Learner Reviews & Feedback for Pixel Art for Video Games by Michigan State University

Aside from focusing more on which buttons to push and settings to change in Photoshop or Unity (which are admittedly useful tidbits) the course doesn't teach much in terms of skills or theory. I had to learn the skills on my own. Mostly what I got was a list of assignments so I didn't have to wonder what I should work on each day. @Pixel_Dailies on Twitter can do that too.

As soon as I watched the second video I realized that this course was just cobbled together from pre-existing courses and that the parts were not originally meant to go together. If the only result was comments like "last time you learned [thing they haven't coverered]" it'd be awkward, but fine. But then they have conflicting assignment details in the videos vs the written course material and that confusion can lead to a lot of wasted time or failing to complete an assignment properly.

Annoying as that is, it is not the worst part of this course. That would be the pacing. Week one: draw a single 32x32 sprite. Week two: draw at least 9 of those plus a huge background painting, which is hard enough, but then make sure it tiles too! Week 3: back to a single sprite, with a reasonable challenge increase from week 1. Week 4 do a bunch of animations with minimal animation instruction. I hope you've animated before! Week 5: a bunch more animation and new character designs and polish up all the older stuff you did and AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!

I realize it was a free MOOC, so I shouldn't expect too much, but you can do better for free. Google: Pixel Art Academy, Pedro Medeiros, Achebit, Heartbeast for a good start. Happy Pixeling!

I'm not normally a harsh person. Even when I'm saying something negative I try very hard to keep my emotions in check and see the other side as someone close to me; as someone needing my help to know what they're doing wrong so that they have the tools they need to improve. I try to be as kind as possible. However, this time I just can't give a review like that. I can find no reason, even through a mistake, that someone with a real desire to teach could make such a course.

I have no idea who this course is meant to be helpful to. The more difficult assignments would only be able to be completed by someone with a lot of experience, but the videos were clearly supposed to be for beginners. Saying that, however, implies that the videos were good for beginners, but sadly this isn't true in the slightest. They often presented material that was incomplete and often highly misleading to the point of being more damaging to a beginner's ability than an outright lie. They spent too much time on things that weren't very relevant, and completely glossed over or skipped things that were very important. It's such a bad course that it's making me angry for the sake of all the others who are duped into thinking they're going to get something useful out of this. Overall my impression of their abilities is passable in artist skills, beginners at pixel artist skills, and con artists as teachers. I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't artists at all, and are actually programmers who wish they could be teaching Unity. Either they're trying the "fake it till you make it" method of teaching and can't do better, or they felt forced to do this and phoned it in. It's disgraceful. The University of Michigan should think more carefully about the way they're presenting themselves as a school, and not just give us the dregs that they know they shouldn't charge money for.

If anyone actually wants to learn Pixel Art, I suggest going to Pixel Joint or Lowspec and getting information from real tutorials, real experts, and real feedback. Plus, it'll be completely free and without the pressure of a time limit. This course, however, is a waste of time.

This is amazing, helps a lot...especially when you are a programmer and you need some art support... Thanks Coursera, thanks Michigan University Staff...

game dev Michigan Spartens gone n broke the internet!

as a person with little experience in this field, i thought it's not for complete begginers .. this course assumes that you know how to draw pixel art and only wants to teach you how to do it technically and prepare it for importing into unity, which is ok but that's not what i expected at all .. more artistic tips would have been very helpful.. the only good one i remember is "do not draw stuff in angles because it's tricky" .. and NOW TO THE PART I HATE THE MOST : anyone .. litterally anyone who happened to sign up for the course can demolish your motivation by giving false reviews .. how is it okay to let other students decide if a student's doing okay or not ????? i was aiming for 100% grade but some troller came by in the last assignement and said awful stuff and marked my work with zeros all over .. that is complete nonsense .. isn't there an instructor who could actually give real advice ? or someone proffessional to judge your work and give you tips to improve ?? i hated it .

The course instructors pose you a real problem that can be difficult to solve. That is why you get a lot of experience and learn a lot at once, as was the case with me, since I was new to the topic. I liked that there is no water in the course and no one chews everything for you twice, but on the contrary, they try to quickly show that you learn to look for information yourself. This course was a real challenge for me!

I am glad that I took this course, thanks to the teachers Andrew Dennis and Richardo Guimaraes for the excellent lessons, I really liked the course, I worked with pixel art before, and this is probably why it was easy for me, but I also gained some knowledge in it, thanks for the course guys.

very precise and stractural, my only complaint is with unity fast paced tutorial , i could bearly understand the teacher when he moved and talked fast when introduced new material to work with. other than that, i highly recommend to try this program.

Es un curso increíble muy completo te da todas las herramientas y bases que necesitas para el maravilloso mundo del Pixel Art. Recomendadisimo me Encanto, Muchas gracias por este curso tan Espectacular.

I liked it waaaaay too much! Sometimes I found it hard to create the things you have to create, because they are difficult, but with effort and paying loads of attention you get a greaat result :)

I really loved this course, I learned how to create pixel art (assets = characters, tiles and backgrounds), how to sketch a character before working on it and create animation.

If you're a beginner trying out pixel art for games for the first time, this would be a great place to start. It will help you get started and would help you in the long run.

Very useful for beginners; I really enjoyed doing projects and created my very first assets that look even better than in some of the pixel art games I've seen before.

This was one of the most helpful courses I've ever done about game development or design. It is easy to follow and understand and it is also very rewarding.

Amazing course .. I learnt a lot of new techniques either in photoshop or unity

Plus the design and animation .. it was very helpful and easy

This course provides all the information needed to design a 2d game in unity. It explains it in details and the videos aren't that long.

This is a very nice course, I was not expecting that Coursera would has a Pixel Art course and I am very happy to have completed it :)

Lectures and pipeline of the course is very well constructed in my opinion. There are a lot to learn in this course.

A great course to learn how to make pixel art! I learned a lot and I found it highly helpful!

Very interesting and useful course. I recommend this for everyone you don't waste time.

Honestly a very fun and helpful course. Was able to learn a lot about pixel art.

Muy lindo y divertido curso para aprender habilidades de diseño en gimp y unity

I love this course, I learn a lot of desing of word an characters

Excelente curso, muy bueno para guías básicas de dibujo pixel.