[N!ck]

Welcome to N!ck's Guide on how to make Pixel Art!
In this Tutorial, I will be showing you how to turn any normal image into a pixel art masterpiece!
I will be using GIMP, but the same concept applies for Photoshop.

Step 1
To begin this, you will need an image that you want to pixelize!
For this tutorial, I will be using an image of the cute and cuddly Pikachu!
Spoiler (Click to View)[img]http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPx9jF6ey9qMEzTrvvTb04Q6FfDEeUVw-KKxgZRVsaBSqlpP4L-w[/img]

Step 2
After you've opened the image in GIMP, the first thing that you'll need to do is set the image mode to indexed as shown:
Spoiler (Click to View)
When you click index, a pop-up will come up. Just click convert.

Step 3
Now that the image is set to indexed, we have to shrink the image! Try going small, but not too small! I went down to 30x32 pixels.
Spoiler (Click to View)


Step 4
This is the final step! In this step, you will need to rescale the image back to the original size (in my case, 200x213). After the image is blown up, it will be pixely!
Spoiler (Click to View)

Here is the end product of my tutorial!

I shouldn't have resized it so small (to keep more of the features), but oh well!

Oh! This is also great for paintings!

Enjoy!

[V For Vendetta.]

Y U DO THAT DO PIKACHU?
OT: Nice tutorial but I don't get the use for it. Like how and why would we ever use this? :S

[N!ck]

Y U DO THAT DO PIKACHU?
OT: Nice tutorial but I don't get the use for it. Like how and why would we ever use this? :S

Art is art :P
Use it wherever you want. 8Bit paintings for Minecraft are pretty popular.

[Twenty]

Art is art :P
Use it wherever you want. 8Bit paintings for Minecraft are pretty popular.

That's exactly what I was thinking. I made a nice assortment of pixelated porn for my minecraft paintings. don't judge.

[N!ck]

A friend of mine told me how to give images an even more retro feeling!
When you're changing the image type to indexed, you can choose how many colors you want to show up (Default in GIMP is 255), so I usually choose something like 8 or 16. Having less colors makes the colors uniform, kind of like how it would be on an NES :D

[emptyqwerty]

Yea, this is awesome! Useful for Minecraft paintings, seeing as those are just as obscure anyway. ;P

[Ryuuji Takasu]

One problem by doing this is that the picture will lose it's shape and recognizable(-ish?).
Best thing would be to try and recreate it yourself in photoshop or a pixel art related program.

[Gangnam]

Could you maybe do a tutorial with Photoshop I have no experience with GIMP.

[KrisKrox]

This was a good tutorial...works nice. Thanks =)

[Issvor]

Anyway to change from 8bit or what it is to 32 or 64 bit? I'd like to use for 64x64 texture packs :3

[Grin]

Rather decent tutorial, thanks for this man. :)