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Tutorial: How to make gradients for pixel art!

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MikuDesu's Avatar MikuDesu
Level 68 : High Grandmaster Senpai
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When shading textures, most people use a gradient that shows the transition between two colors. This simple tutorial will show you how to make them easily!

Step 1 - Download Paint.NET
It's 100% free and I use it all them time. It's very easy to use and has a lot of useful funtions. Website: http://www.getpaint.net/
Now you want to resize the canvas to something small, like 16x16 pixels. Go to Image>Canvas Size or press Ctrl + Shift + R simultaneously to open up the menu, and then adjust the Width and Height values to your preference.


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It should look like this.

Step 2 - Highlight
Select the Rectangle Select tool from the sidebar or press the S key and highlight a small portion of the canvas. This will determine the size of your gradient. I usually go 7 pixels long, but it's up to you.
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Step 3 -  Select your colors.
Select the two colors that are going to transition into eachother. You might want to select colors/shades with high contrast for best result. Black/white and pale red/dark red are examples.
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As you see here, you can toggle between primary and secondary colors, and they show up as the two squares on the top right corner of the Colors menu.
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For this tutroial I have selected two shades of red.



Step 4 - Creating the Gradient
Select the Gradient Tool in the side bar or press the G key.
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Then, if you look at the top, you'll see this:
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For now, we'll set it to linear.
Go to the highlighted portion and click, hold, and drag the mouse starting from the edge of the box.
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It should turn out like this:
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Done!
You can use different colors for different outcomes:
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Well, that's the end of this tutorial, and I hope you liked it, and diamond/favorite if it helped!
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