The hardest part of learning any creative skill is that your taste develops faster than your ability. You can see exactly what's wrong with your work but can't fix it yet. That gap is brutal but it means you're improving even when it doesn't feel like it.
There is no shortcut to art, but that’s part of why it is so valuable to society and so rewarding to create.
But don’t let that discourage you. If you want to make your own art, keep working at it. You will always get better with time and practice. It takes a long time and even the best artists frequently feel like their work isn’t good enough. But dedication and practice will pay off in time.
I have been trying for years to get good at 3D modeling with Blender and have also failed. But I didn’t let that stop me using Blender to produce illustrations for my sci-if epic interactive fiction game that ended up being nominated for a minor award for graphics (it didn’t win).
Let me introduce you to the last resort of the struggling artist - extreme stylization. Really good pixel art is a very difficult discipline but terrible pixel art can be just as appealing if you push a style you can call your own.
Draw, draw, draw, draw. Don't try to be good; just draw. Look for one thing you can improve on, then practice until you get a little better at it. Then look for the next thing and repeat.
You are always going to think that you could have done it better. That's the curse of the artist; don't let it discourage you. Keep drawing and then draw some more.
My kid draws all the time and she gets better at it. She also asks me to draw for her and (surprise) I'm getting better at it. Draw a person. Draw a house. Draw a cartoon character. Draw an orange that just received bad news. Draw a lettuce riding a motorcycle. Don't wait to be in front of your computer so you can do pixel art; draw on a piece of paper, draw on your tablet, draw in the sand. Draw on a liquid crystal drawing board (great for throwaway drawings: no mess, quick erase, no drafts left behind).
And be kind to yourself. You are going to think that your drawings suck. I promise they are better than you think (one is always their own worst critic), but also be realistic on where you need to improve technically. Do ask for advice from other people, and take it gracefully.
(You want to do pixel art. Start with the art, and when you are good enough at it, add the pixel.)
Patience. And a lot of hands on practice. You will only learn by doing, not by watching videos. Sure, first years pixel art won't be something to brag about, but don't throw anything out. Keep a record of your progress, it will be very rewarding to see how you progressed. Start with simple things, try to get shapes right at first, continue with basic coloring, advance with shading and shadows, do some perspective, and follow up with animations and special effects. If you are more of programmer person, you can achieve some effects like lighting and shadows with code faster, but you might want to learn to do everything by hand. And that is okay. Find your own style, but at first you can try to copy other pixel artists, just to get a feel how they work. Don't be afraid to use placeholder "programmer art" in your game at first. With patience eventually you will replace all "doodles" with decent artwork, and then you will do it several times, improving them bit by bit. And don't be afraid to share your game for playtesting even with "begginer art". If game mechanics are solid and engaging, people won't even criticize that graphics are bad ;)
Do not forget, that none of pixel artists started to draw amazing art from day one. Maybe they had more free time to practice? Maybe they were limited by slow hardware or had limited access to it?
When I took a drawing class in high school, we began by laying a grid on top of the image we wanted to copy, and then only drawing one square at a time. This made it a lot easier to draw, as you weren't focused on the overall image.
I imagine a similar exercise might work for pixel art, with each square of the grid representing a single color.
I’m not good at it, but, I got better by making small enough pixel images that I could try different colors for individual pixels to match the feel of a reference images. 8x8 and then 16x16. With larger images, there is too much work to keep changing the pixels while you are still understanding the color theory.
The big insights came from how, in pixel art, a single high contrast pixel can give the impression of color or shade in a whole area of the image. For example, on a ladybug’s back, a few metallic blue pixels make it look more reflective than white, and doesn’t clash with the predominant red.
I used Resprite for iPad which is similar to Aesprite, for my Godot game.
It’s just like any other artform. It takes active practice. The only way forward is actually making things.
Also, people seem to think pixel art is easier than others forms of art. I think this is a misconception that comes from being able to see the individual elements and being able to place them one by one. This does remove the need for the same type of motor skills required for say painting, but does not remove the need for vision, sense of color, composition. Etc.
It’s a completely opposite scenario for me, I accidentally shipped a pixel art game.
It’s actually a game about nonograms. My first attempts at pixel art were bad but it didn’t matter that much, the focus was elsewhere anyway. With time the art improved; far from perfect but it’s still one of the things I like most about that game.
So I guess: practice, room for failure, achievable goals and time.
Pixel art is art. To be good at pixel art requires the same skills as art: composition, color, lights and shadow, shapes.
While there’s no shortcut, I would suggest that in games, consistency in art style is way more important than quality. If you can make your graphic style consistent, although maybe very simple and not so aesthetic, it will make the game appealing.
Tangentially related; remember the much maligned Zed Shaw? Nobody talks about him any more. He's been doing some game dev streaming on Twitch, and I just found out he's got a 7 hour video on how to draw for complete beginners, which I am enjoying quite a bit actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLakoYhiWko
From what I understand of pixel art, it demands all the techniques of drawing on top of trying to create a recognizable shape with only a few pixels and colours. From your question, it sounds like you're jumping directly onto pixel art without a solid foundation on drawing techniques, and I'd suggest to focus there — at least that's what I'm doing with my personal learning path.
Make the sprites as good as you can within a reasonable amount of time. Don't stress too much about it. You can always do a second pass later on. And even if you decide to pay a professional artist, your sprites would still be useful as a vehicle for communicating your vision.
You can’t study or ready your way to better art. You need to be hands on. When you have trouble with a specific thing, you can watch a video or get some advice on that, but then will still need to practice, practice, practice.
Also be realistic about how much progress you can make in a certain amount of time. You can make a game with very basic sprites. As your art improves, so can the sprites in the games.
The other option is to partner up with someone who has art skills already, but can’t make games. Together you can make more than either one could make alone.
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But don’t let that discourage you. If you want to make your own art, keep working at it. You will always get better with time and practice. It takes a long time and even the best artists frequently feel like their work isn’t good enough. But dedication and practice will pay off in time.
https://saint11.art/blog/pixel-art-tutorials/
Let me introduce you to the last resort of the struggling artist - extreme stylization. Really good pixel art is a very difficult discipline but terrible pixel art can be just as appealing if you push a style you can call your own.
Be bold.
You are always going to think that you could have done it better. That's the curse of the artist; don't let it discourage you. Keep drawing and then draw some more.
My kid draws all the time and she gets better at it. She also asks me to draw for her and (surprise) I'm getting better at it. Draw a person. Draw a house. Draw a cartoon character. Draw an orange that just received bad news. Draw a lettuce riding a motorcycle. Don't wait to be in front of your computer so you can do pixel art; draw on a piece of paper, draw on your tablet, draw in the sand. Draw on a liquid crystal drawing board (great for throwaway drawings: no mess, quick erase, no drafts left behind).
And be kind to yourself. You are going to think that your drawings suck. I promise they are better than you think (one is always their own worst critic), but also be realistic on where you need to improve technically. Do ask for advice from other people, and take it gracefully.
(You want to do pixel art. Start with the art, and when you are good enough at it, add the pixel.)
Some good old resources for inspiration: https://www.derekyu.com/makegames/index.html https://pixeljoint.com/ https://www.slynyrd.com/pixelblog-catalogue
I imagine a similar exercise might work for pixel art, with each square of the grid representing a single color.
The big insights came from how, in pixel art, a single high contrast pixel can give the impression of color or shade in a whole area of the image. For example, on a ladybug’s back, a few metallic blue pixels make it look more reflective than white, and doesn’t clash with the predominant red.
I used Resprite for iPad which is similar to Aesprite, for my Godot game.
Also, people seem to think pixel art is easier than others forms of art. I think this is a misconception that comes from being able to see the individual elements and being able to place them one by one. This does remove the need for the same type of motor skills required for say painting, but does not remove the need for vision, sense of color, composition. Etc.
It’s actually a game about nonograms. My first attempts at pixel art were bad but it didn’t matter that much, the focus was elsewhere anyway. With time the art improved; far from perfect but it’s still one of the things I like most about that game.
So I guess: practice, room for failure, achievable goals and time.
While there’s no shortcut, I would suggest that in games, consistency in art style is way more important than quality. If you can make your graphic style consistent, although maybe very simple and not so aesthetic, it will make the game appealing.
From what I understand of pixel art, it demands all the techniques of drawing on top of trying to create a recognizable shape with only a few pixels and colours. From your question, it sounds like you're jumping directly onto pixel art without a solid foundation on drawing techniques, and I'd suggest to focus there — at least that's what I'm doing with my personal learning path.
Also be realistic about how much progress you can make in a certain amount of time. You can make a game with very basic sprites. As your art improves, so can the sprites in the games.
The other option is to partner up with someone who has art skills already, but can’t make games. Together you can make more than either one could make alone.