Click on it to see it on high quality (updated for higher quality)

Our objective will be create stuff in Pixel Art that looks -at least- like this (that won’t be hard, i’m not a pro here, neither ;D):

Ok, so as you can see we have five boxes, being the one in the midle (3rd) the same box I did on the last tutorial. I won’t explain that one (I placed it there because only 4 boxes would look sad).
Anyway, let’s get started.

Box number 1. Japanese gift box. This is a very easy texture where I just applied a red line on the middle and divided the box in two parts (when creating it, you can also create just one box and then place another one like it under it). Also notice that the box’s corners are rounded to make it look like one of those typical strong plastic boxes (used for watches, jewels, etc..).
I added a final touch by using the Filter > Add Noise (1.9). That way the box doesn’t look plain and it’s a faster way, rather than painting the dots by yourself.

Box number 2. Dust box. For this box I took the original one, changed the colors and then added some lines around the nearest corners with a new layer in white with Overly mode and 40% opacity.
The darker lines are exactly the same but using black. You can also do the lines by picking your own colors and not making the layer Overly.
You can try drawing less lines to make it look a little bit less dirty, or if you change the colors to a reddish tone near the borders and gray on the center, you could have an oxidated effect.

Box number 4. Ice box. This box parts from the same point as the Dust box. Actually, I took the Dust box and changed the colors, making them brighter (ice is bright :O!) and actually drawing some lines of the back side of the box.
This box also features the circled angles so it looks more like an ice (I guess..), though it would depend on the situation where you use it.
Also, if you have more objects, it would be nice to create a reflex of them on the faces of the ice box.

Box number 5. Light inside the box!. Actually I had no ideas left for textures (I’m typing this at 4:42am) so I just made this using the original box and adding some nails on it (one light-toned pixel on the top, and a dark-toned one under it) and a light on the middle. It’s actually supposed to be one of those self-illuminated blocks.. yeah.. those ones :|.
For the illumination in the center I just made a box with a very light tone on itt (without really taking care about shadows and all that, since this is a self-illuminated item) and kept making brighter and brighter on the center.
Then, if you use photoshop, you can choose the light are, and in a new layer increase the selection by 2 or so pixels, fill it with white and give it Opacity 30% (or the one that works fine with your current design).

Our objective for this tutorial is creating a simple box in Pixel Art that will look like this box:

Step 1. How to draw the lines.
I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS3, though you can do this with any software. First, notice that the box is in isometric projection. That is, the lines paralel to the ground are not 1px long and 1px tall, but 2×1. Check the link I gave from Wikipedia to understand it better. Here are the differences:

Notice that the difference with the lines? (obviously, yes). We are going to use the style on the left, though I have seen people using the one on the right. I wouldn’t really suggest you using it, as it ends up looking very weird. But each one his style..

Ok, so now we are done. First create a new layer and start drawing a rectangle using the drawing pattern I talked about; 2 pixels witdh and 1 pixel tall. It should end up looking like this:

Now we are done with the first step, out of 6 (all of them really short).

Step 2. Finishing the box.
Now that you have one plain, for this tutorial you can copy the layer with the rectangle on it, and place it a few pixels down. Then draw some lines from the corners of the original rectangle to the new one and erase the lines that we won’t see at the end. It should look like this at the end:

You can give it the shape you want by using the lines I told you, or you can eventually follow another pattern for drawing the lines in order to get some other angles for the box and make it look like a pyramid and whatnot.

Step 3. Giving it some colors.
In this step we will be almost done. First you have to choose a main color. Then we will use 2 other tones, one for the area where the light is brighter (the top) and another one for the area where it’s darker (the right side). This will be, of course, imaginating that the light spot is on the top left side of our design. It’s the most used style. I will use my blog’s pink color:

Notice that of course, if you make some boxes and each one has the darker area on different sides, it will look horrible. So take care. Now, this is how the box looks after applying the colors:

But still.. it’s not that cool yet.

Step 4. Highlights.
In my opinion this is a very important step that will help your design look even better. What we are doing here is making the lines inside the box look brighter, so we don’t get to see that much black (wich doesn’t look good) and it also adds more depth to the box.
For this, we will choose a color brighter than the one we used for the top of the box (that is, the brighter pink). Take care not taking white, since if you put your drawing on a white background, it will look weird. You have to draw the lines like this:

Step 5. Changing the border and adding more depth.
With this box I won’t be able to explain it really well, but let’s see. Now we are doing the reverse of what we did before. Choose a color darker than the darker color on your box. That’s it, the right side of our box.
Use that color for the external black lines AND if you have angles lower than 180º (between two planes), to draw those lines too. In this box all the angles are bigger than 180º (they are 270º) so we won’t do it in any other place that isn’t the outside line.
It will end up like this:

Last step. Adding shadows.
Now, for this step you don’t really need to follow the style I’m using, just only remember to draw the shadow on the right side and make it look realistic.
For my shadow I decided drawing 4 pixels to the right on the right side of the box and that’s it. Then change the opacity to 40% so it looks like a real shadow, and you’re done.

Now, we are finally done!

I did those buildings about one year ago (though the first ones are already 2 years old) for my brother’s site – http://gamersmafia.com. They are supossed to be a representation of some famous games like Half Life, Unreal Tournament, etc.. though just the ones in my brother’s sites (right now around 50+).

Can you recognise any of the buildings here? :)

While I was playing, I ended up with this thing I didn’t continue (I finished the game and didn’t feel in the mood to continue it, lol), but still I guess you can tell from where is it. Here you have it:

And here you have one pic of the village in-game: