Hi, I'm Roman

Roman Gurbanov, pixel artist and game art instructor

I'm a pixel artist and game art instructor. I've been creating and teaching game art for years, and I wrote every lesson, worksheet and piece of art on this site.

My course Pixel Art Mastery Course: Beginner To Pixel Art Professional has been on Udemy since 2023. Across my courses and platforms I've guided over 9,000 students, and many of them have launched careers and indie game studios.

How I teach

When I started, I made the classic mistakes. I used 1000 pixel canvases and couldn't understand why my work didn't look like pixel art. That's where my planning method, SPECC, comes from: size, perspective, color and light, composition, decided before the first pixel.

I teach light first. Once you know where the light comes from and what the shape is, the shading almost decides itself, so I explain every tone from that. And I work in the same steps every time: shape, outline, color, shading, lighting, details. You'll see the same order in every lesson here, from an apple to a whole isometric building.

I answer student questions myself, on Udemy and in our Discord, and I look at the work people share. Most of the free lessons on this site came from those questions: what doubles are, how to pick colors, how to shade a sphere.

Some of my work

Isometric pixel art building with balconies, air conditioners and a blinking sign on the roof
Isometric building
Top-down RPG mockup: a pixel art school with desks, an arcade machine and a sage in front
RPG mockup
First-person game mockup: a dark room with shelves, a computer and a hand holding a floppy disk
First-person mockup
Platformer mockup: a night city by the river with mountains and skyscrapers
Platformer mockup

Where to find me

The school's channels, with timelapses and tips:

See the full course