Study on Pixel Art 2: Character Size

 As mentioned earlier, I had 3 questions when studying Pixel art:

1. What size of canvas do I use?
2. What size do I draw people? 
3. What colors should I use?

The answer to the first canvas question can be found in my earlier post, but to sum it up, almost definitely below 1,000 pixels, usually below 600, and mostly below 300. 

But now that you have a canvas, what size do you draw a character?

 

 

 

A Better Guide to Resolution: Characters

I think we can break characters into a couple categories, based off of a common artifact of programming in early video games—the primacy of the 16 × 16 pixel squares. They used 16 pixel squares because, to my knowledge, it’s a power of 2 (2³), and that has something to do with Binary, blah blah, that's not the focus of this writing. 16 is a common tile size. You don’t need to use it, but it’s handy for reference.

Before we talk about sizes, we need to first discuss face size and head to body proportions. 

 

Face Size

Pixel art means we need to abstract detail, but at a certain point we just can’t see any facial details. You can represent a face with just one dot, but there’s no actual facial features. You can do some pretty miraculous things with abstraction, and people are very inventive when they’re faced with restrictions, but generally having more size for a face gives a lot more room for readability and range of expression.

It’s important to figure out the size of faces—generally you want to keep your faces well below 100 pixels, but it’s up to you. Past 100 pixels, (or even past ~80), the benefits of each new pixel falls off more and more. Your lines become less and less jagged as you go up, and eventually they’ll stop looking like little squares and look like curves. Just remember that, as the canvas sizes get bigger and the image is zoomed out, it begins to blur the line of even being pixel art. Past  Instead of looking for the outer limit, let’s look at the heart of pixel art. Let’s zoom in.

The first time you can really have eyes is 3 pixels tall—and it’s pretty crappy looking. You’d probably at least want 4 so that way it’s mostly readable. From 3-4, the face is mostly an abstraction. To have the eyes at their roughly correct midpoint, we need at least 5 pixels of height, and preferably more so that way we can suggest a nose or mouth. 6 is where it starts to be readable with a nose and mouth—barely readable. In general, the average minimum for most pixel art faces is 7 pixels, though in practice it tends to go higher into 11 or more. 

A little experiment I did on heads. Each portrait size gets 1 pixel bigger, going up till 12-- you can tell that on the 12th I had lost steam and was sick and tired of drawing these faces. I literally just extended the face and gave him weird purple lips. The main row is faces, side portrait, below that are full bodies.

As you can see, the larger the face size, the more room for expression. I found around 8 pixels tall to be the most freeing jump, though you can see that the benefit of each new pixel starts to diminish towards the end.

 

Head to Body Ratio

If you’re doing a character with their body, the next question is their proportions. Many pixel art styles use "Chibi" proportions (big head, small body)—it keeps the pixel count low, while still giving you enough room to show emotion. Pokémon and the original Mario sprites have very unrealistic proportions—they both fit in 16 by 16 squares, but their heads take up the majority of the picture. The Pokémon character’s head is 11 pixels—about 70% of the body. Mario’s head is 7 pixels-- about 45% of the body. For reference, the average human’s head to body ratio is 7 ½ heads tall, with bigger numbers being associated with superheroes and statues and smaller ratios being associated with cuter, more childlike cartoons (or actual children).

 

Head reference by Synicalsel

Chibi Reference by AkaruiYoru. Generally, Chibi characters can be anywhere from 2 heads tall up to 4.

Here's a reference of how head size and proportions look on characters that are 32 pixels tall. As you can see, the super chibi character at 2 heads tall can show a lot of emotion, whereas the character at 8 heads tall only gets 3 pixels for her entire face.

Conclusion: Categories of Character Size

So, let's sum this all up. I've made a graphic to show some references of characters and people at different pixel heights. I've grouped them into how many 16x16 squares tall they are. Most people keep their up close shots and faces lower than 7 squares, or about 112 pixels. Most up close faces I found were about 3 squares or 48 pixels tall, but there are of course always exceptions. The vast majority of character art I found though were about 32 pixels tall.

 

1. 16 pixels tall, 1 square: Micro. Barely readable unless super chibi and abstract. Used more for very simple games like those on the original Gameboy.
2. 32 pixels tall, 2 squares: Chibi, cute, usually between 2-3 heads tall. One of the most common heights for drawing pixel art characters. One of the most common sizes for characters for the GBA and SNES.
3. 48 pixels tall, 3 squares. I like to think of this one as having two categories: 
1. "32 +": Oversized super expressive chibi (more body, or bigger faces). These are just like the 32 pixel characters, but they gave them extra room for a funny hairstyle, larger face, a cool sword, etc. Probably the second most common height after 32.
2. "True 48": Generally more human forms with tiny faces (6-7 pixels face), around 6-8 heads tall.
4. 64 pixels tall, 4 squares: Either very Detailed Anime Chibi (usually 4+ heads), or human form with more room for face (8-9 pixels = 8-7 heads tall)
5. 80, or 5 squares tall. Half a GBA screen (5/12 a DS). Cartoon proportions, usually, or a close up.
6. 96: Fighting Game Characters, with tons of room for full sized bodies, heads of 13-15 pixels, or crazy detailed anime characters.
7. 112+: Super tall fighters, very detailed stuff.