Heartopia Design Studio publishes more than just instructions for the tool itself. These guides are about pixel art as a craft. You can make something with nothing but the automatic converter, but knowing a little about color and silhouette changes both how the result looks and how much work it takes to place the dots in-game.
The articles below are grouped by purpose. You do not need to read them in order. Start with whichever one is closest to the problem in front of you.
Three articles to help you understand what the tool does and what pixel art actually is.
The whole flow, from uploading an image to converting it, reading the blueprint, and working through it in the work modes. Begin here.
What pixel art is and how it differs from a simply downscaled image, plus clear explanations of palette, color reduction, dithering, anti-aliasing, and other terms you will keep meeting.
What to decide before you convert anything: choosing a subject that suits pixel art, sketching a rough layout, framing it, and estimating how long the work will take.
How to turn the photos and illustrations you already have into clean pixel art.
The differences between the three conversion methods, which source images convert well, and how to crop. Includes what to adjust when the result disappoints.
Choosing a noise reduction level, using the two-step color reduction sliders, and merging colors by hand with the custom option.
Techniques for refining a converted result into something you are happy to publish.
Why fewer colors often read better, how to build enough brightness separation, the hue-shifting trick for shadows, and palette plans for different color counts.
How to make a person recognisable in a few dozen pixels: prioritising silhouette, and deciding how much of a face you can simply leave out.
How mixing two colors in a pattern reads as a third, when dithering helps and when it just looks like noise, and what to do about banding.
How to reproduce a finished blueprint in-game, how the block work mode helps, and the preparation that makes placing dots far less tedious.
Faces turning to mush, dull colors, speckled results, too many colors to finish. Common symptoms with their causes and concrete fixes.
Not sure where to begin? If you just want to make one piece today, the Basic Usage Guide and Image Conversion Tips are enough on their own. Once you have made a few and start wishing they looked cleaner, the Color Palette Guide is the one that changes how you see them.