Paint-By-Numbers Pixel Art

An extra credit assignment worth 10-30 points

For this project, I'd like for you to be familiar with Google Sheets, though it's not exactly a necessity. 

We're going to create pixel art in Google Sheets using conditional validation! If you don't know what pixel art is, it's art made one dot at a time. You might think of it as the art used in older video games. If you need an example, simply do a Google Image Search for "pixel art," or think about 8- or 16-bit Mario or Zelda games.

We're going to consider each cell in Google Sheets one pixel; however, we must first make sure that each cell is a square shape, just like a pixel. To do this, click the "awesome button" in the top-left corner of the Sheet.

Once you click on it, you can adjust the size of all boxes by clicking on the little line in between columns A & B. This should adjust all the column sizes. Adjust the columns until they are roughly square-sized. Afterwards, you can add or subtract cells by right-clicking on any column or row if you find you don't have enough.

Then, find a piece of pixel art online that you want to replicate. If it's simple, that's okay! Sometimes, simpler is better. You can find this by doing a Google Image Search for "pixel art _____," where the blank is the name of your character.

After that, you'll need to go dot by dot and assign each color on the pixel art a number. For example, on mine, black = 1, red = 2, etc.

So, in the end, I took this image (which someone was kind enough to add a grid to!):

And changed it into this on Google Sheets:

(As you can see, I added in a handy key for myself in the upper-right hand corner so I didn't forget which number corresponded to which color!)

After that, you get to the exciting part: conditional formatting! Right-click your "awesome button" and press "conditional formatting." This will open up a side panel to define the rules for formatting. Add a new rule that says if the value in the cell is a 1 ("is equal to" is a good rule for this!), that it would have a particular fill/text color. Make sure that you have the text color be exactly the same as the fill color. This will make the number disappear.

In the end, after you've created those rules, you should have a fully-colored picture! Here's my final result:

Awesome! Now you're artin'!

In the end, this assignment will be worth a value of points decided on by Mr. Alexander. This will be decided by size of source image, number of colors in source image, and difficulty of image transfer. If in doubt, check with Mr. A before you start the project. Generally:

0-10 points: 8-Bit (NES/Gameboy Color/etc) sprite. Simple and clean!

10-20 points: Unshaded sprite from a later era, more complicated, more colors

20-30 points: Complicated sprite with shading, etc. Many colors.

Here are two examples of 30-point projects!

Can I do this extra credit from home?: TOTALLY YES