Workflow guides, sprite and animation tips, and news from the Tsubu studio — written for indie game developers.
Make a Defold sprite sheet in a browser tab, then set it up the way the manuals describe: tile source vs atlas, Tile Width and Height, a flipbook animation numbered from tile 1, Loop Forward at 12 fps, a sprite component and nearest filtering in game.project.
A hands-on pixel art shading tutorial: commit to one light source, place form and cast shadows with a hue-shifted ramp, avoid pillow shading and banding, use dithering only where it helps — then shade a sphere in your browser and judge it at 1×.
A hands-on guide to pixel art color palettes: how many colors a sprite needs at 16×16 or 32×32, light-to-dark ramps, hue shifting, value contrast and community palettes — then cut a 16-color palette down to five and test it on a real sprite in your browser.
Make a PixiJS sprite sheet and its JSON atlas in a browser tab, then load it with Assets.load in Pixi v8: how array-format frames become sheet.textures, why sheet.animations can come back empty, building an AnimatedSprite at the right speed, and keeping pixel art crisp.
Make a GameMaker sprite sheet in a browser tab, then import it cleanly: the _strip4 filename shortcut, Import Strip Image with Number of Frames, Frames per Row and frame size, the origin, frames per second vs frames per game frame, and switching off pixel interpolation.
Make a Phaser sprite sheet from scratch in a browser tab, then load it properly — this.load.spritesheet with frameWidth/frameHeight, anims.create with generateFrameNumbers, sprite.play, the JSON atlas path for packed sheets, and the pixel-art settings that differ between Phaser 3 and 4.
A fair, source-checked comparison of free pixel-art software for people who make game sprites — Piskel, Pixelorama, LibreSprite, PixiEditor, GraphicsGale and Tsubu: browser or install, animation timelines, export formats and what your game engine actually receives. Every competitor fact read off that tool's own site, docs or repository on 2 September 2026.
Make a Unity sprite sheet from scratch in a browser tab, then import it properly — Texture Type Sprite (2D and UI), Sprite Mode Multiple, a 32×32 grid slice, Point (no filter), Compression None and a Pixels Per Unit that matches your art.
A hands-on guide to making pixel art a game can actually use: pick a canvas size, hold a small palette, get the silhouette right — then refine a sprite on a real pixel grid in your browser and export it as a transparent PNG.
A hands-on guide to animating pixel art: frames, frame counts and FPS explained, then build a looping four-frame walk cycle in your browser and export it.
A hands-on guide to making a sprite sheet in your browser — draw or generate your frames, animate them on a timeline, and export a packed PNG plus a JSON atlas that drops straight into Unity, Godot, Phaser or Pixi.
Tsubu is a free, browser-based pixel art studio built for indie game developers — draw and animate sprites, generate them with AI, and export a game-ready sprite sheet that drops straight into Unity, Godot, Phaser or Pixi.
