#PixelArt Guide To Boost Your Pixel Art Skills Quickly

Pixel Art is probably the favourite of people who have played games in 20th century, but has now once again risen to gain massive popularity in this market were the ease of creating pixel art has made it popular amongst indie devs and even in the gaming community. We see it in modern games like Broforce, Hyper Light Drifter and even Spelunky(all of them are in my favourite list).

For me, I am young but the first game I ever played was Mario 8-bit on a TV console. I loved it, good game and all. And so I kinda love pixel art, I tend to like pixel art for various reasons the biggest being the fact of limitations. I love to trick and be tricked, which is what we do in pixel art.

Before I start on with the tips and tricks let just increase your understanding of pixel art a little. Pixel art is any art based on pixels so all art should be pixel art! Well no. it is actually a form of art in which we use lesser number of pixels than generic art, like 25x times less, and we try and create the illusion of an object i.e. each pixel has huge importance which is not true in huge images. It is not realistic but it's illustrative. 

Example Of Pixel Art where we see buildings and clouds made out of square pixels so every pixel is important [this piece is far from complete]

"So what are then I want tips to improve?", well I am getting to it, but to understand the tips you must first understand the true definition of Pixel Art. Ok, so in short pixel art is like my handwriting made out of small pieces placed in the right place though my writing lacks the right placement. :)

TIP #1: Straight Lines Are Awesome But Not Organic i.e. Do Not Over Use Them

Don't use too many straight lines

I refrain from using much of straight lines in organic forms, and so should you. It's not like the can not be used, just try and use them as little as possible. Even in inorganic objects overusing straight lines can cause various problems, and result in an edgy art piece. Which looks very rough and unprofessional.

Though they have relatively high importance and they are to be used in blocking pixel pieces, at least that's how I do it.
Straight lines are like medicines whose too much can be lethal and dangerous. Though obviously just like medicines they are necessary and have specific use cases.

TIP #2: Symmetry is your friend principle but not a law!! 

Symmetrical Hammer

Symmetry is your friend every object be it organic or in-organic tends to have symmetry and but it's of most help when creating pixel art of styles that have complete symmetry like top-down view. 

Though every object tends to have symmetry but in your final piece make sure to break that illusion of symmetry it truly helps to give the X-Factor to your pixel art. I mean to say that symmetry should be used to create base shapes and forms but the final image does need this as it makes your art look childish.

Symmetrical Monkey

To break the illusion of symmetry the best case is to add shading to your completed piece and create some random effects while doing it. That looks well and takes your art a notch above.

Another way is to add details like in Sword And Sorcery we see creative hair style, eccentric physical features and clothes with fancy designs rather than shading. Which is also an awesome style of pixel art.

My recommendation is to use symmetry as a guide to help your way through beginners level and then as a workhorse for creating RPG weapons and characters base forms. :)

TIP #3: Learn The Basics Behind Creating Lines and Curves

Lines Guide

The basics behind lines are simple, use regular lines more often than irregular lines i.e. 90, 45 and 30/75 degree lines work best which can be represented as 1:0, 1:1 and 1:2/2:1 respectively.

Curves Are Progressive

While the irregular lines are not the first choice for creating line but due to lack of space you should use the less irregular lines rather than the extremely irregular lines as shown in the image aside.

Next up are the curves and they are rather confusing, they have a rule which is to go about creating curves in a progressive manner which can be hard to grasp but let me make it simpler. Create curves that sooth the eyes, and usually follow the rule or uniform step decrease i.e. something like 4-3-2-1-2-3-4 and so on. For reference see the image below.

TIP #4: Don't Use Connected Edges : They Are Very Edgy!! 

The most important advice is to refrain from using connected edges as they tend to make the art piece edgy/jagged and thus take away the illusion you have worked hard to create. It might be necessary to use them but to not use them is the best practice which should help improve your final piece a lot.

Removing them will help bring out the form that you are trying to achieve and take away the jaggedness.  

TRICK #001: Creating Curves

Well the only trick here, is the trick to create curves using a freehand method and the removing connected edges and then making the curve as progressive as possible. Keep practising this. It takes a little getting used to follow this method, but it's worth it when you are creating curves for big pieces like a 256*256 size piece.

Hope you learned something from this guide if you did then please Share it with your friends and stay in touch for more such tutorials.

Comment anyone of your tricks or any suggestions or anything you feel like for me to add up.