Pixel Art Process (page 1 of 3)

My pixel art images are digital images created one little square or "pixel" at a time. The most basic of computer drawing programs is all that is required as no fancy filters or special "brushes" are used. I only use two tools: a single pixel pencil tool, and the "flood fill" tool, for filling in large areas with a single colour. Images are also limited to a maximum 256 colour palette (rather than the millions of colours that are possible).

"Isometric perspective" are probably the most common view used in pixel art. I won't go into the details of what isometric perspective is here, but Wikipedia has an entry that explains it quite well. A few of my pixel art images are isometric, but most are not.

Many of my pixel art images are obviously based on photos I have taken. For these images I typically have two windows open on my screen, one with my photo reference, the other the drawing I'm working on. I start with a simple, rough outline and the rest is a slow process of refining the shapes and getting the colours right.

Here is an illustrated walk though of the general steps I use to create my pixel art images:

1) Original reference photo	2) Colour Adjustments
This is a rather dark photo I took of a detail of the Khyber Arts building in Halifax. Actually as a photo it's pretty bad... but that's ok, it's just for reference.	I made some major adjustments to the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation of my original photo. At this point I can see the details much better, and although the building is not really these colours, I like the look of it.