Pixel Art Academy is an educational game for learning how to draw. In Learn Mode, you jump straight into the game's interactive tutorials for the fastest way of becoming a pixel artist. After you learn how to use the basic drawing tools, you put theory into practice by first copying an existing pixel art sprite. When you've shown you got the hang of the tools, you get to create your own art by drawing sprites for a snake game—and then play your creation!





During the Early Access period, I will create tutorials, challenges, and projects that cover the major pixel art fundamentals (jaggies, dithering, and aliasing), applied to different areas (characters, environments, items). After this first course gets a full release, the development will continue to other areas (drawing from observation, perspective, shading …) as well as integration of the new content into the game's full Adventure Mode.


Learn by doing
Pixel Art Academy's interactive tutorials are designed for learning by doing. While there will be plenty of nerdy reading, all lessons are immediately followed by drawing what you've learned.
Test your knowledge
Before you move on, you want to make sure you understand what you've been learning. Pixel Art Academy uses formative assessment to identify gaps in knowledge so that you can apply further study and practice to build strong fundamentals.
Become a game artist
You can't be an artist by just copying other people's work. It's time to create your own art! In Pixel Art Academy, you will be working on various projects, most of them creating art for classic games such as snake, invaders, block breaker, and pinball creator.
Play your creations
Immediate feedback is very important. Start up the game and see how your sprites look in context. Then jump back to the canvas and immediately see your changes.
Future development
I've been working on Pixel Art Academy for almost a decade, building the game's engine, writing the story, and narrowing down the learning design. While the bigger adventure game that I have in mind is still far from complete, the game's educational core is ready to be shared with a wider audience. That's why I created Learn Mode, a standalone single-player version that includes just the polished learning content.During the Early Access period, I will create tutorials, challenges, and projects that cover the major pixel art fundamentals (jaggies, dithering, and aliasing), applied to different areas (characters, environments, items). After this first course gets a full release, the development will continue to other areas (drawing from observation, perspective, shading …) as well as integration of the new content into the game's full Adventure Mode.

Free draw
Many of you have been asking for the ability to create your own artworks inside the game, so I enabled this feature.
This is not meant as a replacement for dedicated drawing softwarethe game's built-in editor is too barebones for that. Still, if you want to play around with the game's tools and pixel art evaluation, you will now unlock the Artworks section after completing the fan art challenge.

Creating an artwork comes with a neat little interface for selecting color palettes.

The current limitation of the editor is having palettes with up to 16 colors, but once I add the color element of art tutorial, this should be increased.
You can preview your artwork fullscreen by clicking on it in the clipboard.

And when you're happy with your work, you can export it at various magnification levels.

The game will then create a PNG file (or a ZIP if you select multiple scales).
All of this is very limited, but since I thought it was a good feature request, I figured I'd add it sooner rather than later, and it can become more full-featured as the game's future tutorials add more capabilities to the editor.
Here's also the devlog showcasing all this:
That's enough quality-of-life updates for now though. I'm looking forward to getting back to creating new learning content with the next development sprint.
Best,
Retro
TL;DR:
- Artworks section will appear after you complete the pixel art evaluation challenge.
- Create custom artworks with up to 16 colors.
- Basic, monoramp, system, and modern palettes.
- Fullscreen artwork preview.
- Export the image as a PNG at varying scales.
Many of you have been asking for the ability to create your own artworks inside the game, so I enabled this feature.
This is not meant as a replacement for dedicated drawing softwarethe game's built-in editor is too barebones for that. Still, if you want to play around with the game's tools and pixel art evaluation, you will now unlock the Artworks section after completing the fan art challenge.

Creating an artwork comes with a neat little interface for selecting color palettes.

The current limitation of the editor is having palettes with up to 16 colors, but once I add the color element of art tutorial, this should be increased.
You can preview your artwork fullscreen by clicking on it in the clipboard.

And when you're happy with your work, you can export it at various magnification levels.

The game will then create a PNG file (or a ZIP if you select multiple scales).
All of this is very limited, but since I thought it was a good feature request, I figured I'd add it sooner rather than later, and it can become more full-featured as the game's future tutorials add more capabilities to the editor.
Here's also the devlog showcasing all this:
That's enough quality-of-life updates for now though. I'm looking forward to getting back to creating new learning content with the next development sprint.
Best,
Retro
[ 2025-04-16 12:38:54 CET ] [Original Post]
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