The VG Resource

Starting on pixelart and confused with technical terms? Don't know what banding is? Don't understand why pillowshading is bad? Your problems end here, with the new, Revised Spriting Dictionary.

The entries are organized in alphabetical order and displayed in many posts so you can find exactly you want. Have fun learning!

8-bit

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8-bit refers to the processing power of the gaming/computing console, and not spriting style. While this is often used to mean 'NES styled sprites', many videogames ran on 8-bit processors, and they all had different limitations to display pictures. Grabbing an example from Wikipedia:

Source Image

Atari 2600

NES

Gameboy

Master System

As you can see, all consoles above are all 8-bit and abide to very different rules, which makes "8-bit" irrelevant as pixelart term. If you refer to NES styled sprites, click here. [NES]

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Anti-Aliasing

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Anti-aliasing, also known as antialiasing, antialias or AA for short, is a technique where you place intermediate pixels on strategical places in order to smoothen it.


Left: A pixel line. Right: The same line, with 3 gray tones of AA.

Usually, lines are anti-aliased on the corners and diagonal lines, where the irregularity is more apparent. Since pixelart deals with squares as the smallest graphical element, the places where "half a pixel" are painted are rendered with a lighter tone than the main color.


Diagram representing zoomed pixels on a screen. Notice that the pixels that are partially painted gets a lighter tone in order to render the line.

To successfully anti-alias a pixelart, you need to pick a color that is intermediate between the line and the background. So, if the line were to be red against a white background, the anti-alias lines should be lighter versions of red to properly blend the line.

Notice that overdoing anti-aliasing is not a wise idea and the more shades you create to smoothen, the more blurred your sprite will be.

Anti-aliasing a sprite

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Due to its nature, anti-aliasing should be limited to details inside the sprite's outline than outside, in order to conserve readability, sharpness and use. Anti-aliasing outside the object should only be done if it's not supposed to move or be used in any other background.


Example with a Mario head. The first image is visibly rough and jagged. The second image smoothens the outside lines in a gray background, but if put against a pink background, the anti-alias pixels stick out, making it ugly. It is important to have this in mind when creating graphics for games, where characters walk and explore many terrains with different background colors.

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