In this easy pixel tutorial you will learn how to create a pixel art smiley! We will go over the different steps it takes to make your very own smiley made out of pixels!

How to Make a Pixel Art Smiley for Beginners

Are you ready to design your own pixel art smiley? Learning how to draw a cute pixel art smiley is more popular than ever! Whether you’re looking to create a simple pixel art smiley face for your puzzle mobile game or maybe you just want to share a cute new pixel art smiley as part of your emoji collection on your social media profile, this pixel art tutorial will help you make a pixel smiley fast and easy.

How to Make a Pixel Art Smiley

These are the basic steps for how to make a pixel art smiley:

  1. Select a Pixel Art Software such as Adobe Photoshop, Mega Voxels or Aseprite
  2. Create a 32×32 pixel grid
  3. Sketch out an Outline for the shape of the smiley
  4. Fill in the color of the pixel art smiley
  5. Draw a Shade on the smiley to create depth
  6. Fill in the Background with Color

Now that you are familiar with the basic steps on how to create a pixel art smiley, we will cover each step visually so that you can follow along on how to create it.

If you are completely new to pixel art we recommend reading our post How to Create Pixel Art: Beginner’s Tutorial

Select a Pixel Art Software

In this beginner tutorial we will be showing you the steps to design your own pixel art smiley regardless of what pixel editor software you prefer to use. Before we begin you will need to know how to create a grid and use the pencil tool in the software of your choice. Once you create your pixel art smiley, you can use the pixel art in other games such as Minecraft or software such as Unity Game Engine. We offer tutorials on the following pixel art editor’s so feel free to pick the one that you feel most comfortable with:

Want to see what pixel art software is best for you? Read our post Top Free Pixel Art Software

Create a Grid

To begin we will be using a simple 32×32 pixel grid to draw a small pixel art smiley. Making 32×32 pixel art is a common size when making pixel art, especially for projects like video games. Be sure that your canvas is set to the color White (#FFFFFF). This will be our canvas that we use to draw our pixel art smiley on. Your smiley pixel art grid should have a canvas, also known as a spreadsheet, that looks something similar to this:

A blank canvas for drawing the pixel art smiley

Sketch an Outline for the Smiley

Next we will start by making the outline for the smiley so we can get the overall shape for our pixel smiley. To do this choose the color Black (#000000) and activate the pencil tool in your editor. Since this determines the overall shape, feel free to adjust the outline to what match your game or art project. As a guide, you can use the outline we made below for your smiley or like we mentioned before feel free to design your own.

An outline of the pixel art smiley grid similar to a spreadsheet

Fill in the Color

Now that you made an outline for your pixel art smiley, we will add some color to make it stand out. Fill in the main section of the smiley yellow (#FBCE18). This is a color that is traditionally used on smiley face art. Try matching the picture of our 8 bit pixel art smiley below.

Simple pixel art smiley with solid colors

Draw the Shading

So whenever you create pixel art there are essentially two parts to shading: the highlights and the shadows. We will start with the shadows. We will be applying a shadow to our 32×32 pixel art smiley using a single color. This color will be applied to the bottom of the smiley face. Remember, to create a shadow color for the smiley we will use a darker yellow (#E2B70B). Try to match where we put the shadows in the image below.

32x32 Pixel art smiley with shadows to give depth to the smiley

So now that you got the basic idea we will continue adding some depth to our smiley to give it a 3D feel. Let’s create a highlight for the top of the smiley face, but instead of going darker this time we will go lighter (#FFE88B). Remember, this doesn’t have to be the exact color in fact this is an opportunity to make the smiley look like your own. In our version we only highlighted the outside pixels. Use our image as a guide for your smiley.

Adding highlights to the 8 bit pixel smiley

Great! When you are happy with your shadows and highlights on your smiley, be sure to view your final image. To see your pixel art smiley go ahead and turn off the grid lines to make sure you like the way the smiley came out.

Kawaii pixel art smiley on a transparent background

Fill the Background Color

Finally, let’s change the background color of our smiley sprite to really make our smiley stand out nicely. Select the Bucket fill tool in your editor. For the color enter a very Light Blue (#BCEAFE). Then simply click on the white area outside of the pixel smiley.

Cute Pixel Art smiley on Blue Background

Where to Go From Here

Congratulations! You now know how to create your very own pixel art smiley. Try making your other smiley faces such as laughter to create your own set of smiley faces.

Bonus: Make a 3D Pixel Art Smiley

3D Pixel Art Smiley

Now that you have drawn your own pixel art smiley, you can turn it 3D with Mega Voxels. Mega Voxels contains a 3D Pixel Art Maker that allows you to convert traditional 2D pixels into 3D pixels. Simply download the free Mega Voxels app for iOS or Android.

Then import the pixel art you just made using the Add File button inside of the My Gallery page. And that’s it! Mega Voxels automatically transforms you pixel art smiley into a 3D pixel art smiley. You can now create 3D turntable videos of your 3D pixel art smiley and even view your smiley in Augmented Reality!