All language subtitles for 2.1 What is the Best Size for Pixel Art

Hey guys, Nelson here.

Welcome back to my pixel art lesson.

This week we're going to be

focusing on the different sizes of pixel art.

And what kind of effect each size will have.

We're going to be covering topics

like making items in different sizes,

making items in different angles,

and coming up with item concepts that are interesting

and also talking about how to modify them.

Is this video, we're going to be talking about

the different sizes for pixel art.

So what is the best size for pixel art?

The short answer is: it really depends on the look

you're trying to go for and how much detail you're trying to convey.

Pixel art size has three considerations:

What platform are you targeting?

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On a mobile screen, for console, or PC?

What kind of aspect ratio is it?

The most common is 16 by 9,

but some pixel art games take a

ratio of 4 by 3 or one by one.

How do you want your pixel art to look like?

You can have a low resolution or high resolution.

As a good point of reference,

let's look at our screen resolution.

Most screens today are 16 by 9 aspect ratio,

and that's usually a 1920 x 1080 or 1280 by 720.

So we can take that number

and we can downscale it for our pixel art.

Let's use 1920 x 1080 as our base number,

which is our screen size.

Let's try dividing this number by 2, 3, 4, 5.

And each of these sizes

will produce a different effect for your pixel art.

The higher the resolution,

the more detail you can apply to your scene.

Let's talk about some pixel games

and what kind of resolutions they use.

For our first example, let's talk about Hyper Light Drifter.

It's around 480 by 270 pixels

and the quality is already really high

there's loads of details in the scene

and they follow a 16 by 16 tile set up being a top down game.

The character sprites are around 21 pixels high

and you see, they really simplify the character design

and not add too much detail

just a couple of things that stick out

and not make it too noisy.

Their head only being 9 pixels

and there eye only being one pixel.

The character sprite fits within the 16 by 16 tile

and that tile helps get all the rest of the world.

Let's talk about Metal Slug.

The resolution is 330 by 224

and this is probably one of my top Inspirations

for older pixel art games.

Their backgrounds are just so beautiful.

And they really utilize the depth of field using color

and various details on each plane.

They like to use really faded out colors in the

background to give the sense of depth

and adding more harsh shadows

and saturated colors to the playable area in the front.

Just overall a really fun shootem game.

The character sprites are around 37 pixels tall.

With their heads only being 14 pixels tall

giving a more chibi like body to them.

You can see that there's a little bit more room for detail

for the characters but overall their

design is still really simple.

Looking from afar, this character has

brown hair with a yellow jacket,

tan pants and brown boots.

And that's all you really need to see.

Adding extra little details like sunglasses

or socks or a golden watch or even a tattoo

It will make the pixel art a bit more noisy

and the character design will start to

get lost at smaller sizes, simplicity is really key.

It's really a game of subtraction and thinking about

what kind of details do you want to keep

and what you want to take out

Let's talk about Street Fighter 2.

They have a resolution of 384 by 224.

And their backgrounds are really beautiful.

They have more a limited color

palette and a lot of dithering going on.

These characters have a lot of detail to them

Since these characters are more realistically portrayed,

the sprites are round 77 pixels high

and their heads being around 13 pixels high.

This sort of sprite size gives us more opportunity

to add details and give a more rendered look.

Look how beautiful those clothing folds are

we wouldn't have that opportunity

if we were working in a smaller sprite size.

With each division, the amount of pixels to work with will decrease

and the look of your pixel art

will be of a lower fidelity.

All of these sizes are valid

and it just depends on what you're looking to go for.

It's a lot of guesswork at first,

but you'll find a size that you're comfortable with

For example, my backgrounds are usually 400 by 225

and I slept with that size

because I like how the pixels are clearly defined

but still have enough detail to retain in each object that I draw.

These item collages of snacks found at the convenience store,

they're bound by a 250 by 250 canvas size

Though, each item is drawn in a different dimension.

It really depends on how much detail

you want to convey in each object.

Let me show you a coffee can drawn in six different sizes.

I'll explain the nuances of each one

and how each size will change

your perception of the same object.

For this lesson, I want you guys to find some sort of household item

and draw it in six different sizes as well

and create a sizing chart like this

and understand the effect each size has.

Let's start with the biggest size and work our way down.

So to get a point of reference,

I found it useful to take one element from that object

and define it properly and scale-up

everything else from there.

So I have a height of 3 pixels to work with

and that's like the minimum

to define English in pixel form

From there, I can scale everything else around it.

This can is nice and detailed

and really good for a sort of illustration size.

You can see a lot of the text clearly

and it's more of a realistic portrayal of this coffee can.

Moving on to the next size,

It's 2/3 of the previous object.

And you can start to see the text

take on a more abstract form

regular coffee is just lines and dots of pixels.

Some of the Japanese text is blocked in

and can't be defined anymore.

Although UCC and the word

black are still really legible.

Moving on to the next size, it's scale down to 21 by 45.

Here we start to see if that all the small text

including UCC are really hard to define properly

and have to be abstracted.

In the previous sizes, we had the opportunity

to make the word black in bolder text true to its design.

But in this current size

we can only make the font 1 pixel thick.

Moving on to the next size, it's 11 by 24

and here you really start to see

everything turned abstracted.

Any kind of small text and details

are turned into dots and dashes

that are one pixel high.

Each detail placed is really important

and you have to try simplifying

while retaining the design of the object

and you can see that even at this really small size.

It still looks like a coffee can.

Moving on to the second last can, it's 6 by 13 pixels

and here you can really see that

I'm very selective about what

details to portray properly.

There's only room for the top label,

which is now 1 pixel tall and the word

black is only two pixels tall

and I can only have enough room for the circle

label and the yellow bar

which are now two and one pixel tall.

Any kind of small texts that was previously

there is not able to fit in the small size,

but it still reads as a coffee can.

And moving on to our last size it's 3 by 7.

We only have 7 pixels in height to work with

so we have to be really selective.

So the only details

I chose to put were the top and bottom of the can

and the word black and the yellow seal in the middle.

There's no room for a bevelling like in previous cans

because it wouldn't look like a can anymore if this was bevelled.

In this exercise, I wanted to show you guys

how much detail you can put into each size

and how even at smaller sizes, it can still look like

the object you're trying to convey.

You're still able to put in a lot of details.

You just have to be selective about it

and think about what kind of key elements define this object.

For my example, the key elements are the two metal rings,

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the a black can, they UCC logo,

the black logo, yellow

seal, and the small text underneath

From there, I can get a sense of what elements

I need to keep and what can be subtracted.

A common way in top-down games

is to follow the scaling of grid tiles.

Usually they go by 16, 24, 32, and 64-bit

and we use those tiles to help scale up the world

that we're creating.

Here's a delicious bento box

that I made for a top-down style game.

Though, it's a bit too big

and doesn't follow the dimensions of the game.

This size would be used more

for a really detailed cutscene.

So I decided to downscale the bento box

and downsize it to each tileset size.

I personally like getting between the 64 to 32 bit range.

Because it offers a lot of room for detail,

even though you have a really small size.

But I actually really enjoy the 16 bit size in this one

because you can still recognize that it's a bento box.

You can mostly see all the main components

like the rice, the plum, the salmon,

the vegetable, and the side dishes.

These are all valid sizes and it's really up to you

to choose which one works best for you.

If you're first starting out making pixel art,

I recommend training yourself in smaller sizes

because it really encourages you to be more thoughtful

and selective about what details to choose

Having it read properly at smaller scales

and understanding how to use

each pixel is really important.

I'd say a small size to work with is under 30 pixels.

Anything larger than that would be like a medium

or a large size.

Kinda like this coffee can or this bento box.

Working in larger dimensions

gives more opportunity for detail

and it's more similar to digital painting.

I recommend working in smaller sizes to train yourself

if you're a beginner

and then slowly work up the larger sizes later on.

But yeah, that's about it.

Thank you guys so much for watching

and let me know what you guys

think about pixel art sizes.

What's your favorite size to work on?

What kind of objects are you guys into drawing?

I can't wait to see your sizing charts

and see what kind of objects you draw.

So in the next video, we're going to be talking about

drawing items in different angles

and talking about each step along the way.

Thanks so much everybody and see you in the next video.