Game Sprites & Rips
Galleries of sprites ripped from games
- Emugifs.com - the legendary sprite and background vault is back. A must-visit
- The Spriter's Resource - a good source of sprites, maps, backgrounds and more
- Sprite Database
- Fighter's Generation
- Game Sprite Archive
- PrimeOp runs the best oldschool game site on the net at Scrollboss
- Sprite Rip City, one of the earliest sources for random rips (no longer updated)
- Street Fighter Galleries - including rips
- Sigil of Slateman - rips including backgrounds
- Video Game Museum - tons of rips including game endings
Forums and Personal Galleries
Sites where pixel artists post their art in forums or their own galleries
- PixelJoint - the web's top pixel art forum
- Pixelation - a forum that gets some real pros
- Great discussion/showcase on The Independent Gaming Forums about the best game pixel art out there
- The MUGEN Fighter's Guild - great site to follow the latest Mugen creations and a good Graphic Art subforum for sprite showcases
- DeviantArt's GPixel group - a good collection of devArt's better pixel art
- The Sinhra forum should remind you old timers of the good old days of anything-goes sprite forums
- Check out iammanyninjas for MUGEN and sprite work, related commentary and youtube links
- The personal page of one of the best pixel artists out there. Good links section
Pixel Tutorials
Tutorials for general pixeling or specialized styles
- A list of almost every tutorial out there, from the Pixel Artists DeviantArt group
- One of the best pixel tutorial sets ever made, from one of the best artists on Pixelation (archived)
- The ever-famous "So you want to be a pixel artist"
- Derek Yu's sprite tutorial
- 'Mark's Pixel Art Tutorial'
- OpenGameArt's Pixel Art Course
- Sprite artist extraordinaire Judas walks you through a good, straightforward fighter-spriting technique
- A good look at "Selective Outlining"
- A good introduction to pixels and isometric
- Tips on the important technique of anti-aliasing
- A quick runthrough of texturing
- For the girls, some lessons on the doll style of pixeling
Pixels on Youtube
Video tutorials or walkthroughs showing different techniques.
- SinhRa demonstrates a "Photoshop to Sprite" example that I definitely endorse
- A runthrough of a well made isometric building
- FrankieSmileShow has a bunch of high-quality work in his video uploads list
- Before3D shows how to work with fighter sprites in his uploads list
- A sprite built straight from pixels. I don't know how people do it.
Tools and Other Resources
Resources to help your pixeling or game-making, or just fun experiments
- The online Pixel Font Generator (where I got fonts for this site), from NFG World
- ASEPRITE, a fantastic sprite editor and animator for Windows and Mac
- SmillaEnlarger: enlarge your pixel art into a surprisingly well-defined and smooth image
- RotSprite, a tiny but effective sprite rotation program that can rotate your pixel art much more smoothly than normal
- Street Fighter Palette Database - for all your coloring (a.k.a. palette stealing) needs
- Fighter Factory: Fix up your sprites the Mugen way - check YouTube for some good tuts
MUGEN and homebrew corner
The gaming industry isn't working with pixels much anymore, but sprites are alive and kicking with fan-made game engines
Other links
Sites that may or may not be related to pixel art, but worth checking out
- To be a good spriter, you need to be a good artist. For a great crash course in digital art, read through this classic
- For an introduction to how to make motion look good on small sprites, read "Darkstalkers and the 12 Principles of Animation"
- Youtube user WizzyWhipit brings the 90s back hard and loud with authentic sounding Capcom CPS2-style soundtracks
