I've never claimed to be a brilliant pixeller. In fact, I don't think I'm good at pixelling at all. Some people might beg
to differ... But, I do know that I've been doing it for a while, and I consider myself pretty experienced. I want to share
that experience with you now. Read on to find out some tips and tricks for pixelling newbies (and oldies, maybe!). I've
seperated this tutorial into simple parts: The Beginning, Drawing, Colouring and Shading. Have fun!
I use MS Paint to pixel. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Just simple MS Paint. So, go to Start -> All Programs ->
Accessories -> Paint. Let's introduce you to what tools you'll be mainly using.
Have a little go with those tools. Familarise yourself with them. Now, we're ready to move on and start pixelling!
Zoom in 8x (if you click the tiny space between 8x and the end of the box, you can zoom in 10x, but that's rather
fiddly and I always forget to do it lol). Now, we're going to be drawing a bear. Just a simple, easy bear head.
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You see the "Thumbnail" shown above? That's really useful; it shows you what your pixel looks like zoomed out. Go to
View -> Zoom -> Show Thumbnail. Be sure to use it, it's very helpful. For small pixels, I always draw it pixel by
pixel. For bigger ones, I zoom all the way out or 2x and draw a rough outline, and then clear it up. Below is an example
of what cleaned up lines look like in contrast to horrible not cleaned up lines.
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The first one looks so much better, doesn't it? Make sure to keep your lines clean and tidy by deleting extra pixels.
Now, let's colour.
Go to Colors -> Edit Colors -> Define Custom Colours. This is where you pick all the colours you're going to use
on your pixel. NEVER use the basic default colours already given to you in the tray at the bottom of the screen - these
are ugly! Always pick your own. We want our bear to be brown, so find a nice brown shade to use.
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Click OK. Go to the Fill tool and fill in your outline.
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It's looking better, but the ugly black outline ruins it, doesn't it? Let's change that. Go back to Define
Custom Colors and click a lot lower down for a darker shade of your brown.
Fill in the outline with that and get an even darker shade for the eyes. This is what we have so far:
Looks nice, but still a bit bland, eh? Let's shade it!
Shading is something that is really up to the person who's pixelling. I "dither shade" which I won't go into detail right
now... Check out the other tutorials for that. I'll be showing you the most basic form of shading today.
Always shade from a light source. I always imagine the light source to be coming down from the top right-hand corner. The
lightest parts are the parts nearest the light source and the darkest parts furthest away. Make sense? Let's shade. So,
use the "Eyedropper" tool to "pick up" the main colour of your pixel. Go to define custom colours and make that shade a
lot darker. Shade this into the very left edges of your pixel. Then make that shade a bit lighter and shade some more on
the left side. This makes sure the colours blend in together. Then, add highlights to the right side, and you're done!
I added my own little finishing touches in the form of a bow and some blush... And... we're done! :D Yay! Hope you found
this tutorial helpful, and check out the "Transparentising" tutorial for info on how to make your pixels transparent. <33
~REVerse