Pixel Art Basics: Setting up

YO!

Welcome to a series of informative tutorials helping you get started and learn more about techniques used in creating the pixel art and implementing it into a 2d game!

To me pixel art is a very interesting medium, like all art there are many rules that define what it is and how you can go about doing it, but like all rules they are there to be broken or at least bent to a degree so from all my research so far im going to throw at you a bunch of accumulated knowledge blasts so try and catch em while there hot!

Setting up 

Hardware your going to need: a computer (duh) and ideally a graphics tablet if you don't have one a mouse is fine too but to make more modern pixel arts a tablet is what you want. 

Program wise i use and will be writing these tutorials for Adobe Photoshop, i prefer Photoshop because of all the awesome tools it has your not going to get anywhere near as many options to tweak your art as with Photoshop, but if for some reason you don't want to or cant use Photoshop there are many other alternatives you can also use such as Gimp, Graphics Gale, Aseprite, and if you want to use your browser to create pixel art pixelartor.com will do the trick fine.

Setting up Photoshop for pixel art

When i set up my scene in Photoshop I choose a size slightly larger than what i want for my final piece if im being more artistic and free form with what im making if i know exactly what ill be making and its intent ie. a game item or rpg tile think about what your making and how many pixels it is going to be and make it that size. To make it easy for you set up a 8 X 8 pixel scene to start off. (ps were gonna make a pokemon's ball)

Thats mostly set up the only other things i like to change are turning off the pixel grid under view->show->pixel grid but thats up too you. also optional is a warm cup of coffee or beverage.

Tools

The Pencil tool is the main tool you will use for pixel art, it is your bread and butter you dont need to change many settings here this baby is gold, his partner in crime is the good ol' Eraser tool but before we touch him he needs to be told how to act, in the tools menu your gonna want to change its mode over from brush to pencil. Wonderful your 2 most potent pixel tools are set up, another thing you can set up now is turning of anti aliasing in your preferred selection tools tool menu other than that your ready to go baby.

Ok now you have your scene set up have a play now and make a pokeball so when you come back and learn more you can laugh at what a bad job you did :P

Next Post will be on pixel art Jargon and terms you should know 

Ciao!