Minecraft skin hair bases

Why hair is hard at 8×8

The head measures eight pixels on every edge, so a whole hairstyle has to be told in six small squares. Most first attempts paint the front and stop, which leaves a bald top and a flat back in third-person view. Every base on this page covers all six faces: the fringe on the front, the sides down to where the style ends, the back, and the top, where the parting or crown sits.

The second trick is the hat layer. It sits half a pixel outside the head on every side, so hair painted there stands proud of the scalp. Eight of these nine styles use it for volume, from about 180 pixels on the swept quiff to the full 270-pixel shell on the big curls. The short crop is the exception: it is entirely on the base layer, which makes it the easiest one to restyle.

How to make one of these your own

Recolouring is the quickest change. Open a base in the editor, pick the Fill tool and fill each hair tone in turn with your new colour, going from the darkest to the lightest. The strand pattern and the light direction stay in place, so dyed hair still looks shaded.

To change the length, work on the overlay. Long styles continue down the back of the body on the jacket layer, so erasing those rows from the bottom up shortens the hair without touching the head. To lengthen a short style, do the opposite: paint the back of the head down to row seven, then carry a few columns onto the body back on the overlay.

Finally, check the hairline from every side in the 3D view. If the hair and skin merge, darken the bottom row of hair by one step; if the face looks crowded, lift the fringe by a row.