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 with basic shapes and transform them with details and organic forms.

If you look closely, you will notice a new ruler tool that will speed up drawing of rectangles and ellipses (there will be a LOT of them).

The latest YouTube devlog goes behind the scenes of all the lessons, as well as offers a look at the plan for the rest of the content in Learn Mode.

Given how many sprints it will take to get all the elements of art out, I will now prioritize developing new content over quality-of-life updates, unless of course half of the game breaks or any essential feature requests come up. Let me know in the forums.

Thanks for giving the game a try and I hope you will enjoy the new lessons. Cheers!
—Retro

TL;DR:

• Artworks section will appear after you complete the pixel art evaluation challenge.
  
• Create custom artworks with up to 16 colors.
  
• Basic, monoramp, system, and modern palettes.
  
• Fullscreen artwork preview.
  
• Export the image as a PNG at varying scales.

Many of you have been asking for the ability to create your own artworks inside the game, so I enabled this feature.

This is not meant as a replacement for dedicated drawing software—the game's built-in editor is too barebones for that. Still, if you want to play around with the game's tools and pixel art evaluation, you will now unlock the Artworks section after completing the fan art challenge.

Creating an artwork comes with a neat little interface for selecting color palettes.

The current limitation of the editor is having palettes with up to 16 colors, but once I add the color element of art tutorial, this should be increased.

You can preview your artwork fullscreen by clicking on it in the clipboard.

And when you're happy with your work, you can export it at various magnification levels.

The game will then create a PNG file (or a ZIP if you select multiple scales).

All of this is very limited, but since I thought it was a good feature request, I figured I'd add it sooner rather than later, and it can become more full-featured as the game's future tutorials add more capabilities to the editor.

Here's also the devlog showcasing all this:
That's enough quality-of-life updates for now though. I'm looking forward to getting back to creating new learning content with the next development sprint.

Best,
Retro

TL;DR:

• New dynamic soundtrack song for the Elements of Art tutorial.
  
• Pinball Creation Kit sounds.

I had an odd week before some travel and a family visit so I did a quick update on the audio front.

The game's original soundtrack received a new song by Anna Eicheneuer which will play after the Elements of Art tutorial is unlocked (whenever you don't put on a cassette tape in the Music app, since that overrides the OST).

One thing that didn't make the cut in the past was sound effects in the pinball game. As I had a couple of days left over the weekend after finishing the new song, I quickly threw together some 4-bit Macintosh-style blips and bloops to make playing pinball more tactile.

Can't include screenshots of these things, but you can hear them in the devlog:
During the travels, I'll be designing the rest of the Elements of Art sections, and possibly look into "free draw" mode as a lot of you have been asking for it.

See you a bit (or maybe a byte)!
Retro

TL;DR:

• Renaming and removing of saved games.
  
• The Continue button in the main menu loads the game you last played.
  
• 10-pixel grid in the pinball editor.
  
• Option to use right-clicking instead of the back button.
  
• Customizable music effects.
  
• Many other bug fixes and polishing.

Sorry for the delay in this quality-of-life update. I was affected by the fires in Los Angeles, and it took a bit before I could get back to the game's development.

I implemented a bunch of features you've been requesting (listed above) and it was a nice update to get me back into the groove with coding the game.

The main thing many of you have been asking for, you can now edit saved games:
And for those of you trying to do precise pinball designs, the grid could come in handy:
As always, there's a behind-the-scenes devlog where you can see all the changes in practice:
I'll now work on the audio a bit before implementing the second issue of Pinball Magazine, which should conclude the work on the line element of art. Can't wait to get onto the next one (shape) right after.

Best,
Retro

TL;DR:

• Publications offer a way to cut out images and use them as references in your projects.
  
• Pinball Magazine issue 1 with four articles: prewar pinball machines, gobble holes, bumpers, and gates.

I'm back with another content update, bringing some much-needed help with the pinball project.

If you were feeling a bit lost on how to draw the various pinball parts, you were not alone, and this has finally improved.

When you now start working on your pinball playfield, the game introduces Pinball Magazine, a way for you to learn what you're going to be designing.

As you get access to more parts, new articles will be unlocked.

You can even cut out images and they will appear in the reference tray for you to draw from.

You can use the magazine to get inspired for your own designs (with a beautiful full-screen display of images) or practice by re-creating existing parts from reference.

This is just the first of the improvements on the pinball project. Take a look at the latest devlog to see behind the scenes of this development sprint and my thoughts for the future.

As this is the last update of 2024, I want to thank you for an incredible year. Your support of educational video games means the world to me and it makes me so happy that you're on board with learning in this way. I have so many plans for the future and can't wait to get them all developed with you.

Wishing you all the best for the holidays and I will see you next year!
—Retro

Just a tiny one-line bugfix since the color help instructions prevented the drawing of project sprites until the instructions were shown.

Otherwise, I'm in the middle of improving the Pinball project, which will be coming in the next content update.

Cheers!
—Retro

TL;DR:

• Color help form to request error detection on your sprite.
  
• Option to have cross-stitch symbols instead of dots to indicate colors.

Today's quality-of-life update brings a feature requested as early as the demo by people with color vision deficiency but proved necessary in general since some of the sprites contain very similar colors.

You can choose to either get one-time help that shows all the incorrect and missing pixels when you can't find a mistake yourself, or enable constant display of incorrect colors as you go along.

If able, I recommend trying to color-match palette colors with the reference yourself (to train color observation), but if that's too hard, the game is now more accessible with the possibility of changing the small color dots into cross-stitch symbols.

Here's the devlog about it as well:

Next up will be another content update as I quite like this alternating between QoL improvements and new/improved things to do in the game.

Best,
—Retro

TL;DR:

• 2 new Pixel art diagonals lessons.
  
• 3 new Pixel art curves lessons.
  
• UI indicators where to click in various tutorials.

It's finally time for the first content update! There's been a bunch of bug fixes and urgent tweaks in the first month, but version 0.25 now brings actual new lessons based on your feedback.

I completely replaced the diagonals evaluation lesson and broke it down into two much more digestible parts.

To have a better learning curve on the curves tutorial, I put 3 extra lessons before Line art cleanup so that you get introduced to each of the Smooth curves criteria individually before having to apply them yourself.

Finally, the pixel art evaluation tutorials use a new feature where I can (subtly) point to different parts of the interface to make it easier to progress. Apologies to everyone who got stuck figuring out where to click and hover on the evaluation paper!

And if you want to see behind the scenes of this development sprint, check out the devlog:

Thank you for your support and see you in the next one!
—Retro

Game-breaking bugs should mostly be solved (no more errors on loading, hopefully), so unless new critical things pop up, I will now be implementing quality-of-life improvements and your feature requests.

Version 0.23 (restart Steam to get the update) brings:

• Better tablet support.
  
• Right-click erases pixels.
  
• Brush size shortcuts are now +/- (like Aseprite).
  
• Change brush size with ctrl + mouse scroll.
  
• Loading percentage indicator (if loading takes more than a few seconds).

As always, report any bugs in the Steam discussions or on my Discord[discord.gg]. Pixel Art Academy is a daunting piece of software to test thoroughly on my own, so I really appreciate your help (and patience) with any bugs that pop up during Early Access.

Cheers!
—Retro