Last month, I was tapped on the shoulder to take on new pixel art commissions, so I’m wrote up my process creating these icons from initial sketch to finished pixel art!

Preliminary sketches

As with most of my art process, I start with 4 preliminary sketches, setting up a digital Post-It Note in Clip Studio for ease of drawing and ideation.

Of the four sketches, I got partial to the second one. The third sketch looked too similar to the first sketch and I would have flipped it in the final iteration to distinguish it. So far, my Toggl timer tells me I worked on these prelims for 00:54:21!

Pixel Block Ins

Much of my pixel art starts with a 4 color monochrome to move fast with values and place down the pixels in Aseprite. That messy middle getting the pixels to line up with the pose made me nervous, but I persevered through the yearn to reset and cleaned up the pixels I placed down. Once out of the line art phase, and used the Paint Bucket tool with Continuous Option unchecked to fill the big colors without losing the values, things started looking clearer. So far my Toggl timer reads 00:16:12.

From there, I experimented with palettes I save from Lospec that have close colors like ST Gameboy Magma and BLK Aqu4, while adjusting for the hues I need. My color count gets bloated at this phase, but at the end, I clean up my palette to eliminate hues that are too similar. At this point, my Toggl timer tells me I worked on these color layouts for 00:27:07!

Polishing

All the important colors are in place. Now it’s a matter of rendering and polishing it all! A new thing I was experimenting with was anti aliasing my line art. I can show the line look tapered, by coloring the line’s hue one step lighter. I used this technique for some key lines, such as the hat, but I just wasn’t creatively ready to go lineless just yet.

For a short moment I confused myself about the depicting the center facing light from above. The shadows were all over the place, getting pillow shady, but I wrangled the render to something satisfying. My client liked the final pass that I showed them and I took it as the green light to let it the work go with my Toggl timer telling me I worked on the rendering for 00:54:20!

Wrapping it all up

After doing dinky things like add an outline and background gradient, this icon is all finished up!

Second Icon

My client like the first icon so much, that they paid for a second one using the other preliminary sketches. As an experiment, I worked on the second icon with Pixquare on my iPad! Despite not having my thumbnails with me, I made the pixel block-ins from my memory.

Beyond that, it’s a similar, yet faster process than before, using the first sprite as my color palette, and giving the background a warm tone to distinguish it from the first icon. Looking back, I can see spots that I could’ve improved more, like adding more contrast to the white ear fluff, and saturating the colors further.

Wrapping It All Up

In total the creation took a total of 4 hours and 6 minutes over the course of two days of working. I’ve impressed myself with the turnaround time and I’m glad my client likes what I made!

If you want an icon for yourself, I keep my commissions open! Just checkout my commission page and send me and email or a messages on my socials and I’ll be happy to help!

I make many other illustrations that you can browse on this website, as I even draw art for money, taking commissions for people! You can catch my daily sketches all over the internet and catch me drawing live during my weekly art streams!