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 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.
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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.
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 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.
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 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!
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 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.
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  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.
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 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.
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 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.
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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.
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Part 3: Texturing
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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.
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Part 4: Hints & Tips
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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!
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