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I've been trying to make a game for a while now, but my pixel art just doesn't turn out as clean as yours. How do you make such good pixel art?

(4 edits)

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

Firstly, I don't feel like it's that good; people seam to like it for some reason; I'm really not sure why. I mean I see I'm improving but I'm nowhere near people who draw professionally (most likely never will be). Makes sense I guess, they spend orders of magnitude more time on drawing, probably since childhood or something.

As for your question: I recommend* 3 things (assuming you're a beginner) that work for me:

1. steal** palette from some pixelart you like (the less colours the better, 4 is nice number but anything from 2 to 8 should be good to start with)

2. use a small sprite size: 8x8 or 16x16.

3. if you're unhappy/tired of something just save it on your hard drive (or wherever), forget about it, discover few months later and release with some tweaks as "not that bad after all" - this might be a terrible advice, but this is what I do (might be the reason why I never finish anything) :)

* - also I guess asking an actual artist might be better idea - I'm just a programmer who sometimes draws;
** - stealing is good (don't quote me on that :D), also: https://lospec.com/palette-list

First of all thank you for the assets, I love all your work! The style is beautiful so don't sell yourself short :) Also, I appreciate the response you had to that question, most people simply reply; "Just practice" and that is true but you put some heart into the reply. I too have the problem of not being able to pull off pixel art that's "good enough". By the way, I know this was 265 days ago lol but whatever! Take care

Thank you!

fwiw "just practice" while concise is also a precise and correct advice.

I still only draw sometimes (not every week even) but I see some improvements on my end in those 265 days! 

Take care!