I've never heard of paul robertson, but I looked him up and there's nothing he does that can't been done with just any regular pixel program. Sure, some things make life easier (layer controls, blending modes, levels adjustments, etc.) but you can technically make any pixel art in MSPaint (except animations, I think). I wouldn't recommend it, but it can be done. There's nothing wrong with photoshop, and it's what I use. The only two reasons I can think of to NOT use photoshop is that it's expensive and has a ton of tools and features you'll never ever ever ever use in pixel art (and shouldn't).


You can blow up pixel art, but make sure that in photoshop you go to the "image" menu, then "image size" and instead of something like "bicubic resampling" make very double extra sure you choose "preserve hard edges" and then choose a number for the dimensions that's an exact multiple of the numbers already there.

For example, if it's a 50x50 image you can easily make it 100x100, 450x450, 123450x123450, etc., because they're all multiples of 50. If it was a 200x200 image then you could make it 400x400, but not something like 450x450 since it's not a multiple of 200. If you don't make it an exact multiple of the current size then you'll have an issue where some pixels don't get blown up the same as others and will basically become like rectangles instead of squares.


I don't think there is a proper size for pixel art, as long as it looks good to you and is how you want it presented.



Edited by tanuki - 03 July 2011 at 7:26am

Grafx2 is also available on the Mac. I don't think it supports animation though, which is most of the charm in Paul's work.


Edited by cure - 22 September 2011 at 6:27pm

Wow MyO, that link is priceless!