Heat Haze

Pixel Art is a type of digital art that has been used in games for year and is sadly often unappreciated, the art of carefully place a dot of colour on the computer with care and meaning, each pixel you place must have a reason in being placed there. Take my word for it, pixel art is harder then it looks sure it can be done on some of the most simplest programs such as mspaint since the only tool you'll ever use in pixel art is the pencil/pen tool and by some artist standards not even the paint bucket tool is allowed, but it can be a paint in the butt if you have no idea of the guidelines and rules that come with pixel art, especially the colour harmony that must be used to make each colour work with each other. When I tried my hand at it right off the bat like an impulse I started without even thinking about research, my first piece of pixel art turned out to be... Less then satisfactory. After the abomination of my first piece I strayed away from the style for a bit but I eventually found myself drawn to the style again but this time I looked around and found a wonderful tutorial for beginners showing some techniques on shading which I may point out can be one of the more frustrating parts of pixel art for beginners since beginners have yet to develop their own style in pixel art.

The Tutorial --> http://www.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Tutorial-Basics-196016837

The tutorial is a little on the long side but there is a lot to say about pixel art shading and outlining, yes there is a specific way to outline your art in the way of the pixel and the uses of controlled anti-aliasing rather then having it on everything like most art programs will do automatically, in pixel art you have to pick and choose where the anti-aliasing will go and even then it will only be a smudge of it. Now about the other half of the tutorial, shading, there are many ways to shade but this tutorial will show you the four basic types of shading and an added bonus of the tutorial's creator way of shading. It also shows a isometric way of shading and as well a practices shading to show how thing should go down.

After reading this tutorial my next pixel art turned out a whole lot better then the first which will never see the surface of the internet but I can show the one created after the research, but i must say is still have much to learn before I can become anything recognizable.