Learn the basics of pixel art with some good tutorials. This is my favorite: http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ http://www.petesqbsite.

Learn the basics of pixel art with some good tutorials. This is my favorite: http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ Practice a lot. Get feedback from others in the community (e.g. http://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt http://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt ) Have a consistent style and constrain yourself. The faces in Papers, Please are drawn with only 3 colors! It's a lot easier to get something decent looking when you limit your options. You could always hire an artist of course, but that doesn't answer your question and it doesn't allow you to be that lone developer who has fine grained control over everything. I'm no artist and I've been able to make at least workable graphics in a short time period: http://humbit.com/gkh/ http://humbit.com/gkh/