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How to recreate an image from a video game w pixel

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=21815
Printed Date: 13 September 2025 at 11:34pm


Topic: How to recreate an image from a video game w pixel
Posted By: SegaGenesis
Subject: How to recreate an image from a video game w pixel
Date Posted: 12 March 2015 at 4:39pm
Hey, it is my first time posting and I am really new to pixel art. I have tried to figure this out from a bunch of tutorials but am having no luck. My thing is I want to see how images from a video game are pieced together with pixels before I start to try more with my own art work. There is an image from a game in super nintendo which I know is 16 bit that I would like to try with. So what do I need to do if I were to take that image and try to break it down into pixels to see how it is made square by square. I don't have photoshop. I have gimp but could download something else too. I really want to see how the images are made and then recreate a scene pixel by pixel on my own. Can anyone explain or show me where I can find out how to do that? I was hoping to be able to place the image over like graph paper in gimp and see what squares are filled in by what color but am having no luck.Thanks if you can help!


Replies:
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 12 March 2015 at 5:54pm
To study an existing image, well, you just need to zoom enough to watch the individual pixels ? (Some programs provide a pixel-by-pixel grid, but it can be more distracting than helpful)

recreate a scene pixel by pixel on my own

It doesn't really work like that. You can copy a 32x32 sprite pixel by pixel if you want, but it will not teach you much.
If it's something you want to try anyway, to get a feel for pixel-per-pixel drawing, you'd rather try to copy something very small and with clear silhouette, for example the game's font.

In addition to looking at individual screenshots, you can also look closely at sprites rips, they are easily found for SNES games. They include multiple images of same character, it's helpful to see how an individual animation is actually divided.

Posted By: SegaGenesis
Date Posted: 12 March 2015 at 6:11pm
Thank you for your help. I had tried playing around with it in gimp and it frustrated me because for some reason I could never get the squares or pixels to match up and they would over lap when I tried to copy and paste an image. But I found an okay program that helped me and zooming in allowed me to see where certain colors and blocks go. I just wanted to see how they did certain techniques like shading and stuff on a professional level. Also the sprites I have found have also been very helpful thank you very much!

Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 29 March 2015 at 7:57pm
for some reason I could never get the squares or pixels to match up and they would over lap when I tried to copy and paste an image.

That sounds like the pixels were scaled up . You need to make sure that 1 pixel in the source image equals one pixel, and not, say, a block of 2x2 pixels or 3x3 pixels. Most image editing programs including GIMP show the coordinates of the pixel you are currently pointing at, so you can check pixel size that way. Then you can use Scale Image (with 'None', aka nearest neighbour, interpolation) to reduce the pixel size if necessary.

Of course, if you were working with a photo of a computer display or something like that, those are generally pretty messed up (distorted colors, possibly lens-distorted image, pixels aren't necessarily of a uniform size) and they just don't make good study material.


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absolutely.


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