How many frames should a walk cycle have?

For pixel art, 4, 6 or 8 frames covers most walk cycles — 4 reads snappy and retro, 8 looks smoother. Tsubu's timeline takes as many frames as the motion needs, and the AI can draft a 2-to-32-frame animation from an existing sprite; keep the frames that sell the movement and delete the rest.

What FPS should a pixel art animation run at?

Most pixel animation looks right at 8–12 FPS — slow enough to keep that deliberate, hand-placed feel. Set the frame rate anywhere from 1 to 30 FPS and preview the loop live; the value travels with the export, so the GIF plays at it and the sprite-sheet atlas writes each frame's duration in milliseconds to match.

16×16 or 32×32 — which sprite size should I use?

16×16 suits small characters, items and icons and forces clean, readable shapes; 32×32 leaves room for detail, armour or bigger enemies. Pick the grid when you create the sprite — 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256 square, or any size up to 256×256 — and note it's fixed for that asset, so choose before you commit to the art.

Pixel art for games

Tsubu is a browser pixel studio for making game assets that actually drop into your project — grid-true, transparent and editable down to the pixel. Draw a sprite by hand or let AI draft a first pass you clean up, animate it frame by frame, then export a sheet and JSON atlas your engine can slice. It's AI-assisted and human-refined, and it's free for early adopters for a limited time — sign in with Google.

Grid-true sprites, drawn or AI-drafted

Work on a real pixel canvas — from 16×16 up to 256×256 — with a keyboard-first toolset: pencil, eraser, fill, eyedropper, select & move and a proper palette workflow, over a checkerboard that shows exactly which pixels stay transparent. Want a head start? Type a prompt and the AI drafts a grid-true, limited-palette sprite instead of the blurry, off-grid image generic tools hand back — then you fix a stray pixel, swap a colour and make it yours. It drafts; you finish.

Animate it, frame by frame

Build a walk cycle, an idle bob or an attack on the timeline — a 4-, 6- or 8-frame loop is usually plenty — and preview it at a pixel-friendly 8–12 FPS. Every frame stays plain, editable pixels you can retouch, duplicate or reorder; nothing is baked into a locked clip. Already have a character? Hand the AI an existing sprite and it drafts the animation frames for you to refine.

Export a sprite sheet with a JSON atlas

Pack the animation into a single PNG plus a JSON atlas in the familiar Aseprite / TexturePacker array shape — per-frame rects, durations in milliseconds and a whole-animation frame tag — zipped together so your pipeline reads it without custom glue. Set the columns and padding, and a clean nearest-neighbor upscale at 1×, 2×, 4× or 8×. A single sprite exports the same way as a transparent PNG; an animation can also go out as a looping GIF.

Imports into Unity, Godot, Phaser & Pixi

The same sheet and atlas drop into the engines devs actually ship on. In Unity, slice the PNG in the Sprite Editor or read the atlas rects; in Phaser and Pixi, load the sheet with its JSON as a texture atlas; in Godot, feed the frames into an AnimatedSprite2D. One setting matters in every engine: switch the texture filter to nearest / point so your pixels stay crisp instead of blurred by the default bilinear filtering, and keep the transparent background intact. Godot's import path goes deeper than a shared overview can — enough for a guide of its own.

One browser tab, saved to your library

There's nothing to install and nothing to lose: sign in with Google and every project and sprite saves to your private cloud library, reachable from any machine. Start a character on the studio desktop, fix a pixel from a laptop on the couch, and export the sheet when it's ready for your build.

Free while it's in early access

The whole studio — editor, timeline, AI drafts and export — is free for early adopters right now, with AI usage sponsored by the platform so there's no per-generation credit meter. It's a limited-time launch offer, not free forever, and there's no credit card: just a Google sign-in. Try it on this weekend's game jam.

Common questions about game sprites

How many frames should a walk cycle have?: For pixel art, 4, 6 or 8 frames covers most walk cycles — 4 reads snappy and retro, 8 looks smoother. Tsubu's timeline takes as many frames as the motion needs, and the AI can draft a 2-to-32-frame animation from an existing sprite; keep the frames that sell the movement and delete the rest.
What FPS should a pixel art animation run at?: Most pixel animation looks right at 8–12 FPS — slow enough to keep that deliberate, hand-placed feel. Set the frame rate anywhere from 1 to 30 FPS and preview the loop live; the value travels with the export, so the GIF plays at it and the sprite-sheet atlas writes each frame's duration in milliseconds to match.
16×16 or 32×32 — which sprite size should I use?: 16×16 suits small characters, items and icons and forces clean, readable shapes; 32×32 leaves room for detail, armour or bigger enemies. Pick the grid when you create the sprite — 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256 square, or any size up to 256×256 — and note it's fixed for that asset, so choose before you commit to the art.

Try it now — free for early adopters

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