Matej 'Retro' Jan · Retronator
Technical data
If you created any of your own artworks, looking at their fullscreen preview (clicking on the canvas while on the clipboard) made the game freeze. This small patch makes it work again. Sorry about that!
Some of you were able to buy 9 pawns in Chess Academy. This patch will fix your save file and prevent any others from being too speedy in the chess shop. No more breaking the chess law!
TL;DR: An art project in which you draw small, 2D chess pieces. Playtest your art on the Pixeltosh and learn the rules of chess. A chess magazine with 90 references to get inspired by. 4 chessboard themes and a dark interface mode to match your art style. Play against the compute
TL;DR: Steam Cloud available for existing and new saves. Universal macOS build with native Apple Silicon support. SteamOS/Linux build enabled, see below. Storage and performance optimizations. I finally completed the basic Steam integration into the game, the first bonus of which
There was a bug where the readability analysis didn't give you a checkmark if you used undo to get back to the state of the drawing before you opened the analysis paper. I've changed the logic now a bit so that the analysis always computes in the background and it only shows afte
TL;DR: Pixel art readability challenge with 94 icons to draw in 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32 sizes. Two new cassette tapes in synthwave and lo-fi genres. Archive folder for inactive tutorials. Let me know if you find the readability analysis discouraging. Continuing from where we left o
In case you got stuck on the Perceived resolution lesson, it wouldn't let you complete if you accidentally painted some pixels behind the preview area on the phone or laptop screens. This fix now lets you complete the lesson even if something extra is painted there.
TL;DR: Pixel art size tutorial. Study Plan drawing performance improvement. Easter egg: Jungle PICO-8 cartridge. After you've acquired the simplification and smooth curves interests, you will now unlock a new goal about pixel art size. Every pixel art image depends on the size of
There was a bug in the latest update where the to-do tasks would stop writing out on a new playthrough, so I fixed it. I also added a list of active goals at the bottom-left of the Study Plan to show which goals are currently being displayed in the Drawing app. When you click on
TL;DR: Study Plan app shows the big picture of available goals and tasks. Add goals to get new tasks. Mark goals complete to hide them from the Drawing app. Before I could add more tutorials, I had to solve the issue of the Drawing app getting cluttered as you complete more and m
TL;DR: Draw Quickly minigame with 94 subjects to draw. Symbolic drawing mode where the computer guesses what you're drawing. Realistic drawing mode where you apply simplification with a reference. I like to follow the tutorial→challenge→project progression where learning new theo
The paths stopped showing in some of the pixel art curves lessons due to upgraded paths. Had to change one line of code and now it works again. Yay!
TL;DR: Simplification tutorial. 3D references that can be manipulated. This update brings a new tutorial about simplifying shapes from realistic to highly stylized. 4 techniques are presented, which can be used in various degrees and combinations. The silhouette lesson shows that
TL;DR: 10-year anniversary video going over a decade of Pixel Art Academy development. Play other educational games on Back to School Games Celebration. Most of you probably don't know the history behind Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode. It started as an idea to give players an expe
A player reported they were getting an EPERM error on Windows during the autosave, so I fixed my file system handling to avoid this. I also noticed while debugging this that the Invasion project unlocked too soon (when you finished the Shape tutorial). I fixed it so it correctly
TL;DR: Invasion project (a shmup game for PICO-8) unlocks after you complete Shape language. Customize the Invasion design document on the Pixeltosh. Chronoscope, a magazine with science fiction artworks for inspiration and reference. A new dynamic soundtrack song plays in Pixel
TL;DR: Shape language tutorial. Filled rectangle/ellipse tool by clicking again on the ruler. Redesigned look of picking up references. You can now unlock the first tutorial in the Design fundamentals course (as soon as you complete the Elements of art: shape). In Shape language,
It was discovered that the color help option that draws symbols instead of dots didn't work properly on Windows and Linux (it was misaligned and too big, which made it also impossible to see which pixels to delete). This hotfix attempts to resolve this issue.
Just a bug fix for the Maniac Mansion reference in the Pixel art line art challenge. One of the shapes wasn't completely black and since the game now supports shapes of different colors, it wouldn't let you complete it.
TL;DR: Elements of art tutorial on shapes. Ruler tool for drawing lines, rectangles, and ellipses. A detailed plan for the rest of Learn Mode. I'm very excited to be working back on new tutorials. Starting off with the next element of art, you will learn how to start a drawing wi