Like many people my age, I spent way too much time on the computer as a kid, and developed some slightly esoteric hobbies in the process that had varying levels of impact on my life. Case in point: I spent a lot of time writing what essentially amounts to fanfic on various Proboards roleplaying forums, which led to me eventually taking a serious interest in writing. (I am a much better writer now than when I was 14, thankfully.)
Another example: I had a copy of Photoshop on my home computer that I used to noodle around in and make terrible graphical banners and avatars for characters on aforementioned Proboards forums, which somehow led to me trying to teach myself how to make pixel art so I could create custom outfits and hairdos to put on pixel dolls.
I don’t really remember how that happened, but the important thing is that I was really bad at it. Despite a wealth of very comprehensive tutorials online that showed me how to do this step by step (KawaiiHannah is an international treasure), I’ve just never been very good at illustration. I don’t have a grasp of how lighting works. I can’t shade a circle. My inability to grasp the basics of the medium frustrated me, so I moved on to something else: bad confessional poetry.
But gamers, we’re so back. I came across a demo forPixel Art Academy: Learn ModeonSteamlast week, which I booted up last night. Reader, I felt like a child again. While the demo mostly just runs you through the basic tools used, I was fully enraptured. It had never occurred to me that a game would be the perfect medium to teach skills like this, but in hindsight, it seems obvious – it’s interactable, metes out more information after confirming you’ve grasped the skills you’ve already been taught, centralises information in one place, and can add and take away tools as appropriate.
Like I mentioned, the demo teaches you the basics. You learn how to use the pencil and eraser tools, and how to avoid basic pitfalls with the fill tool. You’ll have to learn to copy reference images, and it guides you towards using the tools you have to do that as efficiently as possible. It even teaches you a little bit about colour theory by having you customise the colours in a bootleg game of Snake (you know, the one on old Nokia phones) that you can then play for as long as you like.
It was a great refresher of the skills I’d forgotten after over a decade of pushing the hobby aside, and it does all of this while paying tribute to classic pixel sprites in games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Out Run. It also has a very chill soundtrack to lull you into a pixel art flow state.
The full game will cover the seven basic elements of art: line, shape, form, space, value, colour, and texture. It’ll attempt to actually teach you how to do art, and not just how to translate those skills to a digital format, which is hugely useful if you’re like me and can’t draw to save your life. I won’t even play Pictionary, I’m that bad. After learning the skills, you’ll be able to draw fan art and even design and illustrate your own pinball machine.
The game is in early access right now, though, so it only covers one out of those seven elements. Despite that, I’m really excited to see how this game shapes up. Useful educational games are few and far between, and while I love a big RPG, I also love when games teach you something useful, just for the fun of it. Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode seems to do just that, and I can’t wait to get stuck into learning a new skill that I will almost definitely never use in my daily life.
