Pixel Art Editor

How to use this tool

1. Choose a grid size (8×8, 16×16, or 32×32).
2. Pick a color and use the draw, erase, or fill tools.
3. Click Export PNG to save your artwork.

Getting started

Choose from the preset palette or select a custom color, then use Draw to click or drag on the canvas. The grid size buttons offer 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32 canvases; Fill colors a connected region, and Erase makes pixels transparent.

Tools

• Draw: paint individual pixels with the selected color.
• Fill (Bucket): flood-fills a contiguous region of the same color.
• Eraser: removes color from pixels (sets to transparent).
• Palette and custom color: choose from 16 preset swatches or set a color with the custom color input.

About pixel art

Pixel art is a form of digital art created at the individual-pixel level, typically at low resolutions. This editor supports 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32 grids. Pixel art originated in early video game graphics in the late 1970s and 1980s, when hardware constraints limited screen resolution and color depth. Despite modern hardware eliminating those constraints, pixel art thrives as an artistic style in indie games, icons, and digital illustration.

Export tips

Export as PNG to preserve transparency and lossless quality. When scaling up pixel art for display, use nearest-neighbor interpolation (not bilinear or bicubic) to keep crisp pixel edges. In CSS: image-rendering: pixelated; achieves this in modern browsers.

Color palette design

Professional pixel artists typically work with a limited, curated palette of 8–32 colors. Constraints force cohesion and make the artwork feel intentional rather than noisy. Popular community palettes include:

• Pico-8: 16-color palette used in the Pico-8 fantasy console
• DB16 / DB32: DawnBringer's palettes designed for natural-looking pixel art
• Famicube: 64-color palette designed to evoke NES-era aesthetics
• Game Boy (DMG): 4-color monochrome green palette

Pixel art animation basics

Classic pixel art animation in games ran at 8–15 frames per second, not the 24–60fps of modern video. This lower frame rate, combined with hold frames (repeating a key pose for 2–4 frames) gives pixel animation its characteristic snappy feel. When creating sprite animations:

• Draw on a consistent canvas size (e.g., 16×16 or 32×32 per frame)
• Use an onion-skin view to see adjacent frames when drawing in-betweens
• Prioritize silhouette clarity - the outline should read clearly at small sizes