1. Pixelight
2. Guides
3. Animate a sprite

Animate a pixel art sprite

An animation is a row of frames, each shown for its own time. Pixelight draws the frames before and after the one you work on faintly (onion skin), so each pose follows from the last.

Step by step

1. Draw the first pose. Start with the key pose of the move, for a walk the contact pose.
2. Add frames. Alt+Shift+N duplicates the frame, so you change only what moves. Alt+N adds an empty one.
3. Turn on onion skin. Press F3: the previous frame shows in red, the next in blue.
4. Set the timing. Type a duration for the frame in the timeline bar, or select Frame › Frame duration for several frames at once. 100 ms is ten frames a second.
5. Play it. Press Enter to play and stop; , and . step frame by frame. The preview panel can play it while you draw.
6. Tag the moves. A tag names a range of frames (walk, jump, idle) and its direction: forward, reverse or ping-pong. Games read tags from the exported JSON.
7. Reuse cels. Frames that share a picture (a still head, a background) can use linked cels: draw once, it changes everywhere.