The dust has settled and I finally had time to think about what the hell happened a week ago. LD46 was my debut as a pixelartist/graphics-something person [1], so I had to learn many things on the fly - tools, techniques, animation basics, just to name a few. Thankfully, I had some cards up my sleeve that kept me sane and I wanted to share them with you.

But first I wanted to thank you all for >30 votes on our game Just a Stroll. It means a lot to us! Every comment and rating is very appreciated. You're the best! :bird:

Random Tips

1. Start simple - you'll save yourself frustration if you keep your goals easy and realistic. I knew I had no experience, so I didn't expect to create a mind blowing masterpiece. Having something done is already a success!
2. Think about a palette and stick to it - focus on the colours and how they come together. Pick ~16 (or less) colours max and combine just them.
3. Don't reinvent the wheel - there are many techniques already in the wild. Just go, research and learn them!
4. Look for inspiration - look at the art you like, and think - What palette is used there? What are the outlines? How to pick colours for shadows? I have some tools I used for creating the pallete (~~I'm still not quite ok with the grass colour but don't tell anyone~~)
5. Make shadows more blue, lights more yellow from your base colour - it'll get your picture more interesting

Reading

Before putting my first pixel down, I made sure I had some readings handy:

• Pedro's pixel art tutorials - many gif-based tutorials which are short and sweet. Mostly focused on animation. Side note: I like to call them Celeste pixelart tutorials, you can do so.
• Pixel Logic - yep, this is the book. It's huge and awesome, so I just skimmed through the colour-related and animation chapters.

There are soo many pixel art materials out there so it can get overwhelming pretty fast. I stick to these two because I had too little time to learn everything. Learn only what you need to get your job done.

When it comes to inspiration, I searched Tumblr and, the best in my biased opinion, Pinterest! Once you find a picture, you can always scroll down and browse More like this section. Beware, it's time consuming + demands having an account.

Tools

I started my work with creating a colour palette! To make my colour palette better, I used:

• Coolors - if I could marry a website, that would be the one. It can generate pleasing colour schemes and lets you lock your picks so you can find a match. I used it to look for the main colours and them pick a shadow.
• Canva colour palette generator - sometimes you just see a photo and it has this aesthetics. You can upload it there and it'll pick main 5 (or so) colours. It can be a good starting point for your palette.

And, last but not least: - Aseprite - it's a no brainer for creating pixel art. Intuitive and powerful tool that I was able to learn in less than a day. It didn't freeze on 1k+ frames of animation, it earned my respect.

I hope you found some of these tips useful. It's a tutorial from a newbie perspective - I just present the 1% you should know but, hey, it's a start!

Good luck with your creative endeavors,

Potato from the outer space :rocket:

[1] - I'm a programmer irl, source