Tips, tutorials, and the occasional rant about pixel art.
June 14, 2026
A practical guide to presenting your pixel art so people stop scrolling: framing, animation, posting cadence, and where to share sprite sheets that other developers will actually find.
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June 13, 2026
Tutorials teach technique. Real sprite sheets teach decisions. Here is how to read finished sheets to learn frame counts, layout, resolution, and animation timing the fast way.
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June 12, 2026
Dithering fakes extra colors and smooth gradients with a limited palette. Here is how the main patterns work, where they help, and the common mistakes that make pixel art look muddy.
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June 11, 2026
Real-time lighting is expensive and often wrong for pixel art. Here is how to fake convincing light and shadow with palettes, baked shading, normal maps, and a few cheap tricks.
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June 10, 2026
The best sources for free 2D game assets, sprites, tilesets, and sprite sheets — with notes on licenses, quality, and what to actually look for.
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June 9, 2026
A clean HUD disappears; a bad one ruins the game. Here is how to design pixel art UI: health bars, fonts, nine-slice panels, and the readability rules that keep menus legible at any scale.
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June 8, 2026
Game jams separate idea people from builders. This is the strategy behind games that consistently rank in the top 10% — from theme interpretation to post-submission ratings. Ship something that works, every time.
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June 8, 2026
Great game audio does not require a $50,000 studio budget. Learn how solo devs and small teams produce professional sound effects and music using free tools, smart layering, and a few counterintuitive tricks.
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June 8, 2026
Steam Direct costs $100, takes 30 days, and turns away thousands of unprepared devs every year. This guide walks you through every step — from Steamworks setup to launch day strategy — so you actually ship.
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June 6, 2026
You exported a clean sprite sheet. Now what? A practical, engine-by-engine guide to slicing, configuring, and animating sprite sheets in the four engines most indie devs actually ship with.
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June 6, 2026
Your pixel art looks razor-sharp in the editor and like a smudge in the browser or game. The culprit is almost always the wrong scaling filter. Here is the difference between nearest-neighbor and bilinear, why integer scaling matters, and the exact settings that keep every pixel crisp.
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June 6, 2026
Those thin colored lines flickering around your sprites are not a bug in your art. They are texture bleeding, and they come from how your sprite sheet is packed. Here is how padding, trimming, and power-of-two sizing actually work.
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April 24, 2026
Frame counts are only half the story. Learn how professional pixel artists use variable timing, the 60fps divisor rule, and Disney animation principles to make 2D characters feel alive.
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April 24, 2026
Animated GIFs are great for sharing — terrible for game engines. Here is exactly why converting GIFs to sprite sheets cuts file size, improves performance, and unlocks alpha transparency that GIFs simply cannot do.
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April 24, 2026
Palette swapping was born out of NES memory limits and became one of the most enduring tricks in pixel art. Here is how to use it in 2026 — from manual recoloring to runtime shaders that generate character variants on the fly.
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April 10, 2026
Video games reduce stress, sharpen your brain, and build real social connections. Here are the numbers, the studies, and the science behind why gaming is genuinely good for you.
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April 10, 2026
Everything indie devs need to know about sprite sheets and pixel art in 2026 — from animation basics and optimization tricks to AI workflows and market trends. Includes practical tips you can use today.
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March 4, 2026
Pixel art is back in a big way. Learn why sprite sheets are essential for indie game dev in 2026 and how to generate them fast with free online tools.
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November 26, 2025
Pixel art is already challenging. Why make it harder?
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November 25, 2025
This is the first post on our new blog. Learn about how we built this tool.
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