The best Pixel brush for Procreate | Pixel Art
I’ve been wanting to make Pixel Art on Procreate for so long, but it never worked for me cause I couldn’t find a truly pixel brush. Until now. I know… I know… bold words but it’s true! It totally works, it doesn’t create transparencies or double pixels. Let me show you~~
But if you came up here wanting to find the perfect pixel brush for Procreate I will save you some time. You can check if on the link below! 😊
1. What is Pixel Art
Quick answer: digital art edited on pixel level. That’s why it’s important to have a pixel brush that only draws at 1px size and the same for the eraser. If you have that combo you only need a small canvas and you are all set up!
When I started digital art my first works were pixel art based, it’s really funny to simplify everything as much as posible and make it work as an animation. After I got the iPad I really wanted to keep doing pixel art, it should be more convenient and faster… well it should, if there was the tools needed for it.
After looking for pixel brushes for Procreate I could find any that worked as it did on Photoshop. So I decided to make my own, which it was also a failure. Needless to say that I had no idea how to make a brush at that time.
Lately, I’ve spent lots of time working on my own brushes and I’ve have learned a lot, so I decided to give it a try again. There’s plenty of Pixel brushes for Procreate out there but I have found any that doesn’t present some of these problems: double pixels, transparency halos… And those needed to be improved.
Soooo I think I got the perfect one! hahahha Yeah I’m quite proud, cause been able to start doing pixel art again it’s great.
2. How to start with Pixel Art
Just the basics. You will need a small canvas and a 1px brush and eraser. We won’t be using any gradient brush cause they create transparencies and that could be a problem when exporting to gif. Start with a canvas of 50 to 100px. With 72 or 144ppi will be enough. This will apply in Photoshop and Procreate.
2.1. Pixel art on Photoshop
It’s the program I’ve always used to make pixel art, since it’s pretty simple to set up all the brushes. As your main brush choose the Pencil and set it to 1px size, same for the eraser. But make sure the mode (on the top menu) is set on Pencil too, it’s very important, or it will not erase properly.
To resize your small image when finished we need to maintain the same proportions. For example, or artwork is 100x100px, so we are gonna enlarge it by 20. Which will give us a 2000px canvas size. The key for not losing any sharpness is to set Resample at Nearest Neighbor.
2.2. Pixel art on Procreate
In Procreate we don’t have any default settings as in Photoshop, we will need to create or import a pixel brush. Which will do the work as a brush and eraser.
Once you have your brush of preference set up, go activate the grid and make sure the grid size is set to 1px. Just click on the % an a little menu will open to change the settings. This will really help you go draw faster since you can see where to hit with the pencil.
To resize the final artwork you will have to duplicate the canvas if you don’t wan’t to loose the original work. After that, go to crop and resize and enlarge the canvas at a round number, don’t do it by hand because we need to keep the proportions. So use multiplies x5 x10 x20… of your original size.
Once it’s done, select the Arrow (Transform tool) and on the bottom hit the Fit to Screen, if the proportion are right it will fit all the canvas. Before closing the menu make sure the Resample at Nearest Neighbor not, bilinear!!
And it should work perfectly~!
3. Best Pixel brush for Procreate
And now for the Procreate pixel brush. I’ve been using many pixel brushes but it takes too long to do anything since I had to learn how to constantly avoid making the same mistakes (double pixels, transparencies…)
But this stopped once I finished my own brush, cause it doesn’t create any of these problems, it just simulates perfectly the default Photoshop brush. So you can draw individual pixels, and even after hitting on the middle of the grid won’t create double pixels. I couldn’t be happier!
You can see how it works in the video down below. Or check my Gumroad if you want more information about it.
Hope this little tutorial has helped. Adios!!