Saint11

Pixel Art Articles

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:16:00 -0700

This is a series of articles I made with the help of my Patreon. This series is aimed towards absolute beginners, I explain the basics of the Aseprite software and walk through some basic exercises. I’m slowly adding them to this page, but for now you can check them out on Medium.

Saint11

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:16:00 -0700

Hi, I’m Pedro Medeiros! I’m a Brazilian-Canadian game developer living in Vancouver. I’m an artist, programmer, and co-founder of Coldblood Inc., where I’m working on my new game, Neverway!

Previously, I co-founded Miniboss and EXOK Games and worked on some titles like Out There Somewhere, TowerFall, and Celeste.

I love sharing behind-the-scenes updates and work-in-progress images on BlueSky. If you’d like to support my project, tools, and educational content, you can check out my Patreon. But don’t worry, everything I make for tools and learning will always be free! :)

Scaling Pixel Art

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 10:19:00 -0800

This is a beginner's guide, it’s oversimplified to be used as a quick reference.

What’s Pixel Art?

There are many definitions, but my favorite is: “It’s low-resolution art where the placement of every pixel is intentional.” Working with pixel art has many advantages but also comes with several challenges and limitations. Pixels are drawn on a grid, similar to certain mosaics or cross-stitching, like this:

Using 3d models as pixel art reference

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 13:03:07 -0700

You can also read (or support me) on Patreon!

One cool trick for making complex animations in pixel art, specially when it involves rotating or complex perspective is to use blender or other simple 3d tool to mock it up first.

Let’s start with a use case, I wanted to create a simple café sign that rotates, this was my initial sketch:

First I tried rotating it by manually drawing it in all directions and that was both very hard and exhaustive. So, I decided that I needed a 3D reference, so this is what I did:

Consistency

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:52:20 -0700

My Thoughts on Style Consistency

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, consider supporting me there :)

The “sacred rule” of pixel art dictates that you shouldn’t mix resolutions, and for a good reason: combining sprites of different resolutions can result in an amateurish and confusing appearance. The primary strategy for developing a pixel art game is to choose a resolution and stick to it. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not quite.

Big Pixel Art

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 12:01:46 -0700

I don’t do this often, but sometimes I work on bigger pixel art pieces, here are some of my favorites.

Into Certain Death (2022)

This was made using an AI-generated image as base. You can see the process here. I also have made a print available for this! You can purchase it here!

Mockups

I love making mockups to visualize ideas, here are some.

6 - Basic Color Theory

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 12:41:21 +0000

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, please consider supporting me there :) Also, this is the part 5 of a series of articles, read the whole series here.

Understanding Colors

Even when using a pre-created palette we still need to think about the colors we are using. My main objective when it comes to colors is to do as much as I can with as little as possible. I’ll try to explain some characteristics and synergies between colors.

5 - Anti-Alias and Banding

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 13:12:35 +0000

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, please consider supporting me there :) Also, this is the part 5 of a series of articles, read the whole series here.

This is a slightly more complex theme, so the article will be a little longer and more advanced than the others. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all at first, a lot of it is very subjective and opinions about anti-alias and banding differ vastly in the pixel art community.

4 - Basic Shading

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 11:58:18 +0000

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, please consider supporting me there :) Also, this is the part 4 of a series of articles, read the whole series here.

This article is a little longer and text-heavy than the previous ones, so buckle up!

How light works

We see things because of light, and when we draw something we are actually trying to represent how the light reacts to that object. Even if you haven’t studied this before, you already know how light works, you see it every day: it bounces off some materials and occasionally refracts to others.

3 - A Basic Aseprite Animation

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 19:20:17 +0000

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, please consider supporting me there :) Also, this is the part 3 of a series of articles, read the whole series here.

What is an animation?

The breakdown of an animation

An animation is an illusion of movement caused by a sequence of images played in a specific order that shows progressive phases of that motion. Our job as animators is to make that sequence look as convincing as possible.

2 - Cluster Sketching and Painting

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 17:07:11 +0000

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, please consider supporting me there :) Also, this is the part 2 of a series of articles, read the whole series here.

I’m using Aseprite for this tutorial. In this article I’ll teach a technique for sketching and drawing pixel art that is similar to the process of a traditional painting. I usually call this technique cluster sketching, since I start with big color clusters and refine them until I’m happy with the result.

Glossary

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 20:42:15 -0800

This is an attempt to build a pixel art glossary based on my style, I’m not trying to create strict rules or imply that this is the correct way, this just my way of understanding and organizing my thoughts with pixel art. This is a “living” glossary and with this format I plan to keep expanding and updating topics based on people’s feedback and my own experience.

If you like what I’m doing you can support me on Patreon if you want.

Pixel Dailies

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 10:41:10 -0700

Pixel Dailies is twitter account that posts daily themes for practicing pixel art, I’m trying to participate on most days and making icons of items, all in the same world of my side project, Scars.

They began using this when the Silver Death came, they quickly learned that while it offered some protection it wasn't nearly enough.

Among a Seeker's most treasured possessions, the Valley's map is surely the greatest. While going in the Valley with one is already extremely dangerous, going without it is just plain suicide.

All The Wrong Places

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 16:12:33 -0700

This is a personal series of drawings that I still work on sometimes, I hope you like it!

Fonts

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 22:03:54 -0700

Here are some tiny fonts I made a while ago, they are all released with a Public Domain licence, meaning you can do whatever you want with them.

Minimal4: A simple 4 pixel tall font, a bit hard to read, but can be useful in a pinch.

Minimal5: A slightly bigger font, 5 pixels tall. I use this in a lot of my tutorials.

Monocons: A 6 pixel tall monospaced font, useful for some making an oldschool console.

Pixel Art Tutorials

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 15:16:38 -0700

This is my series of tutorials created with the support of my Patreons. Each tutorial is 512x512 pixels and was originally posted and focused on Twitter but eventually became its own standalone project. All these tutorials are free to access, but if you’d like to support me, you can do so on Patreon or purchase them as a convenient .zip file on Itch.io.

My Thoughts on Very Low Resolution

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 23:07:14 -0700

This article was originally made for Kano(now offline), I made some adjustments and updates for this version.

This is a collection of toughs I like to keep in mind when working on very low resolutions. Specific challenges appear when working with this kind of limitations, and I try to tackle them here.

1. It’s Not Only Art, It’s a Puzzle

When I’m drawing I like to think that I’m solving a puzzle, each pixel meaning and communicating something. Having few pixels to work with means that each and every one of them is very valuable and must be placed with more care than if I had a bigger space.

1 - An Absolute Beginner’s Guide

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:45:14 -0700

This article was supported by Patreon! If you like what I’m doing here, please consider supporting me there :) This is a little article on how to start making pixel art, intended for those who are really starting out or never even opened a pixel art software. For now I’ll cover only the very basics, how to create a file, setup the canvas size, and work with a color limit.

Why a Website

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 19:56:26 -0700

Because I’m tired of social media rules and their constant effort of trying to sell you something. I feel that here I can add post my ideas in a more free-form way and center all my content in the same place. I’m also gravitating more to open source or non-profit places, like Mastodon.

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