This tutorial is for the little elves above.

My canvas with the pixel outlines. You may download it here.

My color chart. Right click on it and save to your computer.

First, a few notes.....

My image is just a guide. Feel free to change the colors, or add other effects to your liking. I put everything on its own layer (and name each one). That way you can easily go back and change colors later and correct any mistakes you've made. It makes a lot of layers, but it also keeps things organized and will save you a lot of heartache, especially with an image that has as many pixels as this one.

It makes it easier if you enlarge your graphic (use your magnifier tool) so you can see the pixels clearly. Feel free to save my images in this tut too, and enlarge them as necessary to see.

The basic procedure for each piece will be the same. You'll add a new layer. Choose your paintbrush tool and set the size to 1 and paint the outline of the piece and then paint the inside, along with any shading. (Hint: to do the inside coloring, make the outline layer active, choose your magic wand and click inside the section you want to color - then apply the color on your new layer).

Step 1. Open up the pixel outline you downloaded. There are three layers - a background and two outline layers. Make the elf1 outline layer visible and turn the other elf outline layer off for the moment.

Open up the color chart you saved. Copy and paste it as a new layer onto your image. Move it to the top, out of the way. When you need a color, just click on it with your dropper tool.

In the following steps, I'll show you the colors I used for each section of the graphic - feel free to change these as you wish.

Step 2. Elf 1

Shirt/pants outline-1, inside-2,3, collar/sleeve-white Hand/face outline-4, face inside-5, eyes-black, nose-4 Hat outline-1, inside-3, fur-white, top furball outline-6, inside-white Shoes-7

Turn off the visibility on all layers except for the elf1 bits. Merge visible layers. Turn the merged elf 1 layer off. Turn on the background, color chart, and the elf 2 outline layers.

Step 3. Elf 2.

Shirt/pants outline-7, inside-8,9 Hand-4 Hat outline-1, inside-2, 3, top furball outline-6, inside-white Shoes-1

Turn off all layers except the elf2 layers. Merge visible layers.

Step 4. Save each of your elves as transparent PSP files. Make as many variations of colors for your elves as you wish, saving each as a PSP file. Get creative! Now complete the other tuts in this series. You'll find them all here.

Enjoy the series!