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Have you ever seen pixel art on games such as Coke Music or Habbo Hotel, and wanted to do such things yourself? Well then read, on as the author of this massive tutorial, Andantonius, takes you through the basic, intermediate, and advanced techniques that create such interesting, fun, and beautiful work.


Part 1: The Basics of Isometric Pixel Art

Where to start? The beginning, of course! The number one rule of Isometric Pixel Art is to make lines that are two pixels in one direction with a single pixel in another. This rule is the basis of every single isometric pixel art image and is probably the most important thing to remember. It may not seem important now, but when you've started a project, you'll find yourself using more lines than you'd ever imagine. In addition to the cardinal rule mentioned above, it is also very important to draw lines using the Pencil Tool set at ONE pixel thickness. I know it takes forever to do anything with such a small brush, but believe me when I say that it's the only way to get a good isometric pixel art image. Usually you will also need to zoom into your canvas anywhere from 600% to 1600% to be able to work with your lines properly.

Step 1: Now, BEFORE you read on, I want you to make an Isometric Line like the one above with a Pencil Tool (which may be hidden under your Brush Tool), set at ONE pixel thickness. Made your line yet? Good. Now we can make our first Isometric Cube! It's quite simple. Use the Iso-Line you made a moment ago and duplicate it by going to Layer > Duplicate Layer, or by pressing Ctrl + J (Command + J on a Mac) on the keyboard. Now go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical and, using the Move Tool, drag your duplicate down until the far left side is on top of the far left side of your original line. Step 2: Duplicate the layer you just dragged, make a new layer, and on that new layer draw a perfectly vertical line downwards, starting from the far left edge of your lines, until you are at the desired final height of your cube. Drag your duplicate layer down until it touches the bottom corner of your vertical line. Step 3: Now merge all the layers together (there should be four) and duplicate the result via Layer > Duplicate Layer again. Flip the duplicate horizontally and drag it to the right until your far left edges overlap the far right edges of the first layer. Merge the two layers together and name the resultant layer 'Cube' or something similar.

Step 4: To round off the shape simply draw another vertical line on the left pixel where the two edges connect. Step 5: Time to color and finish our cube! This is the easiest step in making a cube. Simply grab your Paint Bucket Tool and, ensuring Anti-Alias is OFF, Contiguous is ON and All Layers is ON, fill in, on a new layer, the top of your cube with the colors you want. Your colors should reflect your ideal light source. In my cube the imaginary light source is at the top left, so the top section of my cube is the brightest, the left edge is second brightest, and the right edge is darkest. Fill in the rest of your cube and merge the color layer and the cube layer together. And that's it - all done! Zoom out and admire your work.

Step 8: Now to get down to some other basic shapes, the first of which is the Pyramid. To create a Pyramid, simply make an isometric square (I trust you can do this after making a cube). Remember you're making just a flat square, not a cube. Now, to make things easier, erase the top edge of the square. Step 9: Draw a vertical line upwards, into the center of the shape, and, using some kind of diagonal line, connect the edge of your first shape with the vertical line, remembering that you might need to increase its length. Step 10: Make your diagonal line on the other side of the shape to finish it off, and remember you can always erase edges that don't come out as you intended. For example, I drew my line on the left side of my center two pixels so my right edge was one pixel too far away, so I moved it to the left one pixel and erased the edges that stuck out. Now add some color and voila!

Step 11: To experiment with more advanced shapes, we will make an isometric cylinder! This is fairly simple - just make an iso-square and draw a circle inside of it, on a new layer. Drawing it in bright red will help you easily isolate the circle from the square as well. To draw the circle in my example, I whipped out the Elliptical Marquee Tool, selected a circle that fit inside the square and then used my one pixel brush, on a new layer, to make it one pixel thick. I then duplicated it several times because there were parts that were transparent.

Step 12: Now hit Ctrl + U (Command + U on a Mac) on the keyboard to open up the Hue/Saturation window, and drag the lightness slider to -100% to make the circle black. Delete your iso-square, duplicate your circle layer, and drag it up to the desired height of your cylinder. Now draw vertical lines connecting the edges, and erase the upper half of the lower circle. Step 13: All that's left is the coloring. You can use block colors or a gradient, it's your choice! I used a gradient.

Step 14: For our final, and most complicated shape, we shall create a sphere! Begin by making a circle, not an Iso-Circle like before, but a plain circle, and fill it in with your brightest color.

Step 15: Now to make it look three-dimensional. There's always the Gradient Tool, but for this sphere i'm going to use a technique called Dithering. Dithering involves making a checkerboard or random pattern of pixels interspersed throughout the colors, forming a nice fade effect. No special skills are required for this effect - just use a spherical gradient with the Gradient Tool and ensure that Dither is turned ON in the tool options. Well... now that we've covered the basic shapes, it's time to start putting them to use! I want you to make something simple, like a house (Cube with a pyramid on top) or a street lamp (Cylinder with a sphere on top). I'm not going to give you a guide, as you need to learn something in the end. Just play around and see what you can create - its the fastest way to learn and hone your new skills.

- Tutorial written by Andantonius

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