i have been wanting to get into pixel art more and more and wanted to start with 16x16 art

i was struggling with animations as the movement up in a run would cut off 16x16

i went to go check some other art and found this

https://superdark.itch.io/16x16-free-npc-pack

it says 16x16 but when i count the pixels its higher on some .. the leaves me to ask

can 16x16 be bigger? and if so when does it go up to 18x18 or whatever next size is

AND

is there a good video that explains character sizes etc and starting out?

can 16x16 be bigger?

That depends entirely on what “16x16” is actually counting. My guess is that in this case they’re using that size for their tile grid and designing some characters to be bigger than that. It’s just badly explained on that package.

#x# should always correspond to the size of what you’re measuring, whether that’s the tiles, the characters, everything, etc. It’s up to you to decide what to measure though, so anything else can be whatever size you want as long as it makes sense.

I don’t know of any videos explaining character size and resolution options myself, so the rule of thumb I’d give you is to look to old game console sprite and tile limits for inspiration. That (along with computers liking powers of 2) is where a lot of classic pixel art metrics came from.

If the letter "x" is one 16x16 tile, it means it has 16 pixels from the left to right, and 16 pixels from the top to bottom. This is one 16x16 tile.

With that said you can combine multiple 16x16 tiles to make a large tile, often called a metatile/metasprite. This could look something like the following "xx" (32x16) tile. You can comebine them to make other sizes as well. 16x32, 32x32, etc.

I'm guessing the pack you linked is talking about 16x16 tile sizes, and just considers anything large to be a metatile.

Hope this helps.