codeinheart/awesome-pixel-art

Curated list of everything awesome around pixel art.

Awesome Pixel Art

Pixel-level digital art, every placed pixel has importance in creating the envisioned graphic.

Contents

• Tutorials
  • Basics
  • Color
  • Animation
• Inspiration
  • Games
  • Artists
• Tools
• Community

Tutorials

Basics

• Introduction to pixel art
• Creating a cube
• Creating round objects
• Outline basics
• Outline colors

Color

• Creating a color palette
• Color palette and HSL

Animation

• Walking animation for low-res sprites
• Tips for animating 2D games

Inspiration

Games

• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Play as Yoshi carrying Baby Mario, platforming through a dangerous world. The painted feel and soft pastel colors create an hearth-warming handmade style that breathes the charm of a children’s book.
• FEZ - Explore a 2D retrofuturistic world by rotating in the third dimension. The minimalistic style, bright vibrant colors and dynamic lighting bring the 16-bit era into the future.
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - Laid back adventure in a bronze age mountain wilderness. Dreamy soft colors in a living world affected by moon phases.
• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove - Classic action adventure with an 8-bit retro aesthetic, taking the looks of a modern NES game.
• Hyper Light Drifter - Top-down action in a sci-fi world that radiates light and warmth. Using a colorful palette and kaleidoscopic neon yet setting a grim ambiance.
• Owlboy - Explore a detailed steampunk world in the clouds. With it's range of endearing animations and expressions the world and it's characters come to life.
• Stardew Valley - Manage a farm from a top-down perspective and engage with a charming and cheerful world in 16-bit.

Artists

• Paul Robertson - Australian, creating cute, sometimes cosmic and psychedelic, and sometimes weird nightmarish pixel art.
• Syosa - Japanese, girlish style using bright and organic color palletes creating cute humans and animals.
• Thomas Feichtmeir - Australian, dark and mature: fan of knights, dinosaurs, pirates, epic beasts, anatomy and history as well as everything twisted and weird.
• Toyoi Yuuta - Australian, capturing small animated scenes of everyday life in unsaturated colors.

Tools

• Aseprite - Open source, paid with trial, works on Linux, macOS and Windows. Awesome UI with a lot of nifty tools to ease pixel art creation.
• Pixen - Paid, works on macOS and iOS. Superb OS integration, create pixel art on a tablet using pressure-sensitive drawing.
• Pro Motion - Paid with trial, works on Windows. Advanced features tailored to creating pixel art for games.
• GIMP - Open source and free, works on Linux, macOS and Windows. Not specifically for creating pixel art but is more than capable to do so.
• Piskel - Open source and free, works in the browser, on Linux, macOS and Windows. Easy to try out in the browser saving sprites online.

Community

• Reddit /r/PixelArt
• Pixelation
• Pixel Joint