Art & Design, Game Design
Video Tutorial
Summary
This video is the first of a two-part series covering some useful tips to improve your workflow and solve some common problems when creating pixel art using GraphicsGale. In this video, you will learn how to resize sprites while maintaining the aspect ratio so your pixels stay clean and square. It’s as simple as navigating to All Frame > Resample.
Using grids by toggling the Grid Button can be helpful when precisely placing pixels, but the Custom Grid tool can give you even more power by dividing your canvas area into blocks of some common standard sizes, or to unique sizes that you can define.
Have you ever worked on a sprite and realised that the canvas you set initially just isn’t large enough, or that it is perhaps too big? Using All Frames > Enlarge Canvas, you can modify your working area, controlling the point the canvas extends from or contracts to.
Working with multiple windows can provide you with reference or colour samples as you work, but the workspace can sometimes be cluttered and difficult to manage. Thankfully, there are a series of options under the Window menu that can allow you to arrange open documents in a variety of layouts.
Finally, shifting palettes can allow you to quickly edit the colours in an existing sprite, or completely swap them to make variant sprites. You’ll learn some simple techniques for applying a palette from one sprite to another, even if those palettes are already indexed.
