# Tips and tutorials for emoticons?



## Valery91Thunder (Oct 1, 2012)

Hello!
First time ever writing in this part of the forum, hope the question's fine to be posted here!
Anyway, I've recently been busy with some friends of mine in restyling a furry forum by adding a new layout to it, more functions, new icons and so on. 
We decided to come up with new emoticons as well to substitute the old ones (which look pretty much like "", "", and so on, same size).

These new emoticons should look like the heads of our forum's mascots, which are an otter, a boar, and a hoopoe. The otter should be relatively simple to "convert" in emoticon, while the boar and hoopoe... well I think they'd need more practice xD But we're still looking forward to draw them all.
Our problem is, none of us is actually used to draw on such little canvases (these emoticons shouldn't be bigger than 20pixels) and we don't really know how to start, so we're looking for various tutorials, references, resources, and tips from who's a little more expert than us. 
Do you have any useful stuff we should know/check out to realize something like that? On a related note, is there a program which is particularly good to create emoticons, or should we use good ol' Photoshop?

Thanks in advance for your help! ^^


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## Arshes Nei (Oct 1, 2012)

Learn pixel art.


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## Ansitru (Oct 1, 2012)

I can recommend Graphicsgale for pixeling (the free version). Hell, even MS Paint is awesome for pixeling because of its 1p g-hard-edge brush.


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