Pixel art
The sprite studio, inside your design file.
A pixel canvas is a layer like any other: it sits on the same page as your vectors and type, and it exports with them. Double-click it — or hit Edit pixels in the inspector — and the whole editor becomes a sprite editor.
Making one
Description
An empty canvas. A pixel canvas is placed from the Shapes panel: a 32×32 grid of cells. With the pencil, a few strokes fill whole cells, the way pixel art is drawn.
The rectangle group in the toolbar holds Pixel canvas. Drag one out, or use the Assets panel for a 32×32 to start. Canvas in the inspector is the resolution in cells — change it any time.
Color modes
| Mode | Each cell is | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Indexed (palette) | An index into the palette | Classic sprite work, and recoloring a whole sprite by editing one swatch |
| RGBA | A full color | Anything that doesn't want a fixed palette |
| Grayscale | A single value | Masks, height maps |
Palettes
Load a preset — PICO-8, DB32, Endesga 32, Game Boy — or import your own from a
.gpl (GIMP) or .hex file. In indexed mode, editing a swatch recolors every pixel using it.
The tools
The toolbar swaps for the pixel set: Pencil B, Eraser E, Fill G, Line L,
Rectangle U, Ellipse Shift+U, Contour D, Marquee M, Lasso Q,
Magic wand W, Eyedropper I, Move selection V and Tile stamp T.
The options row underneath carries the settings that make pixel work bearable:
- Pixel-perfect removes the doubled corner pixels a freehand line leaves behind
- Simple ink vs dithered inks
- Symmetry — mirror what you draw across an axis
- Brush size and shape
Frames and animation
The timeline along the bottom is the sprite's frames. Add, duplicate and reorder them, set each one's duration in milliseconds, and hit play to watch it.
Onion skin ghosts the frames either side of the one you're on so you can see the motion you're drawing into. Like the reference image and the tiled preview, it's an editing aid and is never exported.
Layers stack inside the canvas — the row on the left of the timeline — so a character's outline, fill and highlights stay separable.
Tilemaps
Tiled preview repeats the canvas around itself, which is how you check a texture actually tiles. Convert turns the canvas into a tilemap at the tile size you give it, and the Tile stamp tool paints with those tiles.
Getting it out
Export gives you PNG at any scale, an animated GIF, or a sprite sheet with every frame laid out in a grid — ready to hand to a game engine.