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Awesome Pixel Art

Awesome Pixel Art is a repository specifically dedicated to creating and learning pixel art, as well as providing links that help you get engaged in the community! In pixel art, every placed pixel has importance in creating the envisioned graphic. Below you’ll find help links ranging from basic introductory elements to color and animation tutorials. There are plenty of points of inspiration in games, animations and among other artists!

Contents

• Tutorials
  • Basics
  • Color
  • Animation
• Books
• Inspiration
  • Games
  • Videos
  • Other
• Community
  • Artists
  • Hubs
• Tools
  • Editors
  • Miscellaneous

Tutorials

Basics

• Introduction to pixel art
• Creating a cube
• Creating round objects
• Outline basics
• Outline colors
• Getting started from scratch with Aseprite

Color

• Creating a color palette
• Color palette and HSL
• Moawling’s color palette process

Animation

• Walking animation cycle in games
• Tips for animating 2D games

Books

• Pixel logic - Pixel Logic is an in-depth pixel art tutorial book.
• Make Your Own Pixel Art - Walks you step-by-step through the available tools, pixel art techniques, the importance of shapes, colors, shading, and how to turn your art into animation.

Inspiration

Games

• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island - Play as Yoshi carrying Baby Mario, platforming through a dangerous world. The painted feel and soft pastel colors create an hearth-warming handmade style that breathes the charm of a children’s book.
• FEZ - Explore a 2D retrofuturistic world by rotating in the third dimension. The minimalistic style, bright vibrant colors and dynamic lighting bring the 16-bit era into the future.
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - Laid back adventure in a bronze age mountain wilderness. Dreamy soft colors in a living world affected by moon phases.
• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove - Classic action adventure with an 8-bit retro aesthetic, taking the looks of a modern NES game.
• Hyper Light Drifter - Top-down action in a sci-fi world that radiates light and warmth. Using a colorful palette and kaleidoscopic neon yet setting a grim ambiance.
• Owlboy - Explore a detailed steampunk world in the clouds. With it’s range of endearing animations and expressions the world and it’s characters come to life.
• Stardew Valley - Manage a farm from a top-down perspective and engage with a charming and cheerful world in 16-bit.
• Starbound - Travel across vibrant, colorful and expansive galaxies, including creative dynamic animations.
• Void Golf - Shoot giant pieces of space rock into black holes, using gravitational fields, physics-defying walls and wormholes in a minimalist top-down view.
• Minit - With a minimalistic design (only two colors palette). Minit is an adventure where each exploration journey is limited to 60 seconds.

Videos

• Sean Browning - Pixel Art Animation Reel 2018 - A collection of Sean Browning’s pixel animations, ranging from simple scenes to recreations of popular shows like Steven’s Universe and RWBY.
• Pixel Paul - An Interview with Pixel Artist and Animator Paul Veer - Paul Veer, a professional pixel artist with work on games such as Super Crate Box, shares his interest in pixel art as well as his workflow and style breakdown.
• MortMort channel - Creative videos & streams including tips, discussions and tutorials.

Other

• Lospec palette list - Collection of color palettes for pixel art with examples and artist information.

Community

Artists

• eBoy - German, pixel art group founded in 1997 by Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig and Svend Smital. They are regarded as the “Godfathers of Pixel Art”.
• Paul Robertson - Australian, creating cute, sometimes cosmic and psychedelic, and sometimes weird nightmarish pixel art.
• Syosa - Japanese, girlish style using bright and organic color palettes creating cute humans and animals.
• Thomas Feichtmeir - Australian, dark and mature: fan of knights, dinosaurs, pirates, epic beasts, anatomy and history as well as everything twisted and weird.
• Toyoi Yuuta - Australian, capturing small animated scenes of everyday life in unsaturated colors.
• Slynyrd - American, game designer with tons of material, game specific knowledge and mini-tutorials.

Hubs

• Reddit /r/PixelArt
• Pixelation
• Pixel Joint

Tools

Editors

• Aseprite - Paid and source-available, works on Linux, macOS and Windows. Awesome UI with a lot of nifty tools to ease pixel art creation.
• Pixen - Paid, works on macOS and iOS. Superb OS integration, create pixel art on a tablet using pressure-sensitive drawing.
• Pro Motion - Paid with trial, works on Windows. Advanced features tailored to creating pixel art for games.
• GIMP - Open source and free, works on Linux, macOS and Windows. Not specifically for creating pixel art but is more than capable to do so.
• PixelCraft - Open source and free, works in the browser. Easy to try out in the browser and as a PWA offline.
• rx - Open source and free, works on Linux, macOS and Windows. Minimalist and keyboard driven with animation support.
• Wobblepaint - Pico8 editor that give life to pixel art with a little wobble.

Miscellaneous

• Broider - Make 9-patch borders, export as CSS.
• pixeldudesmaker - Small character generator, including basic animation.