BYOND Art Society

Pixel Art Tutorials

Start Here

• Tsugumo's So You Want To Be a Pixel Artist

The DM Icon Editor

• An Icon Primer by Tom
• Adding Artwork to Your Game Using the DM IDE

  A bit outdated for use with 4.0, but still a worthwhile starting place for adding sprites and tiles to your game using the DreamMaker.exe. From the BYOND FAQ.

Lines

• Mark's Lineart Tutorial
• Derek Yu on Lines
• Derek Yu on Lineart
• St0ven on Lines
• Manning Krull on Black Outlines vs. No Outlines

Selective Outlining (selout)

• Mark on Softening Outlines
• PKMays on Selective Outlining
• Derek Yu on Selective Outlining

Anti-Aliasing (AA)

• St0ven on AA
• Mark on AA
• St0ven on reverse AA
• Derek Yu on AA
• Antialiasing by Nemesis42

Dithering and Patterns

• St0ven on Dithering
• Derek Yu on Dithering
• Pixelation on Dither Patterns
• SpriteArt.com on Using Dither Patterns for Semi-Transparency
• An Intro to Interlacing Patterns by Raven
• Creating Pixel Patterns in Photoshop on Cornoncob.com

Colors and Coloring

• Character Coloring by PKMays
• Coloring a Character in the DM Icon Editor by Gughunter
• Recoloring Characters by Gughunter
• Derek Yu on Coloring Your Sprites
• Mark on Choosing Colors and Coloring
• Color and Palette Discussion on Pixelation
• Flash Video Tut on Refining and Recoloring a Work by Matriax
• TMDI on the Color Picker and Color Ramps

Shading

• Mark on Shading Sprites and Tiles
• Derek Yu on Shading
• Shading, Coloring, and Detailing a Fighter Sprite by Manning Krull
• SpriteArt.com on Ambient Lighting for Sphere
• Using Ambient Lighting in a Fighter Portrait by Kaine
• Creating a Pixel Portrait by Kazuya Mochu
• Picture Tutorial on How to Shade a Car by ~New2Max
• Flash Video of Matriax Painstakingly Coloring a Robotic Dragon Leg

Tiles and Turfs

• Creating Seamless Tiles in the DM Icon Editor by Gughunter
• st0ven on the grass tile
• BioMor on creating and shading a log
• BioMor on creating and shading rocks
• st0ven on making a brick texture
• Kable's tutorial on creating wood textures
• TMDI on Making Seamless Rock Textures
• TMDI on Creating a Full Tileset

Landscapes and Backgrounds

• How a Background Screen for Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth Was Made

RPG Sprites

• Shuku on Using Outlines and Rulers for Creating Two Sizes of RPG Sprites
• Shuku on Using Sillouettes for Creating RPG Enemy Sprites
• Shuku on Using Wireframes to Create Large Sprites for RPG Summoned Monsters
• Creating RPG Sprites by Khin
• Creating RPG Sprites by Flicky
• Creating Female RPG Sprites by Khin
• TMDI on Creating a Zombie Sprite

Fighter Sprites

• Male Fighter Sprite Faces by Grath
• Female Fighter Sprite Faces by Grath
• Creating, Coloring and Shading Fighter Sprites by Grath
• Chibi Sprites by Grath

Animating Sprites

• Idleworm with Some Basic Animation Tutorials
• Manning Krull on 2, 4, and 8 Frame Walk Cycles for Small Sprites
• Walking Animations and Walk Cycle for RPG Sprites by Khin
• Using Photoshop and ImageReady to Animate Waterflow in Tiles by DELer

Isometrics

• The Mother of All Iso Tutorials by Zoggles
• Fantastic Isometric Guide by RhysD
• Using Photoshop and ImageReady for Isometric Work by Gunstar Red
• Isometric Prison Complex Walkthrough by Zoggles
• Isometric Cartoon Style House Walkthrough by Zoggles
• Isometric Cottage Walkthrough by Zoggles
• Water Tiling and Texture Used for an Isometric Kids Swimming Pool by Matriax
• Creating an Isometric (2:1) Grass Tile by Karen
• Creating an Isometric (1:1) Grass Tile by Karen
• Isometric Smilies by Matriax
• Isometric House Step by Step at NascImpact
• Isometric Cylinders at NascImpact
• Isometric Pyramid at NascImpact
• Flash Video Tut on Coloring Isometric Creations by Matriax
• Flash Video Tut on Making Isometric Circles in Paint by Matriax

Miscellaineous

• Adding Sun Beams by Matriax
• Spiky Hair for a Small Sprite
• Detailing and Adding Effects to Your Pixel Art
• Making Your Own Pixel Fonts in MS Windows
• Flash Video Tut on Making Textured Fonts in Paint by Matriax

Pixel Communities

Tools

Drawing Programs (Pixel Editors)

• Graphics Gale

  Timedware and freeware (lite version). A very good pixel art program that allows frame to frame animation and layers. There is both a freeware and shareware version. The main difference being the shareware version allows you to load and save GIFs (handy for animations outside of DM) I use this one and it's my favorite.

• MSPaint Walkthrough

  Bundled w/ Win OS. If you're new to MSPaint, this is a good place to start. I miss a lot of features like a full palette, frames and layers when using paint, but you've probably already got it and it'll work for pixeling.

• the GIMP

  Freeware. A free, open-source photo editor, capable of damn good pixeling. It's very flexible and customizable and comes with a lot of good features Some find the interface difficult. I switched from this to GraphicsGale because it lacks good animation features.

• Adobe Photoshop

  Sell a kidney (eval ver. available). A premiere digital art program with many features and quite capable of creating great pixel art. Familiar interface and LOTS of capability. Very expensive, but available as timedware. Again, not so great at the animation.

• Cosmigo ProMotion

  Medium price (evaluation ver. available). Comes highly recommended by some who would know.

• ProDigital Painter

• GraFX 2

• Paint.NET

  (Free but requires the Microsoft NET framework)

• Tile Studio

• iDraw

  For the Macintosh peoples. Free.

• PD Pro Digital Painter

• Paint Shop Pro

File Conversion & Utilities

• Easy Graphic Converter

  Graphic file converter.

Gif Animation Builders

• GIF Animator
• GIF Builder (Mac)
• GIFFY
• GIF Movie Gear (Win, Linux via WINE)

Screen Capture

• Capture Pad
• Faststone Screen Capture

Fonts

• Bitmap Font Utility

  A program that allows you to build your own bitmap fonts and save them as a pic. Some premade fonts here: http://www.speccy.org/remakesgraph/temp/fuentes/fuentes.htm

• BitfontMaker

  Web-based bitmap font editor (with link to many premade bitmap fonts).

• DaFont.com
• 1001 Free Fonts