Read on to find out how to make your own sprites and where to find resources for making your own pixel art! Note : we have collected more free resources for game developers at the end of this site. Make sure to check these out as well! Pixel art is a digital art form where color is applied to individual pixels to create an image.

The term Pixel Art was first published in , although the concept had existed for at least 10 years before hand. JPEG format is not recommended as it uses lossy compression that leaves artifacts in your images.

Pixel art can be categorized into two main forms, isometric and non-isometric. Isometric pixel art has a 3-dimensional appearance even though the image is still a 2D shape.

Sprites are animations such as characters or objects that can be used in your mobile game. They can be made from any imaginable image source and animated in a number of ways. If you had to create every scene of your game as one image, it would make things a lot harder to edit later on. With sprites, you can add and remove visual elements as you please without having to edit any of the other visual components of your scene.

This makes it easier to design complex game scenes and introduce new characters and objects for your players to interact with. Sprites also offer a performance enhancement as it places less pressure on your game to repeatedly call multiple images to appear on screen. Instead, a sprite sheet is called and then a different part of it is displayed as desired.

To make it easier for you to experiment with sprite creation, you can use one of the pixel editor tools listed below. PiskelApp is a free online pixel editor with an emphasis on sprite creation.

It allows you to save your pixel art online and also has an import function so you can use it to edit your existing pixel art. PiskelApp has a simple user interface and is a great choice if you want to dive right into creating your sprite sheet. Pixie is another fully functional online pixel editor. The white canvas is the standard starting point for this tool and encourages free hand drawing rather than rigid grid designs.

Pixlr is a slightly more advanced pixel editor in comparison to the previous editors with a large range of drawing tools. If you want to avoid the bit style that PiskelApp encourages, check out this tool instead. The main difference is that GIMP is available for free downloads. Similar to Photoshop, it comes with a lot of tools, resources, and features to create digital art including pixel designs. However, it includes an animation player and a timeline which are pretty much like those of Photoshop.

Since the program is popular to many digital artists out there, it receives a lot of support from creators as well as experienced users who provide video tutorials on YouTube. Another important aspect to consider is that it saves money for those on a restricted budget who are searching for a complete package.

The Pixie Engine Editor is available for free download online. It provides all fundamental tools required for creating pixel art. It is true that many professional digital artists may not find it to be completely satisfactory when it comes to doing detailed work because of its lack of resources.

However, it is well-suited for beginners who are looking forward to learning pixel art without having to pay any fees. Although you can only create static animations, there are other benefits that come with this program such as a huge collection of colors and it also allows you to save an image after designing.

If you want to learn how to make proper use of this software, they have a separate section on their site in which you can go through the masterpieces of other experienced artists. Even the source code comes at no cost and is available on GitHub which you can make use of it as a base to create pixel art. PikoPixel is a program that you can work effortlessly on as it provides many useful tools and features such as layering, unlimited undos, a customizable canvas, and hotkey-activated panels that pop up.

When you think about PikoPixel, think about a fair substitute of pixel editors that run only on Windows. It works wonderfully with both Linux and Mac. Starters will find it easy to use because of its basic features even if it lacks modern ones.

But we can say that given to the advanced artist, PikoPixel can provide some of the best quality pixel art. The software is very helpful for game developers who want to create pixel art and full fledged tile-based games.

It has several necessary features such as a bitmap editor which can be used to make tiles and a level editor to design them. One of the good benefits we get from using Tile Studio is that it is workable with almost any type of programming language. Hence, you have full control over the outcome of the design by using your own code. Because of this, there are many game studios and designers who turn to Tile Studio for their projects. It is available free of cost for Windows. There are several things you can do with Tile Studio such as importing tiles from other programs and use them for your design.

You can also use special effects and numerous drawing tools with the help of the level editor. Even though Tile Studio does not have as many features as expensive editors do, it still makes creating pixel art pretty easy even for beginners. Tile Studio comes with both easy and advanced tools. However, they also provide detailed demonstrations and tutorials to help speed up the learning process.

The Lospec Pixel Editor is a new online graphics editor which is meant to make the work easier for its users. We can say that this program is simple enough for beginners to use and at the same time, will still catch the interest of professionals.

Keeping in mind that the application is relatively new, there are still many features left to be developed. But the good thing is that it already appears promising with its exceptional interface as well as being easily accessible online.

GrafX2 is an application for editing bitmap images. It gained inspiration from Amiga Deluxe Paint. The software is loved by many of its users because it has a great toolset that includes a pixel palette and also a very systematic interface. It provides an option that allows you to repeat tiling as you wish. Besides, the program has been around for more than 20 years which makes it very popular in the world of pixel art.

GrafX2 has most of the desirable features in designing pixel art. Some of which are special effects and frames. If you are looking for a free and simple drawing app online, check out Pixilart, a digital editor founded in It does not offer much but it provides cool features for artists who are learning the basic steps of drawing digital animations.

Another handy feature is that Pixlr pixel art program automatically saves your progress in case of internet connection drops. Using the available tools, you can cope with most design tasks. Here you can find all sorts of brushes, customizable color palettes, pencils, eraser tool, filters, ink instruments, and more. In addition to the regular toolset, the software offers Ps-like instruments — Magic Wand, layers, and Lasso.

Besides, you can replace colors without free of charge. Verdict: Choosing Pyxel Edit, you get not only a powerful program for producing awesome pixel art works, but also the one suitable to make a photo mosaic and edit it if needed. The software is supplied with tools aimed at creating static pixel art and animated sprites. You can upload ready-to-use tilesets and mockups, and the software will apply them automatically.

What sets this program apart from similar software is the possibility to work with tile references. In other words, you can edit links without replacing the entire tile. Moreover, a built-in tile editor allows you to create tilesets for your environment and levels, and then adjust them in accordance with iterating level design. Verdict: GraphicsGale pixel art software is packed with top-tier drawing and animation tools that allow fulfilling the most complicated tasks with ease.

Thanks to the adjustable color palettes, you can get an ideal hue for your project and preview the result in real time. Artists who like creating sketches on paper and then turn them into a digital form can make good use of the software. However, mind that the program works only on Windows computers and the interface may seem really dated. Verdict: Pixel art Aseprite program is a frequent choice of novice users, who want to create catchy animations without tackling with numerous settings.

There is a traditional set of instruments that you can use to create sprites and animations. The purpose-built pixel mode adds smoothness and accuracy to the process of drawing shapes and lines. The program is crammed with different features needed to master the art of creating pixelated images — onion skinning option, the possibility to see all the frames of animation, export the entire sprite sheet, save projects as GIFs and more.

Verdict: Not only is this feature-rich photo mosaic software , but also a wonderful program for sprite animating and tileset editing. It has advanced layer effects, color settings, instruments to draw tiles, automatic dithering and more. Thus, you can test the functionality for free and then get more profound features on a paid basis.

Though the program is designed for Windows devices, you can run it on macOS via Wine simulator. Verdict: The program is an ideal choice for an average user as it has all the necessary basic tools for creating static pixel images.