How to become great at making cursors

This is a road-map for people, who want to learn how to make great mouse cursors. The skills and knowledge you gain in the process will help you become a better graphic designer overall, not just better cursor designer. It does not matter how old or skillful you are now - this guide can take you all the way from a newbie to a pro.

1. Look at some great cursors

Before you start designing your own cursors, you should spend some time looking at the best cursors other people have made so far.

2. Recognize a flawless cursor

A great cursor does not necessarily need to be flawless, but it helps. Making a flawless cursor is way easier than making a great one: you only need to avoid the most common mistakes.

Before you can a create great cursor, you must first learn what great means. But making a great cursor is a very complex task, let's try something easier. Our first goal is to make a flawless cursor. Flawless means having no obvious flaws. Being able to identify a flaw helps you avoid it in your own designs.

Once you are able to identify design flaws,

Before you can start designing your own cursors, learn t, but at the end, it also discusses some. there is always room for improvement Starting with mouse cursors and not onlyIt will help you develop skills useful not just for cursor designing, but also
Your first cursor

• hot spot
• 32x32 pixels
• Transparency

Animated cursor

• Sequence of frames
• Timing/units

Complete set

• Roles
• Consistency

Pixel art

• Pencil tool & Flood fill
• Artistic talent

Sprite conversion

• Copyright
• Resizing
• Adaptation

Technical prowess

• Line, curve, polygon
• Edge smoothing
• Shadows

Illustrator

• Use external vector editor

3D artist

• External 3D editor

Script master

• JavaScript
• Scripted tools
• Particle systems

Tips and tricks