pages (2): 1 [2]

Part 2: Human Figures

Step 1: Now onto more advanced topics, and one which usually confuses most individuals - pixel people! Making a human is actually simple enough - to start, make a long vertical cube, slightly wider and shorter than you want your person to be. Now, on a new layer (in bright red to help you discern between the two parts), stick a head on top and erase the parts of the cube that don't belong!

Step 2: Hit Ctrl + U (Command + U on a Mac) on the keyboard as before and drag the lightness slider to -100% so that your lines are black once more. Don't merge your head layer and cube layer together! Now, on your cube layer, separate your cube around waist height.

Step 3: In red and on a new layer, define the basic shape of your person. Delete your cube layer and do your Hue/Saturation trick again to make it black.

Step 5: Finally, add some details and color to your person. To make clothes simply draw a one pixel outline of your character where you want the clothes to be and erase the inside outline.

Finally just add some finishing touches, like shading and such, and you're done! Here's a little helper for males and females. The male figure was shaded by hand using dithering, the female figure was done with the gradient tool. I personally like the hand done one myself, but it's all a matter of personal preference.

Part 3: Texturing

Giving your images texture really makes them look so much better. We'll start with a basic grass tile.

Firstly, create a basic Iso-square and fill it with your basic green. Now select the green area with the Magic Wand Tool, and run Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Play with the settings until you get nice grassy colors with a good mixture of darks and lights. I used 15px.

Press OK and, after losing your selection, choose Select > Color Range. This will automatically select your foreground color (in this case, our middle tones of greens). Now change the setting to around 50 and, while holding SHIFT down on the keyboard, click on one of the black pixels. Invert your selection with Select > Inverse, and copy/paste it via the usual Ctrl + C then Ctrl + V combination on your keyboard. Finally, using the Move Tool, position the new layer exactly on top of the other grass so it looks like it did before you duplicated. Press the upwards arrow key to move it one pixel up. Continue duplicating and moving one pixel up until you get the grass at the desired height.

Now all you have to do is simply duplicate it and make it a tile. Almost every texture can be made with the noise filter - rocks, grass, leaves, sandstone, etc. If it can't be done with noise, just do it by hand.

Take a look on the left for some examples of textures. Notice how much more interesting it is and how much better it looks if it's not just a flat color? Texturing will make your image better in all aspects, so don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Part 4: Hints & Tips

Pixel Art can be as simple or as complex as your imagination, and many tutorials abound on the internet describing other people's ideal techniques for creating pixel scenes. With that in mind, here's a brief bullet-point list of hints I'd like to share with you from my many years of experience of the topic:

• You can make animals in a similar method to people - just take your time and build up the levels of detail slowly.
• Avoid using pure white whenever possible - it is very difficult to see!
• You will never see a sky in Iso-Art. (Unless it's a reflection, there's holes through the earth in the ground, your hanging on the edge of the world, or for some reason your people build upside down, which is just... weird.)
• The noise filter, opacity functions and Pencil Tool should be the only tools you use, otherwise it's not really pixel art.
• Be sure to be careful about the height and perspective of your people - a 6 ft. person can't sit in a 12 ft. high chair.
• Iso-Art takes a long time to make, so be patient or it will come out sloppy and boring.
• Texture everything you can.
• Adding small details, like pictures, plates, glasses, little magnets on the fridge, etc. etc, to make your image much better, and more visually appealing.
• Be sure to add more than one person if your image is set in a public place or it won't be realistic.
• Put windows in your houses.
• Be sure that all your characters, buildings, and doodads (environmental things like rocks and trees) have the same light source. Images just look weird if the tree is lit on the top right and the guy next to the tree is lit on the top left!
• Frogs are cool.
• Be sure to use different colors for objects on top of each other. (If a man is standing in red pants in front of a red wall, his pants will look invisible.)
• Putting patterns or pictures on clothes makes them much more realistic.
• Avoid using very bright colors from the very top of the pallete, as such things will make your art hard to look at and ugly. (You can use them for highlights if you really need to, but be sparing!)

And there we have it! You've learned the basics, hopefully made some basic images, and you're ready to dish out your first masterpiece! Keep on experimenting and have fun! If you have any problems with this tutorial, you can reach me in the Biorust Forums - I go by the name of Andantonius. Best of luck!

view all