Color Pallet Limit

[CastraOil]

When someone says for beginners to limit their color pallet what do they mean? Do they mean don't change any of the colors on the pallet? Im using the NES color pallet right now. So i shouldn't edit the colors at all?

[Robin]

It's just a broad tip because pixel art is an artstyle formed from old console color limitations where they could only show a limited amount of colors on the screen at a time. Generally it is good advice to limit yourself but there are no real rules in that sense. I try to limit myself to a loose amont of shades per color (like 4 reds, 4 skin color shades, maybe 3 browns for the boots etc etc). But no it doesn't mean that you have to hard limit yourself to NES palettes or pre-made ones.

Just look up other pixel artists and study their color use and color counts. You can find plenty over at pixeljoint for one.

[◢ k r i s ◤]

Unless you're trying to be console-accurate or composing a color-theme, it's not so much what colors you use but rather how many colors.

Do you know how traditional artists will practice drawing in monochrome with charcoal to become proficient at depicting weight and volume and light-reflection using just texture and value? The reasoning here is kind of similar; get the most out of every opportunity that limitations can create.

It's not specifically an exercise that's limited to beginners, but it's certainly good to make a habit of it early. The problem with allowing yourself to use a lot of colors is you can become lazy by relying on unique colors for every detail and doing that too much can slowly make pixel-art not feel like pixel art (subjectively anyways; intentional stylizations aside).

PixelPete has a video about working with the limited color palette for GBStudio (Original Gameboy callback) and it's not specifically about having a limited color palette, but shows how a limited color palette (and resolution) will affect your workflow to bring out as much detail as possible with just the 3-4 colors available https://youtu.be/mNGnQMPUFxw

edit: If you like that video, you might like this one too. Includes more indirect reasoning about why you might want to work with a limited quantity of colors while also applying the same logic to a palette that expands beyond the GBStudio limited 4 colors.
https://youtu.be/3DWVitIDHQo

[CastraOil]

K ill check both of those out. Thank you both for the replies.