In the Tools menu ( T ), select the color you want to paint with. This limits your painting to the faces currently selected in edit mode. Now select “Face Selection Masking For Painting” In Edit mode, simply select the faces you want to be a specific colour, like I have done here for the cockpit area: Now it’s time to start filling out our different colors. In the default material make sure that Vertex Color Paint is enabled:

This will enable us to easily see the painted vertices in the Blender viewport. In the end, we are going to use the Cycles renderer, but for now, it’s easier to get started painting using the built in default Blender renderer. We just published a video on Vertex Painting in Blender if you want more details. The nice thing about Vertex Painting is it draws the colour information directly on the model, so you don’t need to worry about UV maps or textures at all. Vertex Painting The Objectįirst, we start off by painting our surface. Now let’s look at first colouring it, then cartoon rendering it and finally how to render it in pixel art style. Instead, we start with a simple model like the following: For this example I am not going to model the sprite, if you are interested in seeing that process, watch the full video. Not the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen I’m sure… but it was exceptionally easy.

We are going to use a combination of vertex painting, cycles renderer, and freestyle in Blender to create an image like the one to the right. We have a pair of ground up tutorial series that will teach you everything you need to know to follow along, this Blender text tutorial series and this Blender video tutorial series. Of course, it assumes you know a bit about Blender, but don’t worry if you don’t. Are you perhaps… artistically challenged? This tutorial will give you passable 8-bit or 16-bit style pixel art results with a minimum of artistic ability.

2d art in blender