I discussed this topic with Varock Shade, who made a few pixel arts from photographs.

What is realistic pixel art?

Realism comes in many aspects. You could use realistic shapes, realistic colors or realistic proportions. If you would like something perfectly realistic, you better just take a picture. But with realistic shapes and smooth color contrasts, you can still give your own twist to it.

Portrait

<- “A Pixelated Photograph” by Varock Shade – WIP and Original photograph

Varock Shade: “What I did with this portrait was leaving detail away. The hair locks are not visible in all places, you can not see her freckles and  moles.  If I did put all of them in there, the image would get much to busy. With pixel art, I have a limited amount of space and colors to use. One off pixel, like a mole would draw all attention of the eye and destroy the smoothness of the surfaces.

The whole face is dithered, to make nice transitions between colors and make everything smooth. However, you have to keep in mind that it gets a lot harder to have the skin still seem shiny with all this texture over it.”

The above image is by Alex Bond

It is again a portrait made by redrawing a photograph, which I was luckily able to find. Every thing is in proportion, every detail is visible. However, his version only uses a few colors, features dithering, and is much more stylistic than the original. Id call this a nice example of realistic pixel art, even though its so different from the next portrait:

“Wind blowing trough her hair”, again by Varock Shade. – Wip and Refference

I think this is beautiful, I hope you do so too. It was recently finished.
Do check out that WIP.

Dithering and Anti Allias

Both two important terms for realistic pixel art. Required for smoothing things out, and taking away the pixelly feel.
Taking away the pixelly feel??? But then why would you still make pixel art?

I personally think that in a lot of cases you can make things  pretty and pixelish with colors. Like in Alex Bonds drawing that is very clear.

But in some cases, just having the idea that this is made pixel by pixel is enough. Like in this portrait.

“Sara Brightman”, by Andy Oakley – WIP and referrence

If you zoom in on this beauty, you will notice the excellent dithering, and Anti Allias mastery! This is 16 colors.

However, to most people this will look like a photograph.

Until now I have only been featuring portraits. The reason to this is quite logical: Portraits have to be perfectly realistic or you will immediately notice. For most objects goes that they are originally designed by humans already. So if you alter that design, it will still look like the same object, as it is still human made.
For example, you can think of a thousand different ways to draw a toaster. The proportions of a toaster are not important.

Of course plants and animals are not designed by humans too, but they are less recognizable by the human eye.
This is also why we can’t keep recognize cats by their faces. Or at least not when you have to pick out of a 100. With humans, you can browse trough a database of a million different faces, and still know which ones the people you know are.

So, to make a face look realistic, it has to be very exactly right, especially if you try to copy someone specific. That’s a challenge!

A bit of it goes up for human bodies too, but often people wear clothes, and if you are drawing nudes there is still less detail than in peoples faces.

However, I here have a picture of a car.

“Lisa’s Little 206″ by Varock Shade – WIP and Referrence

Related posts:

1. What is pixel art?
2. Coloring lineart

The article about coloring lineart is here

I was unexpectedly overflowed by responses. And not just simple responses, most people send me whole stories! And as every artwork tells a story, I would like to share them with you, the reader.

Mambazo (bazosoft.com) created this alien monster. I really enjoy the blue reflections on the red shiny ’skin’!

“Well, I’ve only done one other challenge so I’m lacking in experience there. When I saw line-art I had much trouble deciding which one to do as they were all interesting, but eventually settled for one that had more lines/details. Thats probably just laziness on my part! It is quite inspiring working with her line-art, as it is very different to anything I would created myself. They have great volume to them, even in monochrome, which is something I have trouble replicating. It was a learning experience at the same time.

I don’t really feel as though it is my work when I look at it. Its so different to anything I would do by myself.

Its heavily inspired by the early Unreal Engine III mesh screen-shots, from the tech demos. They had really nice bright back-lighting, and a softer light from the front which really made the details on the mesh’s textures pop (normal-mapping and all that jazz!). I’ve ever-since liked that lighting setup, and wanted to try and recreate that with this piece.

This piece really helped me learn more about defining volume, and a lot about lighting. With the two light sources, I was forced out of my usual shading techniques, and had to think a great deal more than I’m used to. But I’m glad I tried, it puts a new notch on my belt! I’m particularly happy with the shadow between its two left feet (our right). You can almost see the shadow-plane :)”

Fool (foolstown.com)did the usual, what he does best. Brilliant colors popping out on a dark background

“I think it is a parallel inspiration – in the book i’ve just finished there was some interesting theory about vagina dentata in its philosophical aspects. One of  Arachne creatures seems to have a close appearance. They are all defenitely cool , but this one just comes along.

When it comes to visual inside you mind all is left to extract it from there.
Colors are usuall shaman’s dances – tweaking and stuff. I Can’t tell I’m happy with a curent theme, but I got a really retarded schedule right now, sleep whenever  i get a chance. Ought to stop that.
See it, like it, do it. =)”

TheJoe did his best on creating this pink slimy creature. I like the combination of smooth shades and highlight with the grainy pixel clusters.

“I had a lot of fun with it. I don’t have a lot of experience with pixel art. I just treated this challenge like a page out of a coloring book and used it to work on coloring, shading, and texturing techniques that I have seen others use. I learned quite a bit with this piece but I still have a long way to go.

My original color scheme was inspired by paint jobs I have seen on Warhammer 40k Horrors of Tzeentch.
I hope to use what I’ve learned with this challenge in future works to improve myself overall as a pixel artist.”

Darchangel (www.kings-field.com) added some eyes, a nice pattern, and made that mouth very scary and dirty!

“I thought the challenge was great, I enjoyed it very much. The most interesting part, was that we all had the same starting block (the line art). Everyone’s end result is so much different.
I also think that using line art from other members of the PJ community is a good way to acknowledge their talent. Plus sometimes it’s hard to come up with good ideas, so having the line art was half the battle.

I think making it unique was all in the detailing and coloring. Ultimately you still want to make sure it remains Arachne’s line art in there somewhere.
I got the idea while looking at a World of Warcraft art book. A friend lend it to me recently, the book has great illustrations and was good inspiration. The background was the one that gave me the most trouble…it took me 2 days to come up with that idea.”

This was created by Gygrazok. I like this mysterious creature on a mysterious background. The yellow on top works very well!

“I decided to enter because I’m not that good on drawing things out of thin air, and because I loved arachne’s linearts.
I don’t think I have a particular style. I like to use unsaturated color, and I just added a few details like the veins or the red spots around the mouth to make the creature more wicked :)

When I first saw that lineart I thought of Majin Buu from dragon ball Z :) that’s why I decided to make it pinkish with dark eyes.
For the background, I used a couple of pictures as a reference, as well as some pixel arts by various artists. I think it turned out pretty good, although I’m not completely satisfied with the ground and how it blends with the character.”

GTK colored thisone with the Windows Vista Paint colors. It is among my personal favorites, probably because I just love yellow and this cell shaded style!

“My objective is above all to have of fun, I do not make a point of taking part to impress or gain (I do not have the level necessary to reach the top3 in any event) but in Pixel-Art, like the drawing in general, must remain a pleasure for me. It is also an good occasion to improve my technique.

I do not seek to be distinguished from the others absolutely, I work rather like I feel it, with a style which is appropriate to me. Sometimes, I try to try out new style, and I keep what I like.

I am not very satisfied of this one. I am content when I look at my way, I see progress, but PixelJoint abounds in many talent and since I know this website, I try to improve myself constantly. I admire particularly the work of Syosa, of .Anubis., of Bisque and of Fool (and too full other artists buy I all will not quote them, the list is too long ^^’), and my main objective is to arrive at an equivalent quality of work.”

I would like to thanks all the artists for their help and their great responses, and I would like to recommend to the reader to get inspired by these different takes on coloring line work!

Read the other article here too!

Related posts:

1. Coloring lineart
2. Pixel art software
3. Why I love pixel art

But thats not the best part: He showed exactly how he made this, step by step!

Wip animation

Click here for a full view of all the frames, and some explanation on them (Japanese)

Study it, get inspired, and learn how to make your own animations. Thanks Syosa!

For more info about Syosa, read this interview.

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3. Pixel art software

Pixel art in short

Pixel art is the creation of digital art, pixel by pixel. A pixel is a digital screen element in shape of a square, and creating pixel art means that you make bitmap illustrations, placing every pixel by hand.

In modern digital art a lot is often generated by computers. Computers automatically add new colors, smoothing things out or even generate whole image parts. In pixel art, you have full control, and thereby it is possible to deliver digital works of higher quality. However, it is a lot more time consuming, in that way that it is hardly ever worth it. Therefor pixel art is mostly made by hobbyists nowadays.

Pixel art generally uses under 256 colors, while modern screens can display up to 4.2 billion distinct colors.

The origins of pixel art

Years ago, video cards were not as powerful as they are now. People designing graphics for digital use had to work with a lot of restrictions, for example like how much or which colors could be used. The video game market grew fast, and those games needed graphics, like tiles and sprites. The people in charge of making those sprites had to stand out artistically, but also technically because of the difficult restrictions they had to work with.

An example is the ZX spectrum, which could only display 8 colors. The screen was divided into a grid of 8×8 pixel regions, and in such a region only 2 different colors could be used.

The video cards developed further and further. At some point everyone could create images with 256 colors.  Tools were made for speeding up the work, such as gradient generators. The artists that worked with this came into the demoscene subculture. When people figured out it would be more of a challenge to quit working with that many colors, the modern pixel art was born.

People now make their own restrictions, set their own rules, and some do it more like it was done in the early days than others. Some pay a lot of attention to their color counts, some do not. Some people like to practise with those old restrictions, some people like not to.

Pixel art also got a new role in commercial art, some companies figured ways to sell pixel art. They make use of the iconic effect you can achieve with pixel art, using large visible squares. Also a lot of work is done in isometric projection, a projection that works great with pixel art. Two examples of that are the famous habbohotel and of course the company Eboy.

How to make pixel art

Windows users already have one of the easiest pixel creation softwares installed on their computer: MSPaint. This program can be found under the name “Paint” in the accessories .

Mac users will have to download pixen and linux users can download MTpaint. Both are free, and MTpaint is also available for windows.
More on software for pixel art here

Take the pencil tool, the tool with the simplest function. It should create just a single pixel only when you click. With this you can draw your whole picture.
Try to stay away from the other drawing tools. Of course you can use the bucket fill now and then to speed up some work, but thats about it.
Reuse as many colors as possible, use the eyedropper to select a color that you have already used.
And that is it! With this knowledge, you know the basics of any work of pixel art!

When you are done, save your work as PNG, proper GIF (never save as gif in MSPaint as it ruins your colors) or BMP. With these filesystems you will never loose any image quality. However, you will if you will use filetypes such as JPG.
Never save pixel art as JPG

Never do:

Never resize pixel art
Never use gradients
When not needed, do not use transparant layers (it is only needed really in games, or to save time in commercial work, but this lessens the quality)
Never use automatic anti alliasing
Never use any automatically generated effect
Never have your work color reduced automatically
And never ever save pixel art as JPG, unless you are really afraid of it getting stolen.

Do:

Use preset palettes
Use preset restrictions
Set yourself a maximum number of colors used
Work on small scale
Use ^2 numbers for number of colors and canvas size (2,4,8,16,32 etc)
Show your work to the world and ask for feedback on PJ and WotP
Have fun!

Now that you know what my definition of pixel art is, start making some!

MrLollige

Related posts:

1. Pixel art software
2. Realistic pixel art

Please read, and in the comments or the original thread, leave your own thoughts about why you love pixel art as well!

Why I got into it

I was born, quite a few years ago as a creative person. People around me realized, but I did not myself.
I was also born as a logic person. In more than just one way.

So, one day, I do not remember how anymore, I introduced myself to isometric pixel art. I believed it was simple, as it followed logical rules, and required no creativity or much skill. Of course I was wrong, but that does not matter. Thing is, I was able to create nice things by using the line tool right.

A year later, a more important thing happened. I found a community. And any community that would have adopted me could have formed me in any way they would have wanted, but it happens to be this pixel community. At the right time.
So that is the reason I kept going on and on.

Why I love it
But you asked me, why do I love pixel art?

I could have fallen in love with many different hobbies, and I might will someday, but I will keep liking this for ever on. And thats just for one thing: Control!
If I draw by pencil, I can never ever remove a line properly after I drew it. Same goes for traditional painting. If I would paint digitally, I would not get the time to do every little pixel of my image right, and I would always be able to spot infinite correctable things I dislike on my image. On a 32×32 pixel canvas, there are no infinite possibilities! Never!

Why I like it

• Great community
• Retro
• Game fans
• Programmers
• Logic
• Impressive
• Gallery
• MSpaint doable
• Iconic
• Skills being learnt valuable for everything
• Palettes
• Animations
• Isometric stylized stuff

I have much more to say, but I simply don’t want to write more/want to waste your reading time more ;)

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Moai animation

Please tell me what you think of it!

Also I have started on a drawing heavily inspired by Vermeers well known artwork Girl with a pearl earring. It uses the same palette, but will never be finnished

The Moai with the pearl earring

Opinions are welcome, as always!

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