What is Pixel Art Creator?

A pixel art editor for drawing retro-style artwork on a grid canvas. Choose your grid size, pick colors, and place pixels one at a time or use fill tools to make sprites, icons, and game assets.

Grid sizes run from 8x8 up to 64x64. Seven tools: pencil, eraser, line (drag from start to end for a pixel-perfect Bresenham line), rectangle, circle (drag a bounding box for a clean pixel outline), fill bucket, and eyedropper. A 1 to 4 pixel brush is shared by the pencil, eraser, line, rectangle, and circle tools so you can draw thicker outlines on bigger canvases. Mirror X reflects strokes across the vertical centre line; Mirror Y reflects across the horizontal centre line; switching both on at once gives 4-way symmetry. Undo and redo step through the last 50 actions. Export scales the canvas up by 1x through 16x with nearest-neighbour resampling, so a 32x32 sprite exports cleanly at 512x512 with hard, blocky edges.

How to use

1. Set your canvas grid size (8×8 to 64×64) and choose a color from the palette or enter a custom hex value.
2. Click or drag on the grid to place pixels. Use the eraser to remove, the fill bucket for large areas, or toggle mirror mode for symmetrical designs.
3. Export your finished artwork as a PNG at your chosen resolution — from 1× (actual pixels) up to 16× for sharp, scaled-up sprites.

When to use

• Drawing character sprites, tilesets, or item icons for an indie game project.
• Designing small UI icons or favicons that need to stay crisp at 16×16 or 32×32.
• Making profile avatars or chat emotes in a retro 8-bit or 16-bit style.

Result

A game developer creates a 16×16 character sprite for a retro platformer, using mirror mode to keep the character symmetrical, then exports at 8× scale for a 128×128 PNG.

FAQ

Why does my exported PNG look blurry when I open it?

The export uses nearest-neighbour scaling, but some image viewers smooth pixels by default when zooming. The file itself is pixel-perfect — open it in a paint program or set the viewer to disable interpolation and the hard edges will return.

Can I import an existing image and pixel-edit it?

Not directly — this tool starts from a blank grid. For tracing, open your reference image in another browser tab next to the editor. We may add an import-as-reference feature in a future update.

What grid size should I use for a character sprite?

16×16 is the classic NES-era size and works for small mascots. 32×32 gives more room for facial detail and is closer to SNES sprites. 64×64 is large enough for portraits but takes hours to fill manually.

Can I get four-way symmetry, not just left and right?

Yes — flip on both Mirror X and Mirror Y at the same time. Each stroke then reflects across the vertical and horizontal centre lines for 4-way symmetry. Use Mirror X alone for front-facing characters, Mirror Y alone for stacked patterns or floor tiles, or both for kaleidoscopic shapes and icons.

How do I undo or redo more than one step?

Press Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on Mac) repeatedly to undo, and Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) to redo. The history keeps the last 50 stroke groups, so a single drag counts as one step rather than one per pixel.

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