I’ve been waiting to write this post for … I don’t know, 4 years? That’s why I’m that much more delighted to finally tell you that Pixel Logic: A Guide to Pixel Art (@pixel-logic), a digital book that started its way on Indiegogo all the way back at the end of 2014, is finally fully released!
Written by Michael ‘@michafrar’ Azzi (and a dozen of guest artists … @unseven, @jinndevil, @pixosprout to name just a few), Pixel Logic is your ultimate tome of knowledge about all things specific to the art of tiny squares.
Weighing in at 242 pages, Pixel Logic spans 9 chapters which quickly leave introductory basics behind for a deep dive into things that make pixel art a unique art form: anti-aliasing, dithering, sub-pixeling, and less talked about—but just as crucial—topics of readability and clean-up.
While it won’t teach you how to draw in terms of shading and anatomy (for that you can use hundreds of resources on art fundamentals out there already), the book does attack foundational areas that matter a great deal in video games, namely graphical projections and animation.
All topics are neatly illustrated with Michael’s art, guest artists’ work, useful diagrams, and plenty of examples from classic and modern pixel art games. Thanks to the colorful design by Jenna ‘@cyanatar’ Brown, working your way through the content is just as charming as it is super useful.
If you ever wanted all major areas of pixel art knowledge neatly gathered in one place, your wish has been granted (and then some). Pixel Logic is available in both English and French for the very affordable price of $9 or more, and even comes with an enhanced PDF of the Animation chapter that has GIFs embedded right into the book. You can get the first chapter as a free preview, in case you want to get a taste before you buy.
This is now a must-have in your artist arsenal, right next to the $1 kindle title Learning Pixel Art, which I also always recommend for intermediate/advanced pixel artists. It’s not the end of the story for pixel art books though; Make Your Own Pixel Art by Jennifer Dawe is already looming on the horizon. See you back in March!
At the time, I wasn’t confident in my skills. I had a lot to learn. It was not easy to be part of a community with such tallented artists and compare my skills with theirs, realizing the enourmous path I’d have to follow to be with them some day. Criticism broke once, and broke me twice. But I learned with it. I studied. Every single day I studied, not to surpass them, but to surpass myself. It’s funny to think how much proud I was with each result I got. “I’m one step closer”, I used to think. And that kept me going. Each new work I posted was an attest of my learning process, and boy I was happy with it!
I still think I have a long way ahead before I reach the great ones, but I’m still praticing, I’m still studying, I’m still trying my best.
I’m not exactly sure why I’m sharing this. But I wonder if someone that might read this feels like I felt back then, that I wasn’t good enough, and that I had to outdo myself every single day to, hopefully, be where I wanted so hard to be. All I have to say is that it’s not easy. And that I still don’t think I’m there yet. But I’ll be there some day.
And here I lay my most sincere thank you to all of you who helped me somehow, I won’t list names because I don’t think it would be fair. But you know who you are.
Keep awesome, pals. And keep reaching for your goals. We’ll get there some day.
Made these Doctor Who caricatures during inktober, but I figured it was time to finally finish and publish it already. And what a better time than Tardis Day? (Well, I almost missed it too, but here it is!)
