How to make “True” 8-Bit Pixel Art

Hi Pox here, artist behind such retro games as Abobo’s Big Adventure and Soda Dungeon 1 and 2 !

These games have millions of downloads, this is why you need to read this tutorial about something I never actually used once in 15 years of making games!

WARNING: Some of this might be wrong. Fortunately, no one cares anymore!

Use whatever software you want. I use Photoshop.

1- You can only pick from these colors:

You can find this NES palette here: https://lospec.com/palette-list/nintendo-entertainment-system or here: https://frankengraphics.wordpress.com/2019/12/02/accurate-nes-swatch-for-photoshop-etc/

2- Your canvas size is 256 x 240 pixels:

3- Find an image (or draw one) and scale it down to your canvas size:

Image source: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FgwIizkzlfg/Uk6zsmIWi1I/AAAAAAAAGYY/DKSWmaZmObI/s1600/90586_Biker_2_CAT_49_123_431lo.jpg

4- Divide your canvas into a grid of 16x16* pixel squares:

* 16x16 was used for backgrounds while 8x8 was used for sprites. However, the NES couldn’t load enough sprites on one screen to create a drawing like this so let’s just use 16x16 tiles as if this was all a background.

5- Each 16x16 square can only have 3 colors plus black*:

* The 4th color is “transparency” which is always shown as “black” however I imagine if you set the background color to some other color, then your tiles could have 4 colors, none of which being black. I don’t know if that’s actually “allowed”.

That’s pretty much it! Thanks for reading.

If you make any, send them to me!