The hard part of working with a pixel art AI generator like PixAI is deciding what to type. Enter "pixel art" and hope, and you may get a smooth illustration with a few blocky edges.
This lighthouse keeper is the first output of my prompt in Tsubaki.3 on PixAI. I did not re-roll it or edit it.
Ready for the night shift
This tutorial walks through that process. You fill in a prompt template, generate a pixel-style character, check the output, adjust the wording, and build your own variation. The workflow takes text only. It needs no reference image.
One caveat first. The outputs are pixel-style illustrations, not finished game assets. A precisely sized game sprite may need extra work.
Step 1: Select Tsubaki.3 on PixAI
Start in Image Generation, in the left sidebar. In the right-hand panel, keep the Model tab open and pick Tsubaki.3. The model card lists the PixAI DiT.3 label and a Pro variant, and I used Pro. Quick Select also puts a check mark on the Tsubaki.3 thumbnail. No LoRAs were added.
Tsubaki.3 selected, with no LoRAs added
Then scroll to the Settings section of the same panel. I set Single for the number of images, the 3:5 portrait shape and XL resolution at 1104 × 1824. No other setting changed for this first image.
Single image, 3:5 ratio, XL resolution
That completes the setup. The rest happens in the prompt.
Step 2: Fill In This Pixel Art Prompt Template
Next comes the prompt. Copy the template below and replace each bracketed part with your own details.
Pixel art illustration of [character type], full body, [hairstyle and hair color], [clothing and accessories], [pose or action]. Centered on a plain [background color] background. Retro 2D RPG character aesthetic, clearly visible square pixel blocks, crisp stair-stepped outlines, flat color clusters, limited color palette, minimal shading, simple readable silhouette. No text.
On a first attempt, edit only the bracketed parts. Delete the brackets before generating, and leave the style wording unchanged. Each blank takes one input:
[character type]: the kind of character you want
[hairstyle and hair color]: the hairstyle and its color
[clothing and accessories]: the main outfit plus one or two accessories
[pose or action]: the pose or what the character is doing
[background color]: the color of a plain backdrop
Aim for a simple character. Avoid tiny lettering, busy patterns and long accessory lists.
For my pixel art character, I chose a young lighthouse keeper with short silver hair, a mustard-yellow raincoat, red rubber boots and a small black iron lantern. She stands upright with the lantern at her side, in front of deep navy. This is my completed prompt:
Pixel art illustration of a young lighthouse keeper, full body, short silver hair, mustard-yellow raincoat, red rubber boots, small black iron lantern, standing upright holding the lantern at her side. Centered on a plain deep navy background. Retro 2D RPG character aesthetic, clearly visible square pixel blocks, crisp stair-stepped outlines, flat color clusters, limited color palette, minimal shading, simple readable silhouette. No text.
I ran the prompt a single time. This is the output.
The result from this exact prompt
PixAI may add extra detail to your prompt during generation. Every prompt in this article is the exact text I typed. The Tsubaki.3 Prompt Guide has more wording ideas.
Step 3: Generate Your First Pixel-Art Character
Generating is the simple part. The checking is where you learn something. Look at my result above and answer five questions before changing anything:
Is the full character in frame? Yes. I can see her from hair to boots, with space around the figure.
Do the hair and outfit read correctly? Yes. The silver bob, mustard raincoat, red boots and black lantern are clear at a glance.
Do the edges look stepped? Mostly. The hair, coat outline and lantern all show clear stair-steps.
Is the shading kept simple? Only in part. The coat carries soft tonal bands and a glow by the lantern.
Does the character separate from the background? Yes. The silhouette contrasts with the deep navy.
So does this count as pixel art? It looks deliberately pixel-styled, though not purely. The face and legs use softer shading, which puts the result nearer to anime pixel art than to a strictly blocky pixel-art look. Here is a 2x crop of the lantern, hand and coat.
Detail at 2x: stepped edges, softer shading
The lantern outline and sleeve edge have clean steps. Inside the coat, shading turns softer and uses gradual tonal bands, not flat blocks. Next I test which prompt words push the look further.
Which Prompt Words Help Create the Pixel-Art Look?
If you are learning how to make pixel art with AI, the style words are the part to test. So I ran a small comparison with the same character, the same background, the same Tsubaki.3 settings and the same seed. I took the seed from my first image, 309840450399732, and entered it under Advanced settings. The style wording was the only change. The basic prompt removes the whole style sentence:
Pixel art illustration of a young lighthouse keeper, full body, short silver hair, mustard-yellow raincoat, red rubber boots, small black iron lantern, standing upright holding the lantern at her side. Centered on a plain deep navy background. No text.
Same seed: basic prompt left, full template right
The gap is real but small. On the right, the full template appears to have chunkier blocks in the hair and face, flatter shading and simpler features. The basic version shows finer hair strands, smaller steps and smoother gradients. Both look pixel-styled. This is one pair of results, so it does not show that the longer prompt always works better.
Here is what each style phrase requests:
Clearly visible square pixel blocks: a look built from visible blocks
Crisp stair-stepped outlines: edges with steps instead of smooth curves
Flat color clusters: areas of color grouped together
Limited color palette: a smaller set of colors
Minimal shading: less complex light and shadow
Simple readable silhouette: a readable overall shape
Each phrase describes the look you are after. They do not guarantee a uniform pixel grid or a fixed number of colors, and neither image here follows a strictly limited palette.
One caveat: PixAI rewrote both prompts, and its rewrite of the basic prompt added a few pixel terms on its own, such as square pixels and a limited palette. So this test shows what my typed wording changed. It does not show what happens with no style words at all.
How to Adjust a Result That Does Not Look Right
Step 3 exposed one limitation: the shading was simple only in part. When a pixel art AI generator returns something close, change one variable at a time. I appended one sentence to the end of my prompt:
"Larger visible pixel blocks, simpler shading, fewer fine details."
The seed and settings stayed the same. This is the full prompt:
Pixel art illustration of a young lighthouse keeper, full body, short silver hair, mustard-yellow raincoat, red rubber boots, small black iron lantern, standing upright holding the lantern at her side. Centered on a plain deep navy background. Retro 2D RPG character aesthetic, clearly visible square pixel blocks, crisp stair-stepped outlines, flat color clusters, limited color palette, minimal shading, simple readable silhouette. No text. Larger visible pixel blocks, simpler shading, fewer fine details.
Before (left) and after (right) the added wording
The adjustment helped, at a cost. The coat is now nearly flat, the glow patch is gone and the hair blocks are larger. The face lost detail, though. The eyes became flat dark bars, and the coat looks duller against the navy. This is one test with one seed, so another generation may give a different result. If the first version looks better to you, keep it.
For other problems, the rule holds: change one thing. A busy character may need a simpler outfit. A distracting background may need a plainer description.
Step 4: Make Your Own Pixel-Art Variation
Next, build your own version. I swapped the background and left the character alone. The character description and style wording from my first prompt are unchanged. I replaced the plain background sentence with a simple setting, a quiet village lane at night, and kept the seed. The full prompt:
Pixel art illustration of a young lighthouse keeper, full body, short silver hair, mustard-yellow raincoat, red rubber boots, small black iron lantern, standing upright holding the lantern at her side. Set in a quiet village lane at night, with a clear foreground character and an uncluttered background. Retro 2D RPG character aesthetic, clearly visible square pixel blocks, crisp stair-stepped outlines, flat color clusters, limited color palette, minimal shading, simple readable silhouette. No text.
Lantern light on a quiet village lane
This is a fresh text-based generation, not an edit of the first image, so the character differs. The silver hair, yellow raincoat, red boots and lantern show up because the prompt names them. This time the hair is softer, she is smiling, and the coat looks more olive in the night light. The pixel style holds. It is clearest in the rooftops and cobblestones, and the face and legs stay smoother, as before. The lane is busier than "uncluttered" implies, but the character still reads clearly. You can also go the other direction: keep the background and change the character details.
Save Your Pixel-Style Artwork
To save an image, click the download icon in its top-left corner. My downloads were PNG files at 1104 × 1824, matching the XL setting. They are unedited. The crop and the side-by-side figures here were cut or assembled from those files.
A file like this works for a character illustration, a profile image after cropping, a visual concept or a pixel-style scene to share.
One limit applies. An AI pixel art generator produces an illustration, not a game-ready asset. A downloaded file is not automatically a correctly sized sprite, a seamless tile, a transparent asset or an animation sheet. No file of mine has a transparent background. Any of those uses needs extra work.
Final Thoughts
The hard part was knowing what to type. A fill-in-the-blank template makes that step easier. The process is brief: pick Tsubaki.3, fill in the template, generate, adjust and customize. Keep the style wording that worked and swap in your own character details.
If you have a character in mind, give Tsubaki.3 on PixAI a try. My own run started with a lighthouse keeper and a single prompt.
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