5 Unique Pixel Art Tools (ALL FOR FREE) for game developers
In the realm of indie game development, a timeless and captivating art style takes center stage — pixel art. With its retro charm and nostalgia-inducing appeal, pixel art has become an integral part of the indie game developer’s toolkit.
The following tools are all free software from itch.io, some of which you can use in the browser, such as the first tool on the list.
2BitCharactersGenerator
2BitCharactersGenerator is a free web-based character creator. It has a range of styles for individual parts of a 16x16 character, perfect for a top-down Game Boy style game.
The best part is that the user interface is incredibly simple to use, pretty much like a character creator in modern video games.
In fact, if you have used the GB Studio, this tool actually exports to this software, including animations for walking in four directions.
The random feature of this software also adds a quick way to generate many NPCs if you need a game that requires a lot of variety.
Pixelator
Pixelating images, or downscaling, is usually not the best way to get a good sprite for your game. It might be a good starting point, but ultimately, it is not the best route.
Pixelator aims to solve this problem by converting the picture into a palette and then attempts to downscale it to keep as much detail as possible in less pixels, and it does a fine job at it.
If the results are not to your liking, at least you can use it as a starting point, and you even have a color palette to work with with the end result.
Procedural Tileset Generator
Speaking of starting points, this is one of my favorite tools. Procedural Tileset Generator is a web-based procedural tile generator. Here is a quick tutorial to how to use it.
There will be many tiles on the screen, and if they’re blurry don’t worry, that’s the browser trying to make the pixel art look smooth but it ends up looking blurry.
If you left click on any of them, all of the tiles will turn into variations of that tile you just clicked on. This is already pretty cool. If you then right click on any tile, it will delete all the tiles and generate completely new random ones.
Once you have tiles you want to start using in your game, middle mouse click to save a tile to your tile set, you will then see your saved tiles at the bottom right (and to delete tiles from the tile set, middle mouse click them in the tile set).
Finally, you can save your tile set here.
This is above your tile set. Also I suggest following the creator of these tools.
There are a few other features included in this software, and you can find them and what keys you need to press to use them here, but I just wanted to get you started with the basics.
Once you have a tile set, you can bring it to your image editor of choice to tweak the quirks out, and get a solid tile set for your game.
If you don’t have an image editor of choice, then I’d usually suggest trying Aseprite because of its pixel art focus, but it costs $19.99. Well, in that case…
Pixelorama
Pixelorama is a user-friendly pixel art software designed for indie game developers. Follow these steps to create stunning pixel art:
Download and Install Pixelorama: Get the software from the official website and install it on your computer. Familiarize yourself with the interface. Explore the Canvas, Color Palette, Tools, Layers, and optional Animation Timeline.
Start a new project, set canvas size, background color, and pixel grid size.
Choose colors from the palette, select drawing tools, and begin drawing on the canvas. Use the grid for precision. Add new layers to work on elements separately, enabling easier editing and adjustments.
Save and Export: Save your project in “.pxo” format to preserve layers and settings. Export your final artwork as an image in your preferred format (PNG, GIF, etc.).
Node-based software are incredibly powerful, and recently some additions have been very fun.
I want to suggest the software Pixel Composer ($5.00), which is a very robust node-based tool to create all sorts of pixel art magic. However, to keep the list completely free, I am going to suggest another very powerful software.
Tilemancer
Tilemancer is another node-based software with very clear UI, and fun features to play with.
Just messing around with it you can get crazy results. However, I would only suggest getting into it if you already are familiar with node-based software.
Take a moment to explore Tilemancer’s interface, which includes various panels and settings. Start adding some nodes (I recommend Cells), and mix them together using Blends, Absolutes, etc. You’d be surprised how far experimenting this way can get you.
Tilemancer is unfortunately now been deprecated (means it won’t get updates), and it lacks some quality of life features, but at least it is a quick way to make certain types of tiles, such as brick tiles, and on top of that make normal maps for that 3D pixel art aesthetic.
