Pixel art 'for HD' (kind of complicated question)
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13858
Printed Date: 23 February 2026 at 6:15pm
Topic: Pixel art 'for HD' (kind of complicated question)
Posted By: dogboydog
Subject: Pixel art 'for HD' (kind of complicated question)
Date Posted: 15 February 2012 at 7:36pm
Hi everyone. As you can see, this is my first post here. I've dabbled a little bit in pixel art in the past but nothing too great and it was years ago. But now a friend and I are in the early stages of developing a game.
This is the kind of style we're interested in: http://www.bghq.com/bgs/snes/a/arm/001.png as far as the coloring style and general look. (This is an image from a SNES game, apparently)
Kind of a retro look in general, but still good-looking. The problem is, I am really not sure how to go about doing this when we want the game to be able to be displayed in 1080p, especially at the level of actually making the pixel art. It is so difficult to draw an object in pixel art when there are so many pixels to keep track of. The DPI really makes a huge effort into a tiny object.
I don't need it to look super clean and HD and a million colors. In fact it would kind of look interesting to have it look more or less like a nearest neighbor scale of that image by about 2.5 times, having the limited, clean color palette like that. The problem is of course that it would be really hard to draw at that size. So is it feasible to draw at a 16:9 resolution much lower than 1080p and then scale it up? What problems will I encounter doing that? What resolution should I try that imitates the usual dpi of pixel art when drawing? I'm on a 1080p 24 inch monitor right now.
Here are a few drawings I've done of potential backgrounds as well, if it helps.
http://i42.tinypic.com/353116p.png
http://i41.tinypic.com/2556kh2.png
I use Photoshop to do the Pixel work.
Sorry for sounding vague. Let me know if you need more details.
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Replies:
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 16 February 2012 at 11:49am
Not vague at all. All pixelart is 72dpi* regardless of use. (*on very rare occasions Windows 96dpi but then this will look terrible on Apple products.)
Once assets and art is created at 72dpi you can then output in PS using 'nearest neighbor' to size up if you need keeping 72dpi as a base, i.e., 72, 144, 288, 366dpi.
At 366dpi you can print on paper or even use for scalable in game graphics to retain the pixel look (say within Flash).
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Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 16 February 2012 at 11:54am
The game that's from is called "Nickelodeon: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters", based on a cartoon show, if you want to see more example of that style.
1080p is basically 1920x1080 I think? I would make it at a much smaller size, like 480x270 (4x smaller, might be too blocky though) or 640x360 (3x smaller). Then, if working in photoshop, enlarge with nearest neighbor (preserve hard edges). Keep in mind that currently I'm working on something thats 377x610, and it's taking forever. Of course what I'm doing is a completely different style and level of detail, but that's a pretty huge size for pixel art.
It's important that you avoid enlarging by non-exact multiples though, like 2.5 times. What'll happen is that random entire rows and columns of pixels won't enlarge the same way as the others. For example if you go from 50x50 to 75x75 then only half of the rows will become 2 pixels tall and the other half will stay at 1 pixel. Same with the columns.
My experience is limited, but I don't think the term dpi really mixes well with pixel art. For example if the target goal is for the pixel art to fit into a 32x32, 610x377, 1920x1080, etc., space then that's the size of it. How much dpi (dots per inch) is irrelevant. All that matters is how many dots/pixels there are. Dpi is really more of a printing term anyways.
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Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 16 February 2012 at 12:54pm
Your reference uses line works of fixed width (always 1px), filled and shaded.
Rather than use pixel systems, I think you'd have a much easier time drawing in vectors, for example in Inkscape, caring only about the canvas proportions, not the resolution. These programs can then output the bitmaps for any resolutions,.
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Posted By: dogboydog
Date Posted: 16 February 2012 at 2:41pm
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Thanks for the replies everyone. Extremely helpful. I think I will try 640 * 360. I'm going to work on the bedroom one for the next few days. I don't think I'm going to do the vector thing because a) I hate using vector progams and b) won't it come out looking too clean? Thanks again!
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Posted By: dogboydog
Date Posted: 20 February 2012 at 9:46am
I have been working on it a little bit. I got GraphicsGale and I actually think it's really cool, kind of better than photoshop for this. However is there any way for me to copy my sketch on a layer under the pixels? I don't seem to be able to just copy from photoshop and paste into GG. Is it just because there are too many colors in the sketch or something? Maybe I should try doing outlines in Photoshop and shading/coloring/animation in GG.
Edit: well I guess there is no way to have my sketch be in GraphicsGale, but maybe I will just sketch on paper and then use my sketches as references and use my Wacom. In other news I have posted my first WIP thread, so, woo
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