Pixel by painstakingly crafted pixel, artists create masterpieces styled as early video game art. Let's take a look at some of the top pixel art studios and artists that will leave your mouth dripping with wet little squares. Then we'll review a wide range of beginner to comprehensive pixel art tutorials. And don't miss all the articles, resources, and collection of other cool stuff to be found in this solid collection of pure pixel love.
Digital Art
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EbOY
EbOY is Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr. One of the things they do is create with re-usable pixel objects. They then use them to build complex and extensible artwork. Their style of work is often filled to the brim with exciting objects and characters. The scenes they create are saturated with activity. Visit the EbOY site or view a sample of their pixel work below.
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Paul Robertson
He does work in the gaming industry and creates pixel artwork with a mix of various Japanese influences. Visit the artist's blog here. There is also a great article on his work you should visit.
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Denise Wilton of Styledeficit
This artist has a wide range of design and illustration experience. She's made some great pixel based illustrations. The one linked to below was for Time inc. You can visit her various projects here. One of which is a great online flash site where you can create pixel based cities with premade graphics, it's easy to use and fun, check out City Creator.
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Gary J Lucken - Army of Trolls
Army of Trolls is the portfolio of London born, Switzerland based videogame obsessed artist Gary J Lucken. He's influenced by Japanese toys, pop culture, and old 2D videogame graphics. Follow a link to his portfolio below.
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Pixel Temple Studio
Visit the Pixel Temple site. The team is composed of Giovani Faganello and Michelle Lang, and are some of the early practitioners of Pixel Art in Brazil. One of their early projects was Electronicland, which features some impressive Pixel Art style city street corner illustrations. Below is a link to one of their projects done for Nike and meant to star Lebron James.
Tutorials
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Photoshop Skills: Pixel Art
This tutorial outlines the key elements to create Pixel based illustrations. The tutorial walks you through each step in creating: a building, car, signage, and a cheeky lagoon style monster. You'll learn rigid design techniques, as well as organic shape creating, and adding a cartoonish style to your Pixel Art.
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Building a Pixel Art World
This is a tutorial that you'll want to at least skim if you're a beginner in this style. Then once you've gotten better at Pixel Art reread it, as their is a wealth of information here. There are a handful of mini tutorials that show you how to build Pixel Art using professional techniques. Their is also advice given on numerous topics, such as: using grids, textures, reusing objects, adding reflection and shadows, preparing the art for print, and much more.
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Isometric Pixel Art, Complete Guide
This is a comprehensive multi-part beginner tutorial on creating Isometric Pixel art. It's a good place to get started, even though it using MS Paint as the program of choice. Everything covered here can just as easily be done in good ol' Photoshop.
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Isometric Building Tutorial
This is another good beginners tutorial on Pixel Art. There are some good tips here like having an actual pixel view window open in Photoshop and then the working window where you will be zooming in to place pixels as well. The tutorial covers the process of creating an isometric building.
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Dithering Tutorial - Basics
This tutorial is a great introduction to the topic of dithering, which is a patterning effect that occurs with low resolution graphics do to limited colors. Now this is often a problem when creating gif images for the web based on photos, but in Pixel Art dithering can be used to stylize areas, for example make shadows across objects. This is one of many good tutorials on creating Pixel Art on the Deviant Art site. See the paragraph below for more.
Other Pixel Art Tutorials on Deviantart
Deviantart has some great Pixel Art tutorials, especially for those new to the topic. The search query I used there is "pixel art" photoshop tutorial, which turns up numerous tutorials worth reviewing on the site, here are a few: a cute tutorial on Pixel Art Animation, a really basic tutorial on Pixel Art Character Creation, and a basic Pixel Shading Tutorial that shows you how to place shadows on a sphere. There are also more great tuts if you look deeper into the site.
Articles and Resources
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Pixels Go Mad - The Celebration Of Pixel Art
In a typical Smashing style, this article boosts over 50 pixel based illustrations from numerous illustrators and designers. There are examples of pixel art style being carried onto physical objects. You'll also find some additional resources on pixel art. The image shown here is from Eboy of Einstein in the Swiss patent office, you can also view the awesome full Einstein animation here.
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Pixel Joint
This is a great Pixel Art dedicated community to join. The forum is active and they run numerous challenge based contests there. Members have multiple ways to communicate with each other and each member can place their pixel art images in a gallery and show off their work. They also interview Pixel Artists and more.
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The Way of the Pixel Artist
This guide covers some of the important topics for creating Pixel Art. You'll learn how to create clean lines, smooth lines, and perfect circles. You'll also learn about dithering, shading, and some additional tips as well.
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Pixel Museum
This is an interesting way to display Pixel Art. Each section of the site is a hallway designed in a pixelated style. You can then click on rooms and paintings to view artwork. Of course, there is a pixel art section to look at that type of artwork as well. The Eros Room on Floor Two has some Pixel Art characters and scenes for example.
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Pixel Lovers Flickr Pool
The Pixel Lovers Flickr Pool has all sorts of pixel based love. Much of what's showcased is pixels applied to products and pixels as applied in the wild. The Pixel Art & Sprites Pool is similar and worth checking out as well.
Other Cool Stuff
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Lego Cycle© Pixel Animation
If you do a search for Pixel Art on YouTube you'll find over 1,000 videos on the subject. This one is on a pixel based animation done up lego style. It's all pixel created lego blocks being used to form structures and then being torn down and rebuilt into other characters and scenes. It moves at an energetic pace and demonstrates the creative building block process.
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PixelDam
This is a project where participant each stake out a plot of land in an online pixel illustration. Here is a detailed plot created by one member that shows the pixel dam project space members can utilize. PixelDam is named after cities like Amsterdam. You can stake out a claim in PixelDam or even on PixelMoon.
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Habbo
Habbo is a hangout for teens online. It's a virtual world created in pixel art style. Think pixelated Second Life. Users can style their characters, create living spaces, interact with friends, party, hang-out, and play games.
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KirupaVille
Kirupa is a popular Flash forum. KirupaVille is part of the sites lab section of additional Flash based experiments. You can get more information here about the KirupaVille project or view the the town below.
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Kaliber 10000 - K10K
This site is a great resource for design news and inspiration. They have a large collection of free pixel based patterns. The site has a pixel based design with little pixel characters in the footer. And of course the site is focused on delivering numerous experimental art issues on a regular basis.
Related Posts
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Dainis Graveris September 7th
Those artworks looks like early games on pc and later on mobile phones..:) now I think we can call this RETRO style
Of course, I respect artists, I don’t know how to draw this type of artwork, so respect. Thanks for review!
liam September 7th
Great collection, I think this is just one of those styles where everyone just thinks “Wow”
Shane September 7th
I love pixel art, like Dainis, it reminds me of an older era in gaming.
Funnily enough, I used to work for a company that produced mobile phone games, and at the time, we were working with phones such as Nokia’s 7110 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7110). That meant WBMP graphics, and only one colour (your pixel was either off or on.) Using this crude display, some of the artists created absolutely fantastic realisations.
Thanks for the post.
Quan Vu September 7th
These are great!!
Craigsnedeker September 7th
Wow! Cool! You should’ve added nitrome. lol
macias September 7th
great pack
loswl September 7th
That is some serious work, not my cup of cake but I totally respect those that love and do them, takes some serious illustration skills and dedication, and I am sure they get paid a bunch to do them :o)
Corinne September 7th
Amazing!
I tried pixel art and only produced one little piece — an eye! Pixel art is great but oh does it take a lot of time for me!
MaJJ September 7th
Nice! I was thinking about pixel art on Envato sites today morning
But not as a single post, but as a new webpages, like pixeltuts.com or something like that 
Mark Abucayon September 7th
Great list, I really like this one.
Chris September 7th
I’m surprised you didn’t mention CubeScape ( http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/index.php ) super easy, ultra cheating way of making simple pixel art.
Excellent article though, Pixel Art is a difficult and rare art, very few people practice it and it’s nice to see an awesome Photoshop blog cover it!
Matt Fairbrass September 7th
http://www.aplaceformyhead.co.uk/portfolio_graphic.htm - Check out my portfolio, I dabbled with some Pixel art not too long ago. Very interesting art to create. Nice article.
Ben September 7th
This is an awesome post! I love Pixelart. You made my day!
Lawrence77 September 7th
hi hi
Lawrence77 September 7th
gravator check…
harry September 7th
I love pixel art
Its so arcadey and no matter how great graphics get pixel dont but they are still brilly
Max | Design Shard September 7th
Great stuff, these must take a while to get right, i saw a speed video on youtube, very good.
Joefrey Mahusay September 8th
EbOY have been already seen this at smashingmagazine.com. Great list though.
Internal-Essence September 8th
These guys seem to invest a lot of time into their works !
Johan September 8th
I’d like to add http://www.netbabyworld.com to the list, the now defunct internet venture and brain child of Jesper Kouthoofd, one of the founders of http://www.acne.se. You can still play the games if you install the Shockwave-plugin.
MONSTER September 8th
Nice collection.
Grafiko September 8th
Great collection. It is really cool the level of intricacy that some of these artists go to in their work.
BlastBalastik September 8th
thanks for the post… Amazing things
Michal September 8th
Very heavy skewed to iso-pixel art, frankly very boring and uninspiring. For much better and creative pixel art go and have a look at http://www.pixeljoint.com and especially the work of people like Fool (http://pixeljoint.com/p/6741.htm) or pretty much anything in their hall of fame section. If I hear about eBoy one more time ….. agrhhh… soooo yesterday (and I do not mean retro - just plain boring).
Eric Thayne September 8th
Great post! I love pixel art, haha!
NaldzGraphics September 8th
great post.this reminds me of my gameboy:)
Rick September 8th
Hhhmph! I didn’t know exactly what pixel art was but I like it. Like someone else said, it reminds me of the early days of gaming, Police Quest 3 especially!
Myo Kyaw Htun September 8th
I love Pixel Art. It is time consuming work.
Angie Bowen September 8th
These are great! I got my start in digital art years ago doing pixel art and loved it. However, it was so time consuming I eventually just gave it up.
insic September 8th
nice collection. i haven’t tried this yet, but this is quite inspiring art. Looking forward to experiment this kind of style of art.
vanessa September 9th
let’s not leave out minipops by flip flip flyin –> http://www.flipflopflyin.com/minipops/index.html
nicra September 9th
http://yurgus.livejournal.com/
Giovani Faganello & Michelle Lang September 17th
Howdy Sean,
It was a surprise to see Pixeltemple among your list of favorites and I am very glad to be published here. Thank you so much for your kind words about our work and our portfolio. I just want to correct one thing - Our old website is called Electriconland - and not Electronicland. The name was inspired on the famous Jimi Hendrix album called “Electric Lady Land”, we just switched the ladies for the pixels, and Electriconland was born.
Keep up the good work, sire!
Giovani & Michelle,
Santa Maria, BR.
5ivedance September 17th
Thanks for the collection
Jackson September 17th
Awesome list lol..
kate back September 25th
Pixel art is a huge part of web design for web design companies. Many different parts of the site have different aspects of pixel design. I have no idea how time consuming but it looks hard. This is very cool, and I am excited to see this. Thanks
Katie
eric October 1st
Nice collection.
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