Turning a real photograph into handcrafted pixel art inside Shadowforge.

For this piece, I started with a high-resolution photo of a chimpanzee resting in a tree and transformed it into stylized retro-inspired pixel artwork. The process combined automated image reduction with manual pixel-level editing to create something that feels more artistic and expressive than a simple filter conversion.

Workflow inside Shadowforge:

• Imported the original photo as the base reference

• Reduced the image resolution to create visible pixel structure
• Used nearest-neighbor scaling to preserve hard pixel edges

• Manually repainted areas using Shadowforge’s pixel brush tools
• Simplified lighting, fur texture, and shadows into readable pixel clusters
• Cleaned silhouettes and reshaped facial features for stronger character design
• Added cartoon-style elements like enlarged eyes and a speech bubble
• Worked with a limited color palette to maintain a retro pixel-art aesthetic
• Used layers to separate edits, outlines, and added effects

I used Shadowforge’s pixelate shader set to an 8x8 pixel size to convert the original chimpanzee photo into a retro-style pixel-art base.

After importing the image, I applied the pixelate shader and set the pixel resolution to 8x8. This simplified the photo into larger square pixel blocks while still keeping the overall shapes and composition readable. Using 8x8 pixels helped balance detail and readability without making the image too noisy or too smooth.

One useful part of Shadowforge is that the default square brush size is also 8x8, which matched the shader perfectly. Because the brush size and pixelation size were the same, I could paint directly over the pixelated image while staying aligned to the existing pixel grid.

I also used the tiling pixel shortcut while editing so the brush strokes stayed consistent across the image and kept the pixel placement clean.

The workflow was simple but effective:
Import Photo → Apply 8x8 Pixelate Shader → Edit Using the Default 8x8 Square Brush → Refine with Pixel Brushing and Stylization.

This combination of automatic pixelation and manual 8x8 brush editing helped turn the original photograph into handcrafted pixel artwork while still preserving the structure of the source image.