My Basic Tutorial on How to Draw Pixel Art on Photoshop
In creating your own pixel art design, you will need an editing software that enables you to draw with 1px squares on a blank canvas. My editing software of choice is Photoshop, which is primarily designed for editing images and I think it’s perfect for simple pixel art edits. Side Note: ❣If you’d rather watch a tutorial video I made instead of reading this long post, click here. It’s a terrible video, but I tried. Enjoy! ❣ It’s also useful to draw out/ colour your design roughly on a grid piece of paper, which helps when you are transferring an idea you have to your computer. If you don’t have lined grid paper, you can always Google ‘blank pixel grid’ on Google Images. Instructions 1.Open Photoshop and click on the File tab on the top right hand corner and click ‘New’. You’ll see a pop up screen with a list of options and the only two things you will need to do is click ‘Default Photoshop Size’ and select ‘International Paper’, enabling the Size button in order to select A4 in the down bar and change Background Content from ‘ White’ to ‘transparent’. In the video I did say to leave the background as white, but if you intend to animate your pixel art image change the canvas to transparent. It’ll be easier for you, trust me on this one. Of course this is your call, you might want a transparent background for a non- moving image.
2. Once you have a blank transparent canvas which resembles a checkerboard (or white background), zoom in until you can’t zoom in anymore. Once the grid is ready for drawing, select the pencil tool with a 1px brush and begin your drawing.
3. When you have finished perfecting your drawing you will notice that it’s very small in size, in which you can now make the pixel image as big or as small as you like. To change the size of your pixel art, hit ‘Command A’ ( MAC users) or just click on the ‘Quick Select Tool’ and highlight your image. Once your image is highlighted, click on the ‘Image’ tab and go to Image Size to select your desired size for your drawing. Before clicking ’Ok’ remember to select ‘Nearest Neighbour’, which is located in the very bottom tab. Selecting ‘Nearest Neighbour’ allows your image to maintain the crisp edges without pixelating when you alter the size.
4. If you wish to animate your pixel art, you’re going to want to click on the ‘Window’ tab on the top side bar and select ‘Timeline’, which is located towards the bottom. At the bottom of your screen you will now notice a timeline, which enables you to add different layers in a sequenced moving GIF. The layers on the right side bar will correspond with the timeline. So each new layer you create on the timeline will show the image of whatever is shown on the layers panel, unless it’s hidden. Every new movement your image makes will be a new layer on the timeline and will be the only layer not hidden on the layer panel each time you create a new movement. This step is hard to explain, but I have come prepared with a video of me guiding you through step 1-4. I still didn’t know how to coherently explain this step when I filmed it, but hopefully watching my mouse click places helps.