Hi! I am here to show you the noble art of pixel art in Minecraft! Something that requires quite a lot of patience!
Now, I must warn you though, pixel art isn't exactly a very popular and is a very underated domain in Minecraft. Most people think it is easy only because it's copy pasting. I must say, yes, it is easy, but, as surprising as it may be, it is not that easy. Try to make a pixel art containing 6 different shades of red with only 1 red block look good. So it isn't only copy pasting, you need to plan your pixel art, you must think before jumping in. But we'll see this later, for now, the basics!
The colors
Minecraft offers a very basic set of colors, 1 red, 1 orange, 1 yellow, 3 types of green, 3 types of blue, 2 types of purple, 2 types of pink, 1 black, 1 gray and 1 white. So you have 16 colors to work with. For this particular reason, you might have a very easy time making something using many shades of blue, while you will struggle to do something with red colors. Which is why you must choose your sprite wisely, have in mind the colors you have.
This brings me to the must for any pixel artist. Shading, shading is a must. It doubles every color, making a total of 32 different colors. Shading is very important as it can make your everyday normal 8 bit sprites get this perfect shading touch that 2 different colors wouldn't bring. Once you get used to shading, a whole new world is unlocked. Since I've used shading, I could make more complicated pixel art look better, or even possible!
Besides shading, what else can be used? Well, the 24 other blocks!* For example, the bricks block, with its white lines makes it look lighter, or obsidian can be used for very dark pixels, often the outline of it. Water also makes a beautiful dark blue that no other blue blocks can match. Experiment and find what you like.
Doublestep can be a very good light gray, but you can't make doublesteps like that, I suggest you use let's say leaves and then, when you're done, replace all the leaves with doublestep!
I'd like to add that certain variations of gray will be very similar, if not the same, for example, shaded white is pretty much the same color as gray, black is almost the same as shaded gray. Obsidian and shaded obsidian are not the same, but they're very similar. etc.
Tips
If you have a large surface to fill, make sure to use appropriate draw commands! Cuboid is a useful one for plain surfaces, but let's say you want to paint more blocks at the same time, replace is a wonderful tool since it'll paint only the color you selected! So instead of cuboiding to a border, you can use replace on the border so that it will also paint the blocks that need to be painted on that border.
There's many methods to make a pixel art.
- - First of all, the reckless method. This is mostly used by people without the WoM client, you go layer by layer, placing the corresponding blocks, it might be simpler, but it's a lot slower.
- Then, the single color method. It can save some time and make your pixel art simpler, it's basically painting all the pixels of a certain color everywhere, then change color and so on, as useful as it may be, sometimes the blocks can be far away from each other, so it might be hard to get the right block and a single block mistake will ruin all your pixel art and you'll have to fix it.
- Finally, the regions method. This method is just like the previous one, but, to a smaller scale, let's say you outline the shoe of a character, then fill it up with a single color at a time, quite a time saver and you don't risk to miscalculate.
If you click on the mousewheel button on a block it will automatically make you pick that block, that can be useful if you need to change to a color that you are close to.
Don't be afraid to use, let's say, orange for a shade of red, the human brain will see the shades of red and interpret it as a lighter red and it will still look good, you can "trick" the mind into seeing what you want it to see, another example would be using white on a very light skin color, it might look weird from close, but once you look it from far away, it looks very good. Play with combinations, some very useful tricks can be found that way and make your life easier.
Most of the time I find myself changing some colors from the original sprite, you will most likely have to do it sooner or later, either because there's not that type of color in minecraft, or it simpler looks better with something else.
Finally, don't make pixel art to try and be the best, make it because you like to make it, don't let other fools influence you into thinking what you have done isn't cool, I enjoy 8 bit sprites as much as 200k blocks pixel art. Now, of course a very complicated sprite will be better, because it's more impressive.
That's it for now, I'll add pictures later and if I think of other things to tell I'll add it.
*There is actually 21 other blocks in your inventory, I'm counting water, lava and adminium that can be used through commands
