In this guide you will find a collection of artworks I have made using Steam emoticons.
I will add more as I make them.


In an ideal world I could paste the emoticon patterns here and allow for you to easily copy them, but since Steam guides do not let you use emoticons, I instead have taken screenshots and supplied a pastebin link for each. If you want to display one on your profile, copy the text from pastebin and paste it into a "Custom info box" showcase on your profile. Make sure to copy all of the text in the pastebin posts, there are invisible characters that form the transparent background




Please note that most of this art is based on original artwork by other people, I only recreated them with Steam emoticons. A lot of them are based on old game sprites or online pixel art, with some tweaking from me.

These are the emoticons I use, they are a collection of mostly solid colour emoticons which can look like an individual pixel. There are some more I don't own, which can be found here:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1166204116

:bbox:


:linked1:


:linked4:


:indb:


:linked2:


:immunizednode:


:Greencube1:


:akinOrange:


:Yellowcube1:


:chasernode:


:XYOrange:


:linked3:


:Redcube1:


:gcdirt:


:Block_q:

Palico/Felyne/Monster Hunter/Cat[pastebin.com]








Kero Blaster[pastebin.com]


Frog[pastebin.com]

For demonstration purposes, we will recreate this sprite with Steam emoticons



Go to this website[steam.tools]. This tool lets you to create a canvas and "paint" on it using Steam emoticons that the account id you enter possesses. If you don't own emoticons that are useful for recreating pixel art, you can use the id of an account that does (such as mine).



Count the dimensions on the source image (how many pixels wide/high it is) to see what canvas size you will need.

Note: Info boxes only allow for up to 8,000 characters, so try use simple/small sprites





Now pick an emoticon to use as the background. You will want to use one that does not seamlessly join horizontally/vertically, as that will make it difficult to count precisely. I usually use :tradingcard: since it's dark and each one is distinct, but any emoticon which is similar will suffice. Once you have the canvas size and background emoticon set, click "Blank Canvas"



Using the emoticons which best match, place them 1:1 to the corresponding pixels in the source image



Click export and voilà, your emoticon artwork is ready to be pasted into your custom info box!



If you want to make your background transparent, then open a text editor (I use Notepad++) and paste in the emoticon text. Replace every occurrence (Notepad++ allows you to this with Ctrl+H) of your background emoticon (:tradingcard: in this instance) with the following invisible characters:


Note: This code block is not empty, the three invisible characters are on the left side and highlightable. Additionally, make sure to include the ":" of the background emoticon you replace

These characters approximate the size of a Steam emoticon, but they are not exact so some art may become slightly distorted. Also, the mosaic tool will not import them correctly, so make sure to save a copy of your art with a background so you can import and edit it later should you wish.

Now your text should resemble this (Notepad++ represents the invisible characters with a [], but your editor may keep them invisible)



Paste this into your custom info box



If you want to make your own artwork from scratch, be careful with the canvas size. Anything wider than around 30 emoticons won't fit nicely into a info box and break up horizontal lines, and anything taller than around 30 will introduce a scrollbar and hide some of the artwork