PROCREATE Pixel Art Brush Pack Tutorial!

So we all know that Procreate allows us to create some amazing illustrations. From stylized illustrations to realistic figures, we all know that we can use all of the tools available to create some fantastic illustrations. However, now for this video, the question is, can you actually use Procreate to create pixel art? Whenever you're creating assets, for example, for your own game, or you're creating emojis for your Twitch stream or your super chat, is it really possible to use Procreate to create pixel art? And even more importantly, can we actually create pixel art brushes that we can then use on Procreate to create some pixel art illustrations? You will find all of these answers in this video. My name is Leo and you're watching Ghost Paper, so now let's get to it. All right, now that we're here on Procreate 5, let's start by creating a canvas that actually is more geared towards pixel art. And the reason is, when we click on the plus here for creating a new canvas, we have all of the standard sizes from Procreate. And one of the most, or the most standard size on Procreate is the screen size. The screen size on the iPad Pro is somewhere around 2732 pixels by 2048 pixels, which is way more than what we need when creating pixel art. The secret about creating pixel art is actually working with very small canvases so that you have a pixel ratio or the pixel unit is quite visible on your screen. And then once you're done with your illustration, you can then scale that up to the sizes that you actually need, say for like a phone screen size or an HD size or even websites. And there are ways to actually scale up these images without losing the quality of your pixel art. And all of these things we're going to cover in this video. So don't worry, we're just going to go through all of these steps necessary to create pixel art and we're going to create here on Procreate. So first, I'm going to choose one of the sizes that I've been currently testing with. And we're going to choose 256 pixels by 144 pixels. So it looks quite big here on Procreate, but as a matter of fact, this canvas is quite small. If you were to export it and open on your computer, for example. Now I'm just going to choose a very dark color, probably black for the background. And the next step here is that we're going to go into the actions menu, preferences and actually, sorry, canvas, and we're going to turn on the drawing guides. And now we're going to click on edit drawing guides. And as you can see here, we have a drawing guide which has about 18 pixels for the grid size. Now because we want to do pixel art, I'm going to reduce this to all the way down to pretty much zero pixels or one pixel. And by clicking done, now we have the unit of our one pixel is here on the screen. So whenever I'm going to start drawing my pixel art, I'm going to be able to see if that is actually the unit of one pixel or not. So we're also, just before that, I'm just going to go into edit drawing guide because I'm actually noticing how strong this is on the screen. And it's probably not going to be really good to have a grid that is that visible. So I think that's probably a little bit better. And I know maybe the resolution won't be that great, but I just want to be able to show you how we can actually build and if we can actually build a pixel art brush here on Procreate. So now we're going to go back into the full white because for this test, we're actually going to be using white brushes just to see like on a black background, if they really stand out and if they are pixel brushes. So the very first test that I want to make, I want to go into the, let's just say, painting, probably airbrushing. We're going to get the hard airbrush, we're going to make a copy and we're going to start editing this. But just before we edit, just like on this brush itself, if we reduce it to the minimum size and we just try to draw, we have something that almost looks like a pixel brush. But here's the first problem. It's got a lot of aliasing, meaning that there's a lot of like secondary pixels and they are faded. They're not really hard edge pixels, which we actually need to create pixel art. So right from the get go, this brush is not really working to make pixel art. But now, follow me as we edit this brush and the necessary steps to create a pixel brush. So I'm going to go back into the brushes menu and we're going to click on our hard airbrush. Spacing, I'm just going to put down to none. Tapering, we're going to turn it off. Turn off tip animation, turn off the tapering at the end. Opacity, leave it at max. Turn off classic tapering. That looks good. In terms of shape, because again, we're talking about pixel art, we probably don't want a circle but rather a square. So we're going to click on edit and we're going to import and try to click on brush library. And right here, let's see if we actually have a square. So we don't really have a square in the shape source, but let's take a look on grain source. So I believe we're, oops, I just got the wrong one, definitely not this one. So I'm just going to choose blank and I'm going to click done. So now we have a little square here and it seems like there's still a little bit of an opacity thing happening. We're going to turn off randomized because we definitely want these squares to be very parallel to each other. So let me just see. Another thing that we probably want to turn off is any kind of filtering. So that option is actually quite hidden. So you want to scroll all the way down on the shape and we're going to turn off filtering. So now let's keep going on grain source. We're going to leave it as is. We're going to just turn off filtering as well. Now rendering, it says intense blending. So I believe we're probably going to leave it on intense blending. Wet mix. I'm just probably going to turn this off for now. There's no color dynamics really that we need to take a look here and on dynamics, still pretty good. Here we go. So option apple pencil and then flow. We definitely want to turn off this all the way down to zero. And this is really starting to create something really interesting for us. Here on tilt, I'm going to leave it at 90 degrees. No size compression. Finally on properties, this is something where I also think is quite important. So on the properties tab, we actually want to have a pixel brush. So what we're going to do here on maximum size, we're going to leave it at 1% and then on minimum size, we're going to leave it at 1% as well. So this is starting to look like a pixel brush. Now maximum opacity, minimum opacity. I'm going to leave minimum opacity to none and I'm going to hit done. So now when we zoom in on the canvas and I start painting, I almost have a one pixel brush. So what's happening here, it's like it's trying to guesstimate here the best placement of this pixel onto the canvas, but it's still creating almost like at times a three by three pixel brush. So one more thing that we're going to do, we're going to go into preferences and then we're going to go into edit pressure curve and now we're going to max this out. The reason for that is that I've also noticed that this actually generates the best look when we are playing with pixel brushes because it eliminates any kind of opacity or kind of a pressure once you're drawing lines and dots on the screen. So far, it looks like it is possible to create pixel art, but it seems like setting up the brush for one pixel art brush is not as easy as possible. It's not as easy as it looks like. So this is what I did, guys. For this video, I've actually created already here on this tab, I've created 12 different pixel art brushes and I went through the trouble of finding the right size for the shape. So I've actually created these custom shapes and I've set up all of the necessary options so that we have our one pixel brush and there it is. So you can create lines, you can draw just by tapping on the screen. So sometimes I actually tap a little stronger and it creates two pixels, but this is definitely a one pixel brush. And you still get a little bit of opacity if you want to, that's maybe too low. So here you see there's a little bit of opacity and I can create a little bit more, a little bit more opaque. So on and so forth until you get to 100% opacity. And with that, you can create some really interesting shading on your illustrations and anything that you're creating. So continuing with the list, I've then made the two pixel brush, which is this one right here. Then I've made the six pixel brush. So it's something like this square. And then finally, there's the 12 pixel brush, which is really, really big. So these were like the basic brushes and then I kept going and I've made some little stars that you can populate your illustrations. There is also the round brush of eight pixels. Some people, you know, you may also want to use pixel art by drawing circles or dots around the screen instead of having the square as your measure, as your base measure. Then we have the 16 pixel line or brush. And then I've also made this really, really cool kind of cloud brush. So you can do like smokestacks, especially playing with opacity. So this brush, I highly recommend that you actually use with opacity so that you can get the best result. And then finally, I've created these really, really cool kind of glitch brushes. So this is one of the brushes. Then I have glitch two, which has way more pixels. And now just playing with opacity, you start creating some like a really nice kind of shading and things like, you know, you can paint metal doors and you can paint the rust, the rusty kind of look on metal doors and on buildings that are made with pixel art. So now I'm just going to turn off the drawing guide so we can see our canvas a little bit better. And finally, I've also done some speckles brush. And that is once again, if you're painting some elements. So there's speckles one and two, which is a little bit more dense. And you can use that once again on walls, rocks, game elements that you're creating in a series of things. So now on the screen, here are a few examples that I've used this brush pack to create a few illustrations. For example, you can create this really cool city. You can create this character by just using the brush pack. I've also created some animation. So here's a little cherry power up or like a game element. And it is possible to do pixel art and animation in procreate, which is really, really cool. And lastly, I've also I'm just showing how we can do some shaded elements such as this rock just by using some of the last brushes in this pack. OK, now, as the last thing that I want to show you for this video is that say that you're actually done with your illustration in pixel art and now it's time to export it. And you probably want to export that illustration in a much higher resolution, as again, you want to maybe post it on Dribbble, Instagram, you want to post it on your phone, you want to, you know, use this artwork. But at this moment, it is still a very small illustration. So let me show you how you can actually export it. So I've made a copy of this illustration here so I can keep copies and we're first going to go into our illustration. Make sure that is all in one layer. We're going to click on the layer and select copy. Now we're going to go outside of our illustration, click on a plus sign, and now we're going to create a new canvas. And this time I'm making a proportional size canvas, but at a much higher resolution. So right here we have a 1920 by 1080 pixels resolution for this canvas. So now I'm going to click on the actions menu and then add, I'm going to hit paste. So now see that this is the size of our illustration that was done in pixel art. So now that we have our illustration here, in the modes, we're going to go into uniform and in the interpolation methods here for scaling this, we're going to select nearest neighbor. And that is the mode that keeps the hard edges on your illustration. And that's going to keep your pixel art intact. So I'm just going to, you know, we leave it on nearest neighbor and I'm just going to move this to one of the corners of our canvas and keep scaling our illustration right here. I'm going to hit the arrow key. So, you know, as, as you have your illustration selected and when you scale up, it looks like it's going to blur, blurry the pixels. But once you exit, exit this mode of scaling up, you see that actually has not created any problems on your illustration. So now finally, I'm just going to create a new layer here because there's a bit of a white border. Just going to use an eyedropper, select our color and drag it onto the canvas. So now we have our illustration and when I go back into the gallery, you see that, see that this illustration is at 1920 by 1080 pixels. So this is the highest, you know, the high pixel version of our illustration. Now we can go back into the actions menu, hit the share button and share as any of the, you know, image methods that you prefer. So that does it for this video guys. In conclusion, it is possible to do pixel art in Procreate and it is amazing to actually stay in Procreate as you're able to use this brush pack if you want to, to create your own illustrations. So I'm going to be leaving this link in the description box of this video for you guys to check it out and see if this could be a helpful tool for you in your pixel art illustrations and in your workflow. So that's it for this video guys. Hope you guys enjoyed and if you did, a like would be super appreciated as well as make sure to hit the subscribe button down below and the bell notification icon so you don't miss any tips and tricks, speed paint videos, reviews, and that is all for you to become a better digital illustrator. Now if you want to learn a little bit more about Procreate 5 and how to create some really cool brushes, make sure to watch the video that is on the right side of the screen right here as it goes through on how to create some really cool neon brushes. Again, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one. Tchau.