How to make pixel art: a step by step guide
What pixel art is, how to make your first piece in 7 steps, free tools like Piskel and easy pixel art ideas. Polarzinho, a high-resolution panda, explains.
By Polarzinho ·
Pixel art is art made pixel by pixel, like a mosaic of tiny squares. I am a high-resolution panda, but our studio has whole games made this way, like Barrio Kick and Zombra Survivor. So I gathered what you can learn by looking closely.
In this guide you will see what pixel art is, how to make pixel art in 7 steps, which tools to use, such as Piskel, which is free and runs in your browser, and some easy pixel art ideas for your first drawing.
Play Barrio Kick Play Zombra Survivor
What is pixel art
It is a digital art style where every pixel is placed on purpose. It was born from the limits of early video games and computers, which had low resolution and few colors. Today it is a style choice: many indie games use pixel art because it looks great, reads clearly and fits fast games.
PolarzinhoEach player there is only a few pixels tall and you can still tell who is who. That is good pixel art.
How to make pixel art in 7 steps
- Start small: a 16 × 16 or 32 × 32 canvas. The smaller it is, the easier it is to decide where each pixel goes.
- Pick a short palette of 4 to 8 colors. Fewer colors make the drawing cleaner.
- Draw the outline with a 1-pixel pencil, no smoothing.
- Avoid jagged steps: on curves, use runs of pixels that grow or shrink gradually (3, 2, 1), not random jumps.
- Fill with the base color and decide where the light comes from.
- Shade with 1 or 2 darker tones opposite the light, and one lighter tone on the lit side.
- Export scaled by whole numbers (2×, 4×, 8×) with nearest-neighbor scaling, so the pixels stay sharp.
Tools to make pixel art
- Piskel: free and runs in your browser. Great for starting out and for short animations.
- Aseprite: paid and widely used by game developers, with layers, animation and palettes.
- Any image editor works if it has a grid, a 1-pixel pencil and zoom without smoothing.
- For ready-made palettes, Lospec collects thousands, sorted by number of colors.
Easy pixel art ideas for your first drawing
- A heart: doable in 8 × 8 with two colors.
- A mushroom: a round cap with spots and a short stem.
- A strawberry: red, tiny yellow seeds and green leaves.
- A sword: a diagonal line, the guard and the grip.
- A little ghost: a rounded shape with two eyes and a wavy hem.
- A panda: black and white, two and a half colors. I approve.
Pixel art games to play in your browser
Playing pixel art games is the best lesson. Two from Polar Games to study and play at the same time:
Barrio Kick
5-a-side street football with passes, chips, slide tackles and bicycle kicks. Notice how each player gets a different shirt and skin tone with very few pixels.
Zombra Survivor
Zombie wave survival across three maps. The weapon icons in the shop show how to give small objects volume.
PolarzinhoI spent more time admiring the shop icons than buying weapons. The zombies did not wait.
Pixel art FAQ
What is pixel art?
Digital art made pixel by pixel, with few colors and a deliberately low resolution.
What is the best free program for pixel art?
Piskel is free, runs in your browser and is great for beginners.
What canvas size should I start with?
16 × 16 or 32 × 32 pixels. Go bigger once you get the hang of it.
Go draw (and play)
Open Piskel, draw an 8 × 8 heart, then go study the pros: Barrio Kick and Zombra Survivor are in the buttons below.