so to summurize : - mouse can be good, but mostly for small, precise edits (at the scale of 1px brush). Larger edits with a mouse usually mean less efficiency/slower workflow. - tablet makes it easier to do brush strokes, which itself makes block-in faster. Overall, it increases efficiency/speed of workflow for medium-high size canvas - especially with a paint-like style. - *small tablet* makes it easier to reach both ends of the monitor with a single stroke. However you will get to zoom-in often to get the most out of it and keep high precision. - screen tablet has many small ergonomical issues (hand getting in the way, not practical to use a keyboard with it) that make it not worth it.
I use a mouse for all of my pixel art, but I have a roller ball mouse, so I have my arm completely relaxed on my arm chair and I only move my fingers. I get a super painterly look with it, but I've had to practice for years to get there and even I don't understand how I do it completely. If I had to use one of the normal mice I wouldn't be able to work for more than a couple minutes, but with this set up I usually paint for hours assuming I have the time. Also, I'm not sure if this is a default setting, but for me to make the brush bigger and smaller you hold control and scroll the middle wheel. Really comes in handy sometimes.
@ I use a Kensington trackball. The one with the ball in the centre and four giant buttons. The one you mentioned looks nice, but I can’t depend on my thumb that much.
I've been using a combination of mouse and pen--I have a Surface Pro, so when I'm using the pen, I'm doing so directly on the screen of my tablet, which has some advantages and disadvantages. Generally speaking, first drafts are always done with the pen, since I feel like I have more dexterity and confidence for broad strokes and finding shapes when I'm directly using a pen, but when I need to zoom in and work on the pixel level, ironically, I find that the mouse actually tends to work better, but that's also likely because I'm plugged into my 3 monitor workstation at that point, so being able to work with a 27'' monitor probably helps out there.
Yo man, would like to thank ya a lot, starting a new art medium plus a new art program (pixel art, aseprite), would've been quite hard without guidance, which you've helped a lot with, I've developed quite a taste for pixel art thanks to your art vids, of course, pixel art in general is quite nice and I didn't dislike it before, but I truly love it now. So much so I've started actual projects for the future, thanks to some influence and your personal project insignia, hope the best for ya mate, thanks a lot ❤️.
1:37 Oh man, Just buy a good WORKING chair. It should have adjustable armrests that need to be set flush with the tabletop. The hand will always lie relaxed. Even if you mostly work with a pen, it will be much more comfortable. Don't harm your health.
always enjoy this style of video. i have to admit i only pop in every couple months but for what ever reason i was thinking about the insignia demo i played a few years back while eating thanks giving dinner.
Thanks for sharing this. Btw, Control + Alt drag (while hovering for pens users) also changes brush size, no addon needed. (at least in the latest versions)
I have a larger desk space (which I created for this purpose). I was taught to draw traditionally, pivoting from the elbow, my elbow is propped on a surface and doesn't hang over an edge like that. I feel like the problem is the same in your video whether you use a mouse or a tablet, but if you feel comfortable with your arm over the edge with the tablet, then I guess keep doing it... but I wouldn't feel comfortable like that at all.
I’ve been sitting at my computer nearly every day for about 20 years now. It’s the mouse clicking that does you in over time. They’re like little shockwaves through your whole arm. Combine that with any kind of small precise mouse movement and you’ll end up with bad arthritis. Kind of on topic: get up and stretch a lot with exercises that are targeted to prevent sciatica. Please trust me on this.
Great video. I pretty much always use my iPad. To get around ergonomic issues/hand in the way, I actually have a tabletop easel I set it up any time I draw. Helps my neck not hurt from looking down, and I like having my whole arm involved in the drawing process
i use an older wacom bamboo but basically identical to the one you showcased only in grey. anyway, little pointer for anyone who wore their nibs out on the stylus. i had worn my nib down so much i began finding it difficult to draw with the stylus tiled at even a 45 degree angle. i didnt have a replacement so when i pulled out the worn nib and realized it was just a thin piece of plastic i simply grabbed a toothpick. i may have lightly sanded it by rolling it between my fingers in some sand paper(more of a sand mesh product) until its fit snugly into the stylus. which if i recall correctly i really didnt take off any material from the toothpick i think just ensure it was smooth. i then cut the toothpick to the length i wanted. i ended up leaving it a bit longer then the oem nibs are. i then just scribbled on sand paper and on my desk and my pants to make a smooth rounded tip on the toothpick. this was literally in probably 2014 or 2015 and i have never had to change my custom nib since. the best part of this custom nib was that the wood on the plastic of the tablet gave much more of a pencil on paper feel than the plastic on plastic. honestly made me think they dropped the ball calling it the bamboo and didnt use bamboo nibs. it seriously feels so much better. if i were to upgrade my tablet to anything that used the same sort of stylus tech, where there is just a pressure sensitive button inside where the base of the nib rests, i would immediately fiddle with making a toothpick the exact size to fit and giving my self the advantage of the length the feel and the durability of the toothpick. regardless of the price of the tablet.
I use the mouse the 80% of the time because i need precision, but I also use the tablet and is very usefull in moments when you need paint a lot of pixels without getting a disease in your hand for doing with a mouse.
I come from a non-pixel art digital background and i mainly use a drawing tablet for my pixel art, especially for the rough sketch. Sometimes I mouse to refine my sketch though
Its great to see that as an amateur pixel artist I use the same techniques, primarily swapping between mouse and drawpad. I always thought using a mouse was such a noob method but its not! I've still yet to attempt a tablet for drawing pixel art, shocked to see that a tablet was not being used by the pros! Maybe I don't need a new ipad after all 😅
Honestly the tablet size depends from person to person, I absolutely hate using a small tablet, it hurt my wrist like hell and even when I tried to draw focusing on the shoulder there was not enough space for me to move and work, and when I did pixel art I prefered to do it on mouse instead of the tablet. When I got my 12" tablet my wrist problem went away because I had more space to work on and move the whole arm and it was better to work overall including pixel art, now I have a 12" with a screen, and just working directly on the screen improved for me work time and, confort while working. The best to so if you can, is to test each type of tablet. My personal recomendation is go for at least 12" drawing tablet, it has decent space to work on and it is not very expensive
Thanks for this great video. I use a mix of Kamvas 13 and mouse. I mapped my main hotkeys to the side buttons. Along with the pen buttons, has really streamlined my workflow. I use Asperite and Krita. I tried using screen less tablets but they never worked well for me. Awesome to see how other people are set up.
Hello, adding English subtitles to your videos will further increase your video views. Because I can translate an English subtitle into the language I want with the "Auto Translate" feature (it works even if there will be some small errors). (This article was prepared using "google translate")
From my experience: mouse could be usey for really small pixel art and animations, graphic table for everything, it takes much less time to draw everything with a tablet and time is your main enemy. Nothing will save your hand and back, if you ignore the amount of time at the computer. It's worth it to buy a cheap tablet without a screen, but not too small. Like A4 sheet of paper is okay. I have a vertical mouse as well, but it should be the right size. So I don't recommend to buy it online, if possible
Honestly I’ve found the new iPads running procreate to be great for pixelart so long as you don’t want to animate. I know you make a lot of use of the shading brush a lot so I imagine loosing out on that would,d be a huge trade off for yourself and others. In deal world personally I’d be using an iPad Pro with apple pencile side-cared to aesprite on a MacBook
@Adam: have you ever try a ergonomic mouse? From Anker i.e. I have a bunch of it and my kids too. Its such a big difference. If you want, you can put the arm on the desk and just with thumb and middle finger aou can slide across the whole screen. But i use some tablets too of course. Atm i´m sad that there is no really working way for a second mouse pointer. Because i´m both handed. I would use a tablet on the left hand and the mouse on the right at the same time. Btw. i think many people would like to known what keyboard shortcuts do you have on the left side of your keyboard. ;)
People always think the way that I have my mouse is weird because I am right handed but my mouse is front left of my keyboard. I tend to rest my elbow where most people have their mouse.
On my smart phone, I use Pixel Studio for pixel art, Vector Ink for vector art, and Sketchbook for raster art / draft. Wish there was just 1 program that does it all but oh well. Then for my workstation, I'm using a Wacom One and keyboard. My ergonomics sucks cuz I'm short, need a foot rest, and table and chair aren't adjustable.
Darn I cant believe you use a screen less tablet. What is the size of the wacom? Do you use Bluetooth mode? Any latency? Do you ever draw pixel art on your phone? 🤳 ❤❤❤ Thank you for the video and pixel art!
i use a mouse when im feeling lazy setting up my desk because my display tablet takes up alot of room on my desk or when I'm not working on any animations. Animations are a pen only task for me
I have a tablet I use regularly for commissions. I use a mouse for my indie game's pixel art. You can't use the curves, pressure, or accuracy of a tablet pen in any way in pixel art. You literally can't.
Adam what is your opinion on using sprites that are more in line with the side scroller perspective you use, but for top down? I personally hate the big head/small body look of top down sprites but I find side scrolling too limiting, at least for the genre of game I want to make. Do you reckon the perspective would be thrown off too much? or do you think it'd be possible to make it work, with maybe a minor adjustment in the perceived angle of the sprite (like making the feet slightly more underneath the body)?
games like Stardew Valley use this "flatter" top down perspective. it's usually okay as long as you're consistent with perspective throughout the game.
Honestly the biggest factor is the style and core resolution of your pixel art... Which I believe the only time you would need a pen at all is with 21st century pixel art think Nintendo GBA and the most "High def" styles of the past 5 years like yours adam. Like anything older and you can use a pen for a rough shapes and even then at the oldest/'Lowest Def" a pen would be pointless at best at worst just bad and waste of money and time... Unless you like the smart phone tap approach to pixel art that is... But for most peoples pixel art a mouse, touchscreen or gamepad is just fine if not perfect.
I agree, my sprites are only 96x96. So the art is much more a puzzle of placing the pixels in a way that conveys what it's supposed to represent, than it is freeform artistic drawing. So when zoomed in on a 1440p 24 inch display you don't need to strain your arm with a mouse.
@ Oh alright thx, I was a little confused I just bought asprite a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t see the palette in the software. All the other palettes seem to be random and all over the place, while his is simple and uniform.
Very helpful video, thank you! Though I'm wondering, do most people really sit and hold the mouse this way? My arm never hangs in the air when I use the mouse. Instead it rests completely on the desk up to the elbow because my mouse pad isn’t at the edge of the desk but much further in the middle. This way I don’t experience any of the problems you described when using a mouse. I'm doing that since.. I dunno.. 20 years and never had fatigue, inflammation or things like that in my mouse arm. But of course I agree, that a mouse is not optimal if you want to draw stuff seriously.
Thumb, Pixel art on Mobile (Although if anyone knows a good alternative to Pixel Studio on Android, that would be great, as the dev is a genAI grifter annoyingly)
Tablet is useless for Pixel art, compromise way too much for so little. You should have an arm rest that is high and a MMO mouse for super fast key binds without having to use keyboard much.
so to summurize :
- mouse can be good, but mostly for small, precise edits (at the scale of 1px brush). Larger edits with a mouse usually mean less efficiency/slower workflow.
- tablet makes it easier to do brush strokes, which itself makes block-in faster. Overall, it increases efficiency/speed of workflow for medium-high size canvas - especially with a paint-like style.
- *small tablet* makes it easier to reach both ends of the monitor with a single stroke. However you will get to zoom-in often to get the most out of it and keep high precision.
- screen tablet has many small ergonomical issues (hand getting in the way, not practical to use a keyboard with it) that make it not worth it.
I use a mouse for all of my pixel art, but I have a roller ball mouse, so I have my arm completely relaxed on my arm chair and I only move my fingers. I get a super painterly look with it, but I've had to practice for years to get there and even I don't understand how I do it completely. If I had to use one of the normal mice I wouldn't be able to work for more than a couple minutes, but with this set up I usually paint for hours assuming I have the time.
Also, I'm not sure if this is a default setting, but for me to make the brush bigger and smaller you hold control and scroll the middle wheel. Really comes in handy sometimes.
Are you about devices like the Logitech M570? If so, I see you're a fellow man of culture
@ I use a Kensington trackball. The one with the ball in the centre and four giant buttons.
The one you mentioned looks nice, but I can’t depend on my thumb that much.
I've been using a combination of mouse and pen--I have a Surface Pro, so when I'm using the pen, I'm doing so directly on the screen of my tablet, which has some advantages and disadvantages.
Generally speaking, first drafts are always done with the pen, since I feel like I have more dexterity and confidence for broad strokes and finding shapes when I'm directly using a pen, but when I need to zoom in and work on the pixel level, ironically, I find that the mouse actually tends to work better, but that's also likely because I'm plugged into my 3 monitor workstation at that point, so being able to work with a 27'' monitor probably helps out there.
The drawing demo with no music, ASMR-style, was quite enjoyable to watch.
Yo man, would like to thank ya a lot, starting a new art medium plus a new art program (pixel art, aseprite), would've been quite hard without guidance, which you've helped a lot with, I've developed quite a taste for pixel art thanks to your art vids, of course, pixel art in general is quite nice and I didn't dislike it before, but I truly love it now. So much so I've started actual projects for the future, thanks to some influence and your personal project insignia, hope the best for ya mate, thanks a lot ❤️.
I actually got a drawing pad last year for pixel art but for some reason I’m still hooked on the mouse permanently 😅
Maybe you need a smaller tablet. The smallest is best for pixel art 👍
1:37 Oh man, Just buy a good WORKING chair. It should have adjustable armrests that need to be set flush with the tabletop. The hand will always lie relaxed. Even if you mostly work with a pen, it will be much more comfortable. Don't harm your health.
No armrests D:
Elbow below desk surface D:
Weight of arm on wrist D:
Drawing with wrist and finger movement D:
Nerve pain speedrun
always enjoy this style of video. i have to admit i only pop in every couple months but for what ever reason i was thinking about the insignia demo i played a few years back while eating thanks giving dinner.
Thanks for sharing this. Btw, Control + Alt drag (while hovering for pens users) also changes brush size, no addon needed. (at least in the latest versions)
I have a larger desk space (which I created for this purpose). I was taught to draw traditionally, pivoting from the elbow, my elbow is propped on a surface and doesn't hang over an edge like that. I feel like the problem is the same in your video whether you use a mouse or a tablet, but if you feel comfortable with your arm over the edge with the tablet, then I guess keep doing it... but I wouldn't feel comfortable like that at all.
I’ve been sitting at my computer nearly every day for about 20 years now. It’s the mouse clicking that does you in over time. They’re like little shockwaves through your whole arm.
Combine that with any kind of small precise mouse movement and you’ll end up with bad arthritis.
Kind of on topic: get up and stretch a lot with exercises that are targeted to prevent sciatica. Please trust me on this.
how does clicking on a keyboard compare to clicking on a mouse? not rly related to the topic at hand
Great video. I pretty much always use my iPad. To get around ergonomic issues/hand in the way, I actually have a tabletop easel I set it up any time I draw. Helps my neck not hurt from looking down, and I like having my whole arm involved in the drawing process
Great reply! 😸
i use an older wacom bamboo but basically identical to the one you showcased only in grey. anyway, little pointer for anyone who wore their nibs out on the stylus. i had worn my nib down so much i began finding it difficult to draw with the stylus tiled at even a 45 degree angle. i didnt have a replacement so when i pulled out the worn nib and realized it was just a thin piece of plastic i simply grabbed a toothpick. i may have lightly sanded it by rolling it between my fingers in some sand paper(more of a sand mesh product) until its fit snugly into the stylus. which if i recall correctly i really didnt take off any material from the toothpick i think just ensure it was smooth. i then cut the toothpick to the length i wanted. i ended up leaving it a bit longer then the oem nibs are. i then just scribbled on sand paper and on my desk and my pants to make a smooth rounded tip on the toothpick. this was literally in probably 2014 or 2015 and i have never had to change my custom nib since.
the best part of this custom nib was that the wood on the plastic of the tablet gave much more of a pencil on paper feel than the plastic on plastic.
honestly made me think they dropped the ball calling it the bamboo and didnt use bamboo nibs. it seriously feels so much better.
if i were to upgrade my tablet to anything that used the same sort of stylus tech, where there is just a pressure sensitive button inside where the base of the nib rests, i would immediately fiddle with making a toothpick the exact size to fit and giving my self the advantage of the length the feel and the durability of the toothpick. regardless of the price of the tablet.
FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for this one
Art tablet was a game changer for me. I never realized how much I needed it till I got one.
I use the mouse the 80% of the time because i need precision, but I also use the tablet and is very usefull in moments when you need paint a lot of pixels without getting a disease in your hand for doing with a mouse.
Everyone: pen or mouse?
Me who uses a trackpad: -__-
I come from a non-pixel art digital background and i mainly use a drawing tablet for my pixel art, especially for the rough sketch. Sometimes I mouse to refine my sketch though
Its great to see that as an amateur pixel artist I use the same techniques, primarily swapping between mouse and drawpad. I always thought using a mouse was such a noob method but its not!
I've still yet to attempt a tablet for drawing pixel art, shocked to see that a tablet was not being used by the pros!
Maybe I don't need a new ipad after all 😅
Hey, great video as always! I'm wondering how did you set the center point at 13:53 so you could draw symmetrically?
Click view- > Symmetry options, make sure its checked then the symmetry tools will appear in the top bar
@@dailydoodle42 Thanks a lot!
Honestly the tablet size depends from person to person, I absolutely hate using a small tablet, it hurt my wrist like hell and even when I tried to draw focusing on the shoulder there was not enough space for me to move and work, and when I did pixel art I prefered to do it on mouse instead of the tablet. When I got my 12" tablet my wrist problem went away because I had more space to work on and move the whole arm and it was better to work overall including pixel art, now I have a 12" with a screen, and just working directly on the screen improved for me work time and, confort while working.
The best to so if you can, is to test each type of tablet. My personal recomendation is go for at least 12" drawing tablet, it has decent space to work on and it is not very expensive
Thanks for this great video. I use a mix of Kamvas 13 and mouse. I mapped my main hotkeys to the side buttons. Along with the pen buttons, has really streamlined my workflow. I use Asperite and Krita. I tried using screen less tablets but they never worked well for me. Awesome to see how other people are set up.
Hello, adding English subtitles to your videos will further increase your video views. Because I can translate an English subtitle into the language I want with the "Auto Translate" feature (it works even if there will be some small errors).
(This article was prepared using "google translate")
From my experience: mouse could be usey for really small pixel art and animations, graphic table for everything, it takes much less time to draw everything with a tablet and time is your main enemy. Nothing will save your hand and back, if you ignore the amount of time at the computer. It's worth it to buy a cheap tablet without a screen, but not too small. Like A4 sheet of paper is okay. I have a vertical mouse as well, but it should be the right size. So I don't recommend to buy it online, if possible
Honestly I’ve found the new iPads running procreate to be great for pixelart so long as you don’t want to animate. I know you make a lot of use of the shading brush a lot so I imagine loosing out on that would,d be a huge trade off for yourself and others. In deal world personally I’d be using an iPad Pro with apple pencile side-cared to aesprite on a MacBook
@Adam: have you ever try a ergonomic mouse? From Anker i.e. I have a bunch of it and my kids too. Its such a big difference. If you want, you can put the arm on the desk and just with thumb and middle finger aou can slide across the whole screen. But i use some tablets too of course. Atm i´m sad that there is no really working way for a second mouse pointer. Because i´m both handed. I would use a tablet on the left hand and the mouse on the right at the same time. Btw. i think many people would like to known what keyboard shortcuts do you have on the left side of your keyboard. ;)
People always think the way that I have my mouse is weird because I am right handed but my mouse is front left of my keyboard. I tend to rest my elbow where most people have their mouse.
On my smart phone, I use Pixel Studio for pixel art, Vector Ink for vector art, and Sketchbook for raster art / draft. Wish there was just 1 program that does it all but oh well. Then for my workstation, I'm using a Wacom One and keyboard. My ergonomics sucks cuz I'm short, need a foot rest, and table and chair aren't adjustable.
Darn I cant believe you use a screen less tablet. What is the size of the wacom? Do you use Bluetooth mode? Any latency?
Do you ever draw pixel art on your phone? 🤳
❤❤❤
Thank you for the video and pixel art!
I don't know the full size of the tablet itself, but in the video he mentions the drawing surface is 4 x 6 inches.
@ArloMathis thanks that helps narrow it down. The smallest is 7x6 and larger is 10 x 7. So I'm thinking it could be the smallest one....
i use a mouse when im feeling lazy setting up my desk because my display tablet takes up alot of room on my desk or when I'm not working on any animations. Animations are a pen only task for me
I would definitely recommend doing pixel art on an iPad between Procreate, Resprite and Artstudio Pro there are more than enough options
I use a pen for everything, but as soon as Aseprite is open, I convert to a mouse... I should train that out of me 😅
I have a tablet I use regularly for commissions. I use a mouse for my indie game's pixel art. You can't use the curves, pressure, or accuracy of a tablet pen in any way in pixel art. You literally can't.
i know this is gonna sound weird, but i like to click and hold my mouse while using the mousepad to actually draw.
Adam what is your opinion on using sprites that are more in line with the side scroller perspective you use, but for top down? I personally hate the big head/small body look of top down sprites but I find side scrolling too limiting, at least for the genre of game I want to make. Do you reckon the perspective would be thrown off too much? or do you think it'd be possible to make it work, with maybe a minor adjustment in the perceived angle of the sprite (like making the feet slightly more underneath the body)?
games like Stardew Valley use this "flatter" top down perspective. it's usually okay as long as you're consistent with perspective throughout the game.
@@AdamCYounis All right; that's reassuring. Thank you for the reply, and for getting back to me so quickly!
I use my mouse to draw smaller art but I use my drawing tablet when I'm making larger art.
Hey Adam, which tablet do you have? I've been wanting to try one of these out but I wasn't sure where to start. Do you have an Amazon link?
I'm using a huion kamvas24 with a stream deck32 for my hotkeys
i have a tablet, but for small pixel art that i often do, a mouse is just better
What about hand ? Aka mobile 😅
Nothing wrong with it does the same things a pen in pixel art unless you are doing the modern high reez pixel art that is.
Which is better? Pure white font thumbnail or colored one?
8:08 did anyone notice his furniture is invisible? 🤷♂
he's a magician
Honestly the biggest factor is the style and core resolution of your pixel art... Which I believe the only time you would need a pen at all is with 21st century pixel art think Nintendo GBA and the most "High def" styles of the past 5 years like yours adam. Like anything older and you can use a pen for a rough shapes and even then at the oldest/'Lowest Def" a pen would be pointless at best at worst just bad and waste of money and time... Unless you like the smart phone tap approach to pixel art that is... But for most peoples pixel art a mouse, touchscreen or gamepad is just fine if not perfect.
I agree, my sprites are only 96x96. So the art is much more a puzzle of placing the pixels in a way that conveys what it's supposed to represent, than it is freeform artistic drawing. So when zoomed in on a 1440p 24 inch display you don't need to strain your arm with a mouse.
Ive switched from mouse to drawing tablet(with screen). I draw more accurately, game changer. Still use mouse for some actions.
I use a mousepad on my laptop. Cannot imagine using a mouse lol.
over the years I developed a frankenstein contraption .
I didn't care for the surface pro. The pen is not great. I ended up using a tablet with mine when I had one
What palette is he using?
He makes a palette for each project, but his Apollo palette is available on Lospec
@ Oh alright thx, I was a little confused I just bought asprite a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t see the palette in the software. All the other palettes seem to be random and all over the place, while his is simple and uniform.
@@travis8925 I can’t seem to download it, when I click on open in app it just opens a blank tab
Very helpful video, thank you! Though I'm wondering, do most people really sit and hold the mouse this way? My arm never hangs in the air when I use the mouse. Instead it rests completely on the desk up to the elbow because my mouse pad isn’t at the edge of the desk but much further in the middle. This way I don’t experience any of the problems you described when using a mouse.
I'm doing that since.. I dunno.. 20 years and never had fatigue, inflammation or things like that in my mouse arm. But of course I agree, that a mouse is not optimal if you want to draw stuff seriously.
Thumb, Pixel art on Mobile
(Although if anyone knows a good alternative to Pixel Studio on Android, that would be great, as the dev is a genAI grifter annoyingly)
Is that a superlight lmao
G703
Tablet is useless for Pixel art, compromise way too much for so little. You should have an arm rest that is high and a MMO mouse for super fast key binds without having to use keyboard much.
What are your recommended key binds for the MMO mouse?
Make sure to hit the gym
2nd
1st
Only mouse! Only hardcore!
What do you think about pixellab AI service? Is pixel artist still a valid profession?