Well timed. I've been going through this process as a non-artist forced to churn out some tiles for a game I'm building [1].

I started off simply cribbing all the tiles from Ultima IV for the Apple II, then gradually adding some rudimentary new tiles as the need arose. Starting with a pixel "rock" and "stick", changing the clothes on existing characters, then eventually gaining a bit of confidence and launching off on more complicated things. Eventually coming back and redoing all the "borrowed" tiles, and launching off into new, more detailed, characters and items.

"Constraints hide your flaws" got me a long way. I've relaxed those constraints a bit as I got better at shading, so it's easy to tell which tiles were drawn at what point in my "career"

[1] https://valtima4.com/, the Survival Crafting RPG you would have played on you Apple II in the '80s. It's essentially Valheim crammed into Ultima IV's interface.

Single player works up through the first couple bosses, but it's not really ready to ship into early access yet.

After classical art training, I thought pixel art would be fast and easy -- the low resolution would disguise any mistakes.

Quite the opposite. The fewer pixels, the more each one has to be perfectly in place. Honestly should've been obvious in hindsight. If I have any games left in me after my current one's finished, I'll just use as high a resolution as I'm comfortable with.

Unless the sprites are truly tiny, like 16x16 with 2 or 3 frame animations, I don't know if pixel art makes a good shortcut to an aesthetically appealing game. Then again, it might be easier than six years of every day practice.

Good advice! I did pixel art for a personal project: https://github.com/Irtaza2009/Hackamon and I think the only reason I was able to get good results was because I had a limited 5-colour palette, which helped my indecisiveness. And referencing other pixel art also helped.

> Programmers are known to not have a strong suit for art related disciplines

Full stop. There are quite a few coders with artistic talents. And even if some specific individual does not have such talent, they are allowed to have their own taste - we do not need to train ourselves to mimic other people's preferences.

Good advice. I draw pixel art for an image logic puzzle game [1] and these resonate, especially 2. (Negotiate) and 5. (Constraints).

Another thing that helped me was to experiment with different canvas sizes and styles. I was surprised how changing these affects my process, speed and results. Then again, this can be difficult in an ongoing project.

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/app/nonoverse-nonogram-puzzles/id6748...

To these fine tips I would add: ‘test on as many devices as you are reasonably able’. Something can look fine on your laptop but lousy on the platform for which you are aiming to disseminate.

I don't think the author's two samples look good.

These are just incredibly basic, and oft repeated, pixel art 101 guidelines. And, quite frankly, some of those tips are what I consider bad advice (e. g. a pixel artist has to deal with color theory as much as a character artist or animator has to deal with anatomy; a good understanding of color theory is also necessary to nurture good taste in the first place... so the quicker one gets into that, the better).

Also, just like in coding: Constraints don't hide your flaws (per se); you fuck up, people will (let you) know. And pieces in constrained environments can be much, much harder to pull off.

I had hoped for something closer to the intersection of pixel art and graphics programming. Well, maybe in the future.

They’re your pixels for your project, not some conformation challenge.

I'm a programmer who started doing pixel art for a personal project in 2022 and this is solid advice. I didn't really think about it too hard but I do find myself negotiating with the canvas to get something to look right when it's just a few pixels off lol