Imhomer's MS Paint Tut for Beginning and Advanced Pixelers

Well, I've been around the block at least once with pixels and I've decided to make a tutorial to show the people what I've learned and found useful about pixels. I'll be using examples from my work to try and show you examples of certain techniques and skills. This is still being worked on but feel free to suggest any improvements I can make to it. And, just a little poke at Aludron, while you're adding this to the FAQ sticky :wink:, it might be helpful to seperate the tutorials into different catagories like one for pixels, another for abstracts, another for digipaint, etc.

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0.0 Table of Contents

Because my tutorial is rapidly getting extremely large, I'm implementing a quick search system. Each different section will begin with a decimal. Press Ctrl+F to open a search in your browser window and type in the number you want to zoom to.

1.0 A Short Histoy of Pixel Art

2.0 What's This Pixel Art About Anyways?

3.0 Pixelling: The Basics

____3.1 Your Program

____3.2 Saving

____3.3 Shading

____3.4 Line Art

____3.5 Adding Text

____3.6 Posting Your Image

4.0 Putting It All Together

____4.1 Step 1: The Idea

____4.2 Step 2: Your Characters

____4.3 Step 3: Basic Coloring

____4.4 Step 4: Shading Your Characters

____4.5 Step 5: Shading the Foreground

____4.6 Step 6: Shading the Background

____4.7 Step 7: Final Touches

5.0 Advanced Pixelling

____5.1 Getting Rid of Those Black Lines

____5.2 Profiles

____5.3 Anti-Aliasing

____5.4 Advanced Textures

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1.0 A Short History of Pixel Art

Pixel art began in the late 1970's with the advent of the first video game systems such as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. Instead of the previous digital readouts of the basic computers at the time, these games required more than 36 characters to display (26 letters and 10 digits). Some games requires sprites to form human-like shapes with a simple 5 by 5 pixel square.

An example of early pixel art

Required to keep to a small palette size (color choice) these artists created the very first game sprites and were the first to create classic game characters such as Link, Mario, and Pac-Man.

As processing power of systems advanced, more colors were opened to artists, creating more advanced art with basic shading.

Basic shading from The Legend of Zelda: Links to the Past

As three-dimesnional graphics became easier to make and more common, pixel art shifted out of the mainstream and into other markets. These include portable games, cell phone games, and others. Again, the new range of colors with these systems resulted in a third incarnation of pixel art with more detail.

The town of Imil from Golden Sun

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2.0 What's This Pixel Art About Anyways?

Pixel art is the using of various basic programs and tools to create an image such as MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Graphics Gale, or (for you Mac users) AppleWorks. Each color is chosen individually by the artist (no use of pre-set gradients) and manually shaded with the pencil and fill tools. Through the use of the color wheel and different textures, great detail can be obtained resulting in a variance from cartoon-like to painting-quality images.

Though it helps a lot to have artistic ability, it is in no way required! No matter what anyone says, practice makes perfect. The most important part of art is patience; you can make a great image as long as you don't rush yourself.

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3.0 Pixelling: The Basics

3.1 Your Program

To get started, first find the graphics program on your computer. All PCs are shipped with MS Paint and all Macs (to my knowledge) are shipped with AppleWorks. I have used both, but for this tutorial I will be using MS Paint. It's important that you familiarize yourself with the controls and tools.

3.2 Saving

The first thing you do before you do any work on your sig is save it. Go up to the FILE menu in the upper left and click it. Select "Save".

Type in a name for your file and make sure it's going ot the right place. Always, always, always save as a .png (shown below with the yellow box).

3.30 Shading

Shading is what makes pixelling. Without shading, we would be living in a world of bad looking, flat cartoon sigs. If you master any skills at pixelling, it must be shading.

3.31 Color Choice

Go to the colors at the bottom of the window and double click on one of the boxes. You should open a window like this:

These are the default colors provided by MS Paint when it opens. Only use this for the most basic of coloring, NEVER use these colors for shading. Instead click on the button boxed in in yellow to bring up the window below.

There are 3 important parts of this window. The most important is the part boxed in red. This is called the Palette. Depending on the settings you have your computer on, the palette can offer anywhere from 256 to millions of choices of different colors.

Near the top of the widow boxed in red are the brightest colors. These have the least amount of grey in them and are very bright and eye catching because of this. No piece should use these colors. A sig that uses these colors near the top to shade tends to make peoples eyes hurt and tend not to turn out well on some background colors.

Instead, choose colors from the middle to the bottom of the palette. These colors have more grey, are softer on the eyes, and are easier to blend when you shade.

When you've found a color you like, go to the green boxed area and choose how light or dark of a shade you want that color to be. Once you've found a shade you like, click the "Add to Custom Colors" button to save the color to the area boxed in yellow. Until you save over it or quit Paint, this color with stay in that box. Let's start with a few blues.

3.32 Shading a Cube

Let's start with shading a cube. Draw a picture of a cube or copy this one and paste it into Paint.

Next we choose our light source. If it helps, draw a small lightbulb or sun in where the light is coming from. Arrows also help in determining the coloring. Now color the sides light and dark depending on your light source. Remember to use the custom colors you have made.

As you can see, the cube is already taking on a three dimensional look as though it's coming off of the screen. Take intermediate colors and color the lighter areas lighter and darker areas darker to give it more contrast.

The cube above now has multiple shades. This kind of shading, where one color runs straight into another without and blending is called Gradient Shading This is useful for 'hard' looking surfaces such as metal. An example of gradient shading using these colors looks like this:

For softer materials like cloth or wood, you can blend using Dithering. Dithering in the zig-zag pattern used to blend colors together.

Above is an example of dithering

This is our cube dithered.

3.4 Line Art

When you first draw the outline of your pixel, your first instinct will be to use the pencil tool. This is ok but the pencil too tends to leave behind messy lines that aren't sharp and clean. Pixels in the outline should not touch each other except on the corners.

The face on the left is sad because he has lots of messy pixels around the edges. The other face is happy because it's clean and sections of pixels are only connected on the diagonal.

3.5 Adding Text

1) Go to Dafont.com and download a font you want in your piece.

2) Open MS Word or another word processing document and type the text you want.

3) Take a picture of the screen by pressing Alt+Print Scrn

4) Paste your screenshot into MS Paint and cut out the text.

5) Use a darker color in the center of the text and a lighter color on the outside.

6) If you are good at Photoshop, you may also use its superior text abilities to make a fancier text.

3.6 Posting Your Image

1) Find a website that uploads images for free such as:

ImageShack

PhotoBucket

2) Browse your machine for the image you want, then click upload.

3) Copy the text that's labeled "Direct Link to Image"

4) Put it in a post with tags bracketing it.

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4.0 Putting It All Together

So, if you haven't already gotten bored by all these exercises, we'll now get on to the actual pixelling. First off, you have to get into a pixelling mindset. The cold hard truth is that you WILL NOT finish in a single day. Do not rush a piece; only declare it finished once you're satisfied with it.

4.1 Step 1: The Idea

The key to any sig is an idea. Whether you get this from requests by other people or on your own doesn't matter. Come up with a concept that you'd like to work on and run with it. If you are not passionate about a piece, don't make it. Doodles from school are a great starting block as are requests by individuals for sigs in The Art Bazaar.

4.2 Step 2: Your Characters

For this tutorial, I'm going to use my fourth sig as an example. For this sig, the main action was a man fishing for sharks.

What you should do first is sketch or envision what you want the sig to look like. Then create a basic wireframe or outline of the main characters and some basic props (in this case a spear).

4.3 Step 3: Basic coloring

Choose the basic colors you want for you sig and simply use the fill tool to color your sig. It's okay if you use colors off of the palette at this step.

4.4 Step 4: Shading Your characters

First you pick out the characters and shade them out. Make sure to use as many colors as you need. Remember, color choice reflects style as much as anything else in your piece.

Here I've chosen off palette grey-blues to shade the shark. I've also used dithering to blend the colors better.

4.5 Step 5: Shading the Foreground

Next you shade the rest of the foreground. Shade your characters, the ground, any trees or other objects. Finally, once everything is shaded according to the light source, add in shadows.

Note: I replaced the light bulb with the sun at this point.

4.6 Step 6: Shading the Background

The background has very different kind of shading from the foreground and characters. Because it goes off into the distance (usually) the light source doesn't apply quite as strongly. This means that you can use fewer colors on your shading of the background but don't shun them altogether.

4.7 Step 7: Final Touches

Now you add final text, shade the last bits of your sig, add a border (if you haven't already) and then upload it!

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5.0 Advanced Pixelling

Note: Though you may attempt to skip ahead to these steps directly, I would highly reccommend that you get some experience pixeling first. Practice makes perfect.

Okay, now you're proficient with black outlines and basic shading now what? Now you can move on to more advanced pixelling concepts such as advanced color choice, anti-aliasing, and profile shading. First, we'll start with your outlines.

5.1 Getting Rid of Those Black Lines

Most beginner pixel artists begin with black or near-black outlines on their pieces. While effective at showing you how to shade, these lines tend to be very 'hard' looking and give the entire work a cartoony feeling. The most basic way to counteract this is to use a different color of the shade for the outline. A lighter color as the outline suggests a ridge or curve towards the viewer while a darker color suggests a dent or curve away from the viewer.

In the picture above, I replaced all the black lines in the sig I made with darker colors (top version). When compared to the original (bottom version), you can see that it appears to have more depth and detail than the original.

Though replacing black outlines on your work is a quick fix, it is difficult and doesn't produce a quality result. This is where profiles come in.

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5.20 Profiles

Profiling is an advanced pixeling technique that relies on the artist to begin without black lines. This tends to allow the artist to explore more details into the art but also is much more time consuming than other forms of pixelling. For this example, I will be using a Starcraft piece I pixelled a few months ago.

5.21 Step 1: Profile Your Characters

The first thing you have to do is profile you piece from a reference. The way I do it is I use a different color for overlapping bits to show that they're different. Each section of the character is a different color.

Here you can see how the Marine, though many different colors, isn't shaded at all. The only things present are filled in outlines of the characters.

5.22 Step 2: Shading the First Piece

Next, choose a piece that you want to shade. Pick your light source or sources and color the piece from there. In this kind of shading, it helps to choose a small or simple piece to get you started. Let's look at the Zealot's Psi Blade for now.

You can go about shading in two ways, from the center out or the edge in. As a general rule, if the border is lighter than the rest of the piece, it's shaded from the edge in to the center; if the border is darker, shade from the center out.

5.23 Step 3: Shading the Rest

Now you can start on the rest of the piece. Start shading a little bit at a time. It's ok to add in more detail as you go.

As you can see, at one point I added a lot of detail to the gun including several ridges along the top. I also used dithering extensively on the Marine's suit to make it look more beat up than shiny so it wouldn't look brand new. All of this has been done so far without any black lines. Remember, dark outline means a dip while a light outline means a ridge.

5.24 Step 4: More Shading

As I said in the previous post, major changes are not impossible. Here I replaced the small and undersized Hydralisk with a larger, more impressive one.

5.25 Step 5: Finish Shading and Add Final Touches

When you're done shading, add your final touches such as text and a border, then post.

5.3 Anti-Aliasing

If you work around computers enough, you might be familiar with the term Anti-Aliasing. Simply put, it's the use of gradual shades of colors to make curves and angles appear more smooth in pixelling. Let's go back to our trusty cube here.

This cube is nice but the lines going diagonally look like zig-zags (which they are). We are going to try to make those diagonal lines look a bit more smooth. First, choose three or four intermediate colors between the white and the black. Now, pick the darkest intermediate color and place it in the corners of the sections of black line. Now place a lighter intermediate next to that color. Eventually you will end up with a smooth looking line, albeit a thicker one (see below).

You can also anti-alias other colors besides black and white. All you need to know is what the intermediate colors are. Take, for example, a red cube on a blue background. The intermediate colors placed closer to the cube will be purples containing more red while those further from the cube will be purples with more blue. To get colors with more red or blue, simply slide the color selecting bar from the red to the blue while trying to keep it level.

A quick way to find good colors to anti-alias with is to take the values for RGB (red-green-blue) and average them between the two colors. This produces the exact middle color between the two you are trying to AA. If you desire more colors you can do this again, averaging the average and one of your base colors. Remember, the more colors you use the smoother it looks but also the thicker and fuzzier it looks.

Thanks Megadedhed for this tip

5.40 Advanced Textures

5.41 Sand

Start with sand by choosing three or so colors, varying in shade. Then divide you canvas into relatively equal sections for each color.

Next, dither 3 or 4 pixels on either side of the boundries between colors.

Now, using the spray can on the widest spray, randomly spray pixels of all three colors across the canvas. Spray until you get the spread you want. You will be left with a random looking arrangement that slowly changes shade from light to dark.

5.42 Ice

Begin by pciking 4 different shades, one light, one slightly darker than the light, one middle, and one darker color. Fill your canvas with the middle color then draw in diagonal lines (or any direction lines as long as they're parallel) or the darker color.

Take the 2nd brightest color and use the pencil tool to loosly draw over the diagonal lines. Don't be afraid to color too much, there's always the undo button. Make sure that you always draw lines parallel to your dark lines. After you've used the 2nd brightest, add in your lightest colors as highlights.

Continue drawing in random lines making sure to maintain a balance of colors. Avoid long, unbroken lines. Eventually, after some trial and error, you will end up with something like this.

5.43 Water

So far my water strategy only works for small areas. It is by no means perfect and I have difficulties making it appear natural up to the horizon. If you come across any ways to make ti better, please PM me to let me know so I can put it in this tutorial.

Start by picking 5 colors, 2 dark, 2 light, and 1 middle. Fill tool the canvas the 2nd darkest color and draw vertically parallel lines in the middle color.

Now, take the 2nd brightest color and draw arches connecting the ends of the ligther bars; these will be your ripples.

Use the spary can on the widest spray and spray all but the lightest color across the canvas.

Using the spray can again, try to define the lightest tops of the ripples by spraying the second darkest color between the arches.

Now, go over the arches in the 2nd lightest color with your pencil tool.. Then, go around the second brightest with the middle color. Finally, in the areas furthest from the light ripples, use the dark color.

After some trial and error and fine tuning, you can eventually get a watery looking tile.

Here's another one I spent more time on and prepared earlier:

5.5 Color Choice

So now you have some experience with shading of different light and darknesses of a specific color. To take it to the next level, we need to take a look at our color wheel.

Thanks to Chaostayoko for this pic

At the top, you see the Yellows. In this kind of shading, Yellow is considered the brightest and 'warmest' color. Opposite the Yellow is the Purple-Blue; the 'coldest' and darkest colors.

So, how does this apply to color choice? Well, istead of changing the darkness of a single color to shade, you use multiple colors to shade. In moderation this strategy can be used to add more depth to you work while, when used more liberally, it can also give it a cartoon feeling. As a general rule, the furthur you go for each step from the original in color distortion, the more cartoon-like it will appear.

Now let's go back to the Paint custom color window.

Before, you used the slider bar and moved it up and down to control shade (yellow line). Now that you know about light and dark colors, we are going to use the color selection piece and slide it side to side to get different colors. This can also be used in addition to the darkness slider bar on the right.

This is a piece I'm working on that I've done with this strategy of coloring:

Here I've actually used three different colors with two darknesses each to color the robot, two yellows, two tans, and two greens.

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More Coming Soon

*Your suggestion?

wow, should really help beginers

you should include a section about anatomy, shadows, and mabe even a style of outlining.

also, if you can pixel water, that would be good to include. i myself as a pixel artist, have a hard time doing that, and usually end up barrowing someone elses style =(

add in different shading techneques such as random dithering styles, 4+color shading, a color wheel, terlys cartoony thing where he uses different colors on the color wheel to go darker and lighter on his shading, add a section on glass, and how it effects objects, and how light effects shadows.

great tut

hope u gonna add tuts on manual anti-aliasing and non-lineart pix0ls

anyway great job

nice tut. Can't wait till you show how to do:

Water

Sand

Ice

etc.

great approach to a tutorial, why didn't I think of explaining what pixel art actually is, and where it came from #-o

You've inspired me to work on my own again, update it fully with all the info it initially needed.

Added profile, non-black lines, anti-aliasing, and advanced texture shading.

just something to add to the AA section, the best way for color gaining is to just simply find the middle color between the red, the blue and the green value.

Vert Nice guid! :) y

I just started to pixel. I did some practice here :D This helps ALOT

I think that the pattern of dithering you showed is very novice and could be further built upon.

Otherwise, that is a great tut for starters, good job.

I think that the pattern of dithering you showed is very novice and could be further built upon.

It's on the 'to do' list at the bottom.

=D> Good guide, I liked the ice one. Here's what I came out with, first one I made then the second one I just copied and pasted the first one to make it bigger. Worked good.

Addition on the multi-color shading section, updated the shading and dithering section, some editing.

just something to add to the AA section, the best way for color gaining is to just simply find the middle color by division in the red, the blue and the green value.

 

just something to add to the AA section, the best way for color gaining is to just simply find the middle color by division in the red, the blue and the green value.

So insistent :wink:

Done.

Very intresting guide, good job :)

Good job! =D>

But one very important thing. I've taken several classes in color theory, and there is no such thing as purple. It is called violet. So on your color wheel you might want to change it.

Here, I made this, feel free to use it.

well now that the topic has been inactive for a few days

heres my tut sugestion :

Tut on making cartoon sigs

as in cartoony scenes of different type

and u cud also add a part showing different pixelling softwares available wid a lil description of em

i found one by the name of Grafx2

and its real old school

great for those who wanna try out the way it was originally done ( its a kind of copy of DPaint - Deluxe Paint ) and its limited to 256 colors

Google it up if u wanna check it out

oh. and its free

so i know the following good pixeling softwares( Number 4, 5, 6 are too overpowered for pixelling )

1 ) Graphics Gale

2 ) MS Paint

3 ) Grafx2

4 ) Adobe Photoshop

5 ) The Gimp

6 ) Jasc Paint Shop Pro

7 ) Pixen ( MAC Only :(

8 ) Microangelo

9 ) IconBuilder Pro

10 ) i.Mage

11 ) Phoenix Paint ( DPaint Clone in C#, also known as PxPaint )

12 ) Pro Motion

13 ) Ultimate Paint

14 ) ProPixel

Thats all i could whip out for the list :)

oh.. and then u cud move on to photorealism :P ( i m not askin too much rite ? lol )

We'll very good guide, I am currenly creating my own signature but it would be helpful if you included more about how to make the beginning shapes/outlines, whatever.

oooo never seen your sig with the protoss in it...nice

very good guide!

thanks

great guide :thumbsup: the sand and the ice ones are very helpfull and i think for beginners this is especialy a great tut.

I would really like to see a section on how to do grass.

I would really like to see a section on how to do grass.

here is a zoom on some grass i did, with the image at normal size next to it:

i got a realistic view on the grass, but i did not do it blade by blade, instead i did it patch by patch w/ color conservation (5 colors total).

ImHomer, you can add this if you want to

i got a realistic view on the grass, but i did not do it blade by blade, instead i did it patch by patch w/ color conservation (5 colors total).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ImHomer, you can add this if you want to

I would, if I really had any idea how you did it. :-s

It looks like......................no, I really have no idea. :anxious:

 

i got a realistic view on the grass, but i did not do it blade by blade, instead i did it patch by patch w/ color conservation (5 colors total).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ImHomer, you can add this if you want to

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would, if I really had any idea how you did it. :-s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks like......................no, I really have no idea. :anxious:

As said, patch by patch, i only used dithering and the purple for color conservation, so pretend all dithered parts are just a 3rd shade of green

woot old school Zelda for a pixle art example...well not really old school GBC by the looks of it...possibly older, anyways, decent guide, nice layout :)