How to Make Pixel Art

Silhouette → Line → Colour → Refine

The wizard was drawn in four passes: fill the silhouette, carve out the lines, lay in flat colour, then refine. Click a step to see the drawing at that stage.

Starting from the silhouette keeps your attention on the big shapes and on whether they read, and the silhouette barely changes from the first pass to the last. The wizard is a triangle at heart; the bent tip of the hat and the staff sticking out are what make the triangle interesting.

Other ways to start

• Construction lines: Block the figure out with circles, triangles and trapezoids, then build detail on top. Settling proportions early saves a lot of repainting later.
• Rough blocks, then clean up: Lay down large rough patches of colour and tidy them as you go. It suits backgrounds, because it catches the mood at once. Expect a messy middle stage where nothing seems to fit, and keep going.
• Draw big, then shrink: Paint at normal size in any drawing app and scale it down to pixels. It is a fine starting point, but the smaller it gets the more the detail breaks, and every pixel still needs cleaning up by hand.

There is no single right process. Watch how artists you like work, try a few methods, and keep the one you enjoy — they all arrive at the same place.

16×16 · 32×32 · 64×64

There is no correct size for pixel art. It depends on what you are drawing, how much detail it needs and what the project asks for. A good first exercise is to draw the same subject at several sizes.

This wizard could live at 16×16: the silhouette holds up and the style has little detail to lose. It is 32×32 because it belongs to a set of drawings at that size, and pieces that appear together should share one scale — mixed sizes look pasted in.

Common pixel art sizes

If you are new, start small and get a feel for the weight of a single pixel. At small sizes one pixel can change the whole picture, which is easy to miss on a big canvas. Try it on this 10×10 face: pick an expression, or click any pixel to flip it.

Doubles · Jaggies

Once the size is set, mark out the main areas with simple line art. There are two things to watch for when drawing lines.

Doubles

Where two pixels meet at a corner in an L shape, you have a double. It thickens the line in that spot, so it reads darker and harder there. On a one-pixel outline, remove the extra corner pixel and the line becomes cleaner and even in weight.

Doubles are not always a mistake. They can hint at shadow, and an outline made entirely of doubled lines is a bold style of its own.

Jaggies

When the steps of a line or curve change length unevenly, you get jaggies: sharp corners you did not intend. Remove the pixels that break the rhythm, or let the step lengths grow and shrink smoothly, such as 5-3-2-1-1-2-3-5 on a curve.

Jaggies can be deliberate too. The wizard’s face has one intentional break in its line to shape the brow.

Hue · Saturation · Value

Almost every colour picker is built on HSV:

• Hue: The colour itself: red, yellow, green, blue…
• Saturation: How pure the colour is. In the picker square it runs from grey on the left to the most vivid on the right.
• Value: How light or dark it is, roughly from the bottom of the square to the top. This one matters most.

“Roughly”, because each hue has its own perceived lightness. Turn the hue bar to greyscale and yellow is the lightest, while blue and violet are the darkest.

Value is what gives a picture depth and form; light and shadow are made of it. If the values are wrong, no choice of colours will save the picture.

Saturation

With too many highly saturated colours, they fight each other and tire the eye. With too many dull ones, the picture looks muddy and faded.

Treat saturated colours as seasoning: a little, placed on purpose, where you want the eye to go. Some pieces use strong colour everywhere and still work, but they always have very solid values underneath. Value comes first.

Contrast

Visual art has many kinds of contrast: value, hue, shape, detail. High contrast means a big difference between two things; low contrast means they are close.

High-contrast areas pull the eye in; low-contrast areas let it rest, and can build rhythm and repetition. Contrast is relative: low contrast everywhere gives a unified, pattern-like image, and a high-contrast spot only stands out when calmer areas surround it.

As you draw, keep asking how contrast can point to the most important part of the piece.

Shading · Lighting

To shade well you need to know how light behaves, because shading is value used to show form. Shine one light on a ball and you can see every part of a basic lighting model:

Pixel art rarely needs all seven parts; at small sizes it would be too busy, so it comes down to size and style. How light looks also depends on how many light sources there are, how strong they are and what surrounds the object.

Pillow shading

A very common problem is ignoring both the form and the light, and simply darkening inwards from the outline in rings. That is pillow shading. It does not describe the form, so the object looks flat and puffed up, like a pillow.

Materials

Materials reflect light differently. A matte ball spreads light evenly with no clear highlight; a glossy ball or metal has strong highlights and mirrors what is around it. To show wood, gold or glass, think about how it reflects light and choose values and a value range to match.

Colour temperature · Environment

You will often hear colours called warm or cool, but whether a colour looks warm or cool depends on what sits next to it.

In the first pair the two small squares are exactly the same grey. In the third pair the left half is the same red as in the second. Colour is relative and shifts with its neighbours.

An object’s colour also changes a lot with the light, the things near it and its surroundings. Switch the light and the table below and watch the same yellow ball change:

Hue shifting

Hue shifting is a common technique that simplifies those environmental effects and makes colour more interesting at the same time. When you darken a colour for shadow, also turn its hue a little — shadows often lean towards violet, and lights towards yellow.

Neither way is better; pick the one you like. Hue-shifted ramps tend to look richer, while straight ramps look calmer and more graphic.

Colour palette

Another common beginner habit is reaching for a new colour every time. The picture gets noisy, and the palette and the values slip out of control. Limiting the number of colours makes the work hang together.

If picking colours is a struggle, start from a ready-made pixel art palette. They are also a quick route to a particular look, such as the four greens of early handheld screens. Lospec hosts thousands of them, and you can build your own by sampling colours from films and games you like.

A palette will not do the work for you, though. You still have to think about hue, saturation, value, contrast and the style you want.

Dithering

Dithering arranges pixels in a pattern to mix colours, or to suggest more colours than the palette has. With only black and white, a checkerboard reads as grey from a distance.

Dither patterns can be inventive, and each looks different: some are orderly, others noisy and gritty.

Dithering can also blend two colours into a new one, which is especially useful when the palette is small.

Be careful: dithering adds noise and unexpected texture, most of all in small sprites. Decide what it is for before you use it.

Anti-aliasing · AA

Anti-aliasing (AA) softens the edges of a shape: in each step of the edge you place a colour whose value lies between the two neighbouring colours.

The third circle has too much AA. It is softer, but the extra pixels add corners and change the shape of the circle. Add AA selectively, and never let it change the shape.

AA can sit inside a shape (internal AA) or outside it, on the background (external AA). External AA is mixed against the background, so when the background changes, external AA stops working — its values no longer match. Try the dark background above.

Since value is what counts, the hue of AA pixels is free to play with. AA can also change how a line feels, making parts of it look thinner.

The wizard does not need AA at all. If it were a style choice, the beard would be the place for it, to make it look softer. AA is an advanced technique, so use it with care.

Banding

When a shade or AA follows the whole contour at the same width, layer after layer, with every step lined up, you get banding. Instead of describing the form it flattens the picture or makes it noisy. The pillow shading above has the same problem.

Outlines · Sel-out

There are many ways to outline pixel art. Here are eight of them on the same mushroom:

• Black single-pixel outline: Graphic and cartoonish, and it works well for animation.
• Doubled outline: Very thick — you met it in the lesson on doubles.
• Dark outline: An ordinary outline in a dark colour instead of black, which lowers the contrast and the hardness.
• Area-colour outline: The outline takes a darker version of the area it surrounds.
• Lit outline: An area-colour outline that is lighter on the lit side and darker on the shadow side, so it shows the direction of the light too.
• Selective outline (sel-out): The line art uses AA-like shades to describe the form instead of one solid line.
• Broken outline: A kind of selective outline that leaves the line out entirely in places, usually where the light hits.
• No outline: Also a perfectly good choice.

The wizard uses a black single-pixel outline because it suits the style; the outline on the hat is broken slightly so that the hat’s shape reads more clearly.

Clusters · Orphan pixels

Thinking in clusters means grouping pixels into blocks, in pairs or more, and describing areas with those blocks, usually avoiding single pixels. A lone pixel (an orphan pixel) adds noise and looks out of place among clusters.

Orphan pixels have their uses: detail and highlights, especially at small sizes, or a deliberately gritty texture. The wizard’s eyes are single pixels — the size leaves no other choice, and it looks right. Some artists build whole pieces from single pixels; the result is noisy and gritty, and true to their style.

CRT displays

Keep one thing in mind when you study retro game art: many old games were shown on CRT televisions and monitors, and a CRT blurs neighbouring pixels together.

Look at the raw pixels of many 16-bit games and you find banding, jaggies and harsh dithering that nobody saw on the screens of the time. Some artists of that era knew it and drew for the blur, using dither patterns to make in-between colours the hardware could not show.

Not every retro game was drawn that way, but when you gather references, remember that what we see today is usually the clean raw pixels, with no screen in between.

Pixel art in beads, stitches and drills

Pixel art does not have to stay on a screen. A fuse bead, a cross stitch, a diamond painting drill or a knitted stitch each holds one colour, so a pixel drawing is already a pattern: one pixel, one bead. Everything above still applies, with three differences.

• The palette is what you can buy: On screen any colour is a click away; in beads or thread you have the colours a brand makes. Limiting the palette stops being a choice, so pick the bead or floss range first and draw with it.
• The board sets the size: A large square pegboard is 29×29 pegs, so a 16×16 sprite fits with room to spare and a 32×32 one needs four boards joined together. Plan the canvas around the boards you have.
• Distance does the blending: A finished piece is seen from a step or two away, which softens it much as a CRT did. Checkerboard dithering reads as an in-between colour from across a room, while a lone off-colour bead still reads as a speck.

Anti-aliasing translates worst. It needs in-between shades, and a bead palette often lacks the exact one; a clean stair-step in a colour that exists usually looks better than a near-miss shade.

When a drawing is finished, the pixel art editor prints it as a chart with a count of each colour, and the image to pixel art converter works the other way, mapping a picture onto a bead palette.

Hand-drawn pixel art usually makes a better bead pattern than a converted photo, for the reasons in this guide: clean outlines, few colours, and clusters instead of noise.

Style · Practice

Combine the art fundamentals, the pixel techniques and your own taste and the possibilities are endless. What you like, someone else may not. There is no right or wrong style, but choices made on purpose and applied consistently make everything you draw look intentional, and help it fit the world you are building.

Exercises

1. Draw the wizard at 8×8. Which features have to stay for it to still read as a wizard?
2. Turn on Value check and recolour the wizard with only four values, then compare it with the four-green version.
3. Change the wizard’s black outline to an area-colour outline, or to a selective one.
4. Draw an apple twice: once matte, once glossy.
5. Draw the same apple at 12×12, 16×16 and 24×24.

Much of this takes years to master, and experienced pixel artists are still learning it. Do not be put off by how much there is. Enjoy the drawing — it is a craft for life.

Glossary

Silhouette

The outer shape in a single colour

Double

Two pixels forming an L at a corner of a line

Jaggies

Sharp corners from uneven step lengths

Hue / saturation / value

Colour, purity, lightness

Pillow shading

Darkening in rings from the outline

Hue shifting

Turning the hue as a ramp gets lighter or darker

Dithering

Mixing colours with a pixel pattern

Anti-aliasing

Softening steps with in-between colours

Banding

Shade layers lined up in parallel

Selective outline

An outline that describes form with AA

Cluster

A block of same-coloured pixels

Orphan pixel

A single pixel on its own

Pixel art questions

Credits

The order of the lessons and many of their ideas come from The Ultimate Pixel Art Tutorial, a video by Saultoons. Watch it for the full walkthrough. The explanations on this page are written in our own words, and every example was drawn for this page rather than taken from the video.