Part 1 : Introduction

In this series of articles

Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Tiles
Part 3 : Characters
Part 4 : Objects
Part 5 : Backgrounds
Part 6 : HUD and other additional graphics

This bunch of articles is about making decent pixel art for games. I am a decent pixel artist, not a pro. There are many fine pixel art tutorials out there that will teach you the finer points of the pixel. This article won’t teach you how to make massive pixel pieces. We are going to talk about keeping it simple and functional. In this series of articles we will concentrate on finding out what the smallest thing is that will get the graphic do it’s job and go with that. We will find out what is easiest way to make your graphics and we will find balance in the graphical side of your game as a whole. Keeping it simple is the key.

Less is more
Many people in this community find it hard to make nice looking art for their games. I used to be totally terrible at it myself. My older graphics are not ugly because something is missing. There’s actually way too much in it. Kind of like somebody just barfed all over your screen. There are 90 kinds of green in one little mountain, the sky is all funny and you can hardly see the main characters because there are so many pixels everywhere. You will find that less is more.

What we are going to do
I will just do what I normally do when I create the basic graphics for a game and explain every step. And it’s not hard to do. Just keep in mind that this is just my style, you don’t have to do it my way. Al the basics of pixel art will be covered but we won’t go into the detailed techniques.

What do you need
We don’t need lots of tools. Any click product will do. I will use the TGF editor because I am really old. And because the TGF2/MMF2 editor is one pixel off.

The palette
Most pixel artists use a personal palette. The big idea is that you only use this set of colours in your game to give it balance. The click product you are using has a standard palette and because it’s standard it’s not very suitable for distinct pixel art. There are two things you can do: make your own palette or steal one. Making your own takes lot of effort but in the end it will be worth it.