10 Great Pixel Art Tutorial And Free Resource Sites For Your Games
I don’t usually create “list” posts, however I wanted to share a grouping of resources I have been collecting over the past few months. As you may have noticed, I’m a bit of a Pixel Art fanatic and wanted to share with you the tutorials that helped to get me started as well as some sites offering some high quality free pixel art.
Keep in mind that some of these sites have similar content, however they all take a slightly different approach in teaching. I found it very helpful to read each of the tutorials and learn from different points of view.
1. Gas 13 – Isometric Pixel Art Tutorial
This was my very first pixel art tutorial. I was amazed at how quickly I was able to make a really professional looking pixel art building. I highly recommend all of the tutorials on this guy’s site. Some of them however can be quite complex.
2. Derek Yu – The Pixel Tutorial
This was another site that I stumbled upon early on in my pixel art quest. Derek provides a nice story telling approach to teaching the in’s and out’s of pixel art. I really appreciated his tutorial on lines.
3. Mini Wizard Studios – What is ‘Isometric’ pixel art
This guy offers another dead simple intro to pixel art. Most of it is just explanation, however his examples are quite good. He shows examples of Backgrounds, Characters, objects, tiles, as well as a ton of different UI elements and icons. It’s a great place to go for some inspiration.
4. Hub Pages – How To Start With Pixel Art
Again, another great site for the pixel art n00b. This tutorial goes over all of the basics of line, cubes, and texturing. It also links out to other great pixel art tutorials for creating various objects such as a bed, table, and lamp.
5. Bio Rust – Isometric Pixel Art
This tutorial is a bit rushed however it provides a great overview for creating other basic shapes besides a cube. In addition to lines and cubes, it demonstrates pyramids, cylinders, and spheres.
6. Oceans Dream – Pixel Art Tutorials
This is the most comprehensive site for pixel art tutorials. While many of them aren’t for the faint of heart, there is some fantastic content here. This site has everything from tips and tricks, to character creation, to breakdowns of existing games. I could spend hours on this site.
7. Pixel Character Tutorial – NekoSoraYagami on Deviant Art
This is a nice in depth tutorial for creating a custom character from start to finish. They start out with a base character (plain, nude, genderless) and turn it into their own creation. Very well written and very fun to follow.
8. City Creator
The City creator is not so much a tutorial as it is a resource for creating gorgeous pixel cities. It has a nice interface and a huge selection of buildings, objects, roads, signs, and trees to go into your city. I am not sure what their license is on the generated cities, however I didn’t see any clause about not reusing the graphics in your own projects.
9. Has Graphics
Has graphics provides tons of free game graphics mostly geared towards tiled games. So, if you are hacking an old school RPG or platformer, I would definitely check out this site.
10. VX Resource Planet
This is the Motherload. I have saved the best for last. This a wordpress blog that contains TONS of free pixel art and tilesets for use in your games. They have endless spritesheets and beautiful tiles that would enable anyone to have a very professional looking game. If you visit one site from this list, visit this one.
Conclusion
If you have any resources of your own, please paste them in the comments. My readers and myself would be very interested in them.
Happy Coding!
This post is part of iDevBlogADay, a group of indie iOS development blogs featuring two posts per day. You can keep up with iDevBlogADay through the web site, RSS feed, or Twitter.
