Before I start, here are various programs you could use for pixel art.
Graphics Gale a popular pixel program
grafx2
ProMotion (This is not free)
jdraw
mtpaint
Pixen for Macs
Paintshop Pro
Paint.net
This one is about color. Sometimes people have difficulty picking colors for their pixel art. So they might either use default color palettes or try to make their own but end up with oversaturated colors, or ones with not enough contrast in them. It can be problematic, as a color can look different when placed near others, making it harder to find colors that are right. One thing I find useful is looking at the colors used by commercial game graphics. Feel free to look at those colors and see how they are used. How much red,green and blue is in them? You don’t need to memorize numbers. But keep them in mind. Also, don’t be afraid to alter colors once you’ve got them.
Let’s go over the various problems one could have with colors. First thing is contrasts. Floor tiles are one of the most important things to have lower contrasts on. If they have high contrast, then you’ll find that the floor pops out too much and takes too much attention away from the other things. You don’t want that. Here is an example:
See how much more attention the floor on the right takes away from the object. You'll want the characters/objects to pop out more from the background, and in general they should have higher contrasts. Don't always work zoomed in, see if you can even tell the difference between colors when you are not zoomed in. If you can't, then chances are the colors are too similar to each other.
Hue is another thing. You may think: This object is green. So the highlight will be a lighter green, the shadow will be a darker green. Instead, refer to a color wheel. What color light do you have? Natural lighting? Make the highlight have more of that color (a more yellowish when illuminated by the sun). Let the shadow colors have more of the opposite color (Usually blue or purple). It can make your object more interesting than just having different brightness levels of the same color. For red, you can make the highlights a brighter orange, yellow, or pink.
And we’ll end this one on saturation. Saturation is how bright and pure a color is. Desaturate it and you get grey. I work in RGB (Red/Green/Blue) values, but you can also use Hue (Type of color), Saturation and Value/Luminosity (HSL). If the RGB values are all the same (like 127,127,127), then you have a grey color. If the RGB values are only or mainly just on one of them, you have a saturated color (like 255 Red, 0 green, 0 Blue). In general unless you’re doing this for a specific purpose, you could try avoiding using saturated colors like pure Green, and include a bit of other colors in them. Here’s an example of saturated colors on top, desaturated colors in the middle, and examples from other games. Grass is from Seiken Densetsu 3 and the brick wall/water is from Star Ocean.
The numbers beneath the images show the R/G/B values of the colors used in the image. For the bottom row, it shows from the lightest colors values to the darkest ones.
I personally find it best to test out colors on a middle grey (127,127,127) background, rather than a white or black background.
I hope this was helpful, and feel free to give me feedback or suggestions or if you have any questions on this!
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