Videogame sprites
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=25541
Printed Date: 09 September 2025 at 9:33pm
Topic: Videogame sprites
Posted By: yashar
Subject: Videogame sprites
Date Posted: 06 January 2017 at 7:47am
Hi! I'm wandering about the dimensions of pixel sprites in a videogame.
The programmers want a quite big sprite (about 512x512px) so, they say, they can reduce eventually its dimension. But i think that that's impossible: if the sprite is in pixels, how the hell you can reduce it? All would be messed up, cause every pixel has is precise meaning to be in that position.
So, if a game must be thought for different screen dimensions (pc, phones, consoles...) then there must be a sprite with dimensions sets for every type of screen?
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Replies:
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 06 January 2017 at 7:56am
You are correct that pixel art cannot be properly reduced. However, you don't need separate sprites for each type of screen.
Pixel art games are usually designed for the smallest screen they'll be presented on, or even smaller. For larger screens, the games are simply zoomed in, and/or more of the environment or surrounding UI is shown.
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Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 06 January 2017 at 10:25am
I think programmer expects non-pixel-art. It sounds like the typical technique of having source graphics in a very large size, even though they are never displayed 1:1.
The graphic will be dynamically reduced to the required size (depending on screen/resolution), AT LEAST 25%, so a minimum of 16 source pixels produce a single output pixel. It will automatically anti-alias, merge colors, and blend sub-pixel details.
This works best if you draw with a painterly technique. Don't bother aligning your lines to 45% multiples, and keep to sharp brushes if possible : It will be the engine's job to merge pixels, and it will look prettier if your source graphic is sharp. Don't worry if single-pixel details are inaccurate/jaggy.
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Posted By: yashar
Date Posted: 08 January 2017 at 3:38am
Thanks both for the help.
In fact programmers are a little confused
abaut the graphic style of the game, they want pixels, but imagine them
like if they are rasters like in terms of post-redimensioning. I've talk
to them about this issue and we are searching for an alternative
solution.
Originally posted by eishiya
Pixel art games are usually designed for the smallest screen they'll
be presented on, or even smaller. For larger screens, the games are
simply zoomed in, and/or more of the environment or surrounding UI is
shown.
how can i correctly zoom a pixel sprite, like it
happens here in the forum and in the site? i've tried whit photoshop but
it mess up the picture a lot.
Originally posted by yrizoud
This works best if you draw with a painterly technique. Don't bother
aligning your lines to 45% multiples, and keep to sharp brushes if
possible : It will be the engine's job to merge pixels, and it will look
prettier if your source graphic is sharp. Don't worry if single-pixel
details are inaccurate/jaggy.
if i do so the image will be
somehow pixelart-like but not actually pixelart? like a raster digital
painting that imitate pixelart? i can give it a try.
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Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 08 January 2017 at 5:29am
To correctly zoom pixel art, there are two things you need to do:
1. Use Nearest Neighbour sampling, do not do any type of colour interpolation. Anything other than Nearest Neighbour will introduce new colours, effectively blurring your work. In a game, this is achieved by simply making sure texture smoothing is off.
2. Zoom by integer factors, never by fractions. 1x (100%), 2x (200%), 3x (300%, and so on, those are integers. This makes sure all the resultant "pixels" are the same size. If you zoom by some non-integer like 2.5x (250%), then you get some "pixels" that are 2x2 screen pixels, while some are 2x3, 3x2, or 3x3 - you get a mess.
If you have a very small game that's getting zoomed above 5x or so, you can afford to start doing fractional zooming because beyond that point the distortion is barely noticeable. For most games, however, it's best to stick to integer zooms. For posting your art on PJ, you should always use integer zooms (or better yet, not zoom at all.)
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Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 08 January 2017 at 5:43pm
Eishiya, you seem to have missed how the first post speaks of a 512x512 game sprite. There's no way an animated game character is going to be drawn in pixel art at this size.
I can't find a real example of what I mean, but for example:
https://creativemarket.com/melissareneepohl/10736-Jewel-Game-Pieces-Set/screenshots/#screenshot1 - https://creativemarket.com/melissareneepohl/10736-Jewel-Game-Pieces-Set/screenshots/#screenshot1 (actually drawn in vectors, using Illustrator)
http://karanak.deviantart.com/art/Sprites-set-196798492 - http://karanak.deviantart.com/art/Sprites-set-196798492
These are the kinds of graphics which can be painted (or rendered, for the first) at a higher resolution than the target real cases.
Since the image is never displayed 1:1 (always considerably smaller, like 1:4), you don't need pixel-precision while drawing, and you can freely use brushes larger than 1x1 pixel.
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