Pixel Art Tips from a Professional Artist - Tips & Tricks

Here are my top 8 tips on how to improve your pixel art. These tips are how I grew my pixel art skills and how I become a professional graphic designer.

┈ Who is Goodgis? ┈

I’m a full time Graphic Designer, Game Dev, & Youtuber. I specialize in making cute, colorful games in Godot and telling my story through my videos. I also run my own little game studio called Firith. My dream is to hire my friends and make Firith a full-time job. I’m known for games such as The Keeyp, Wizbirds, Snomes, and Dewdrop Dynasty.

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┈ Timestamps ┈
Introduction - 0:00
Tip #1 - 1:00
Tip #2 - 1:34
Tip #3 - 2:36
Tip #4 - 3:21
Tip #5 - 4:00
Tip #6 - 4:44
Tip #7 - 5:33
Tip #8 - 6:08
Conclusion - 7:15

#pixelart #pyxeledit #gameart​ #indiedev​ #goodgis​ #gamedev​ #indiegame

[JOHNDAYLL]

"Art can already be a challenge, so why make it any harder by insulting yourself"
Holy shit man this hits home

[adamkonig]

"Don't belittle yourself" is an outstanding piece of advice. Its about progression not perfection! You'll get there if you keep working at it!

[miloverreijt]

While practesing art, draw something you like. I like duckies

[dailydoseofhalal]

It's actually crazy how underrated you are...

[DDMPlayer]

Sad how i lost the premiere, this channel may be one of the most underrated game dev channels out there.
Good job with your videos tho!

[JustFredrik]

"I wanna get better at what I do but I'm proud of the accomplishment that I've done right now" is exactly the right mindset and you formulated it so well! Great job! :)

[BenBonk]

Thanks for pointing out how important color is! I totally agree that it is a great idea to use a premade color palette. I've seen many pieces of art that could look amazing, but just use really bad colors, and don't hue shift at all. Color palettes are a great way to hop into pixel art and just get to creating stuff without worrying about learning color theory and all that stuff, and palettes can even make you work more creatively if you only have a preset amount of colors to use. I also totally agree that you shouldn't belittle yourself, I've also seen this way too many times to count with beginner artists. If I had to give one more essential tip, it is, that for game development, please keep pixel size consistent! This kind of goes along with your tip number two, but besides having bad colors, this is the second most common pixel art mishap I see. People sometimes get lazy, and if a house they drew is too small for their game, they might just scale it up in their game engine. Please don't do this! Spend the time to hop back into your pixel art program and make a house that looks right, while maintaining the same pixels per unit as all the other objects in your game. It makes a massive difference, and keeping pixels size consistent will make your game look so much better, at least in my opinion. And take that from someone who used to scale up pixel art all the time.

[jjthepikazard]

love the video! also, saying you're art sucks, especially before someone sees it, tends to make them focus more on the flaws. it's called the anchoring principle. i saw them discuss it on extra credits once & it fully changed my outlook on how to talk about my art

[LoxagosSnake]

Hands down one of the best videos about game dev-related creative endeavors. It doesn't mindlessly regurgitate cliches ('just practice', duh), it has solid advice, and most importantly, it talks about issues that are common to most beginners yet no one talks about.

[cubeco]

Here’s another tip i’ve learned over the years: develop your own style and stick with it! Not only is consist the key, when you develop a style you’re comfortable with, you’ll be more confident when making new pieces.

[griffinissupercool]

The funny thing is, I feel like I'm way better at tilesets than I am at characters. I mostly got into tilesets because I was very inspired by Terraria and Celeste, and I dug into their game files to find the graphics for all of the tiles just to admire them basically. In my experience, redrawing tilesets from other places (in my case mostly Terraria) can actually help a lot, and using them in different ways can also help because it lets you see how they all connect together. This video was very helpful, thanks man!

[HalloweenCafe]

As someone who has been drawing for years, this advice definitely holds up for more than just pixel art. Great job at explaining!

[RobokiYT]

One tip was missing "Colours" colors show emotions and emphasises the look of game like a serious game will not use super saturated colors as they are cartoonish a bit and we use a less hue shift for them also less saturation and in sorrow moments the saturation is decreased even more these things expresses the story and game too well.

[McConnellMatthew]

This comment is to let the algorithm know that this is a good video, and deserves to appear in search.

[furkanaytan]

Your channel is only 3 months old? Your content is amazing man keep up. Love watching these informative videos

[Pacca]

As someone whos been in a rut with her art abilities for my entire life, and in a very poor mental state for the last two years, this video was INSANELY inspirational! Thank you, I really needed this!!!

[simschleider]

Excellent video! I agree 100% with everything you said. I've been doing pixel art for more than a year and I think the most important thing is to know that you can always get better at it. It may be the colors, the details, the characters, but there's always something you can improve on, so in my opinion, the best way to get better is by watching games or artist that you like and writing what they do that make their (pixel) art unique. And also, as you said, try new concepts, things and ideas. This art style is like any other art form, you will always be learning new stuff and that's what makes it fun. Keep up the good content!

[BookdashYoutube]

I must say notes definitely help. Having a little notes io page where you write down all your little ideas and possible thoughts is SUPER helpful, just to make sure you don't forget anything, as well as this amazing fact: If you write down ALL of your possible ideas in one place, then look at it and brainstorm, you can just take a load of different ideas from each possible game you thought up and make one dream game. GOOD LUCK GAMEMAKING!

[DazzlingAction]

All starting artist should watch this video as a mandatory video.

[TylerHaddad]

Really great tips! Setting rules is one of the most important things you can do to keep yourself in check and keep everything cohesive. Took me awhile to realize that, but it really helped elevate my pixel art. Keep up the quality content!