1. Find an inspiration - Find someone that inspires and motivates you to pixel art and study what they make. There's no better way to get a feel for what you're going for than to see someone else doing what you want to do. My personal inspiration is Darkpuppey, a member on the Terraria Pixel Art discord. Seeing what he is capable of doing and talking to him a few times really motivates me to continue improving. Having an inspiration can really help push you to new heights you didn't think you could achieve before.
2. Time and Patience - Out of all the tips here, this one is the most crucial. It takes everyone different amounts of time for them to finally get where they want, and sometimes it can take a while. It took me about a full year and a half to actually start getting decent, and about another half year to a year to get to where I am now. You might get frustrated often that you're not where you want to be at a certain time, but just keep trying. I've beat myself up over this a lot in the past but managed to get over it and really push myself to improve, just stay dedicated and positive.
3. Consistency - Just keep spriting or else you'll never improve. Taking breaks is alright, but don't take them for too long. I've taken some month long breaks and noticed my quality slip some. It's usually not much, but consistency will keep you constantly improving. The main thing I do to stay motivated it if I'm sort of out of ideas, I'll find inspiration somewhere else, whether it be a game or movie, another person, or opening requests up for people to give me ideas.
Here's a few resources I've found to be really helpful in my learning process. I started out on the Spriting Carnival forum thread, which is a great place to get advice if you want to stick on the forums. After that, I got lots of feedback in the Terraria Spriter's Guild and the Calamity Art Server, where there's a lot of very good pixel artists that can help you out along the way. As for tutorials, I'd highly recommend going with the Miniboss Tutorials, they're made by the people that made graphics for Celeste and they range all the way from beginner tips to expert strategies.
Hello all you Terrarians! Some of you may remember the original Terraria Spriting Carnival on the last forums, this is a continuation of that thread. For those of you who don't know what this is or have never heard of the original, this is a thread where you just show off your pixel art. It's a...
forums.terraria.org
Check out the Terraria Pixel Art community on Discord - hang out with 1815 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
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Check out the Calamity Art Server community on Discord - hang out with 9232 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
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Here are all the pixel art tutorials made by Pedro :D More info on his Patreon page! Article #8: Saving and Exporting Pixel Art Article #7: Working with Lines #79 Jumping Article #6 Basic Color Theory #78 Impact Article #5 Basic Shading Article #4...
blog.studiominiboss.com
