bases were sketches first. But this is something that is certainly different for everybody.