Pixel Art Maker

Pixel Art Is Having Its Biggest Moment Since the 1980s

Retro gaming nostalgia, indie game development, NFT art, Discord avatars, animated social media stickers, icon design for apps — pixel art is everywhere. The constraint of working on a small grid forces creative decisions that larger canvases hide: every pixel is a deliberate choice. The ToollyX Pixel Art Maker gives you a browser-based canvas from 8×8 to 64×64 cells with pencil, eraser, fill bucket and eyedropper tools, a 24-colour palette, 30-level undo, auto-save to browser storage, and PNG export at 1×, 4× and 8× scale. Open the page and start drawing — no account, no download, nothing to install.

Choosing the Right Grid Size

Grid size sets both the artistic complexity and the physical output size. An 8×8 grid is for icons, favicons, and emoji-style characters — 8×8 is the minimum meaningful pixel art size and produces a 64×64px PNG at 8× export. The constraints are severe in a useful way: every pixel matters and nothing is wasted. A 16×16 grid is the standard for game sprite work — every classic 16-bit game character from SNES and Game Boy era fits in this canvas. It produces a 128×128px PNG at 8× scale, which is a usable icon or avatar size. A 32×32 grid allows significantly more detail — full facial expressions, clothing detail, small scenes — and exports to 256×256px. A 64×64 grid is for detailed character sprites, complex scene tiles, and isometric environments. At 8× export, the output is 512×512px — large enough for print use.

The Four Drawing Tools

Pencil draws single cells on click and paints continuously on click-drag — hold the mouse button and move across the grid to paint a line or fill an area freehand. Eraser removes colour from cells, returning them to transparent. Fill (bucket) flood-fills a contiguous region of same-colour cells — clicking the white background fills all connected white cells. This is the fastest way to lay down large flat colour areas. Eyedropper (Pick) samples the colour from any cell you click and sets it as the active colour — useful for resuming work with an exact colour already on the canvas without searching the palette. Click and drag is supported on pencil and eraser; the other tools are single-click only.

30-Level Undo and Auto-Save

The undo stack holds 30 states — 30 steps back in your drawing history, accessible with the Undo button. This covers most working sessions where the last dozen or so operations need to be revisited. Auto-save writes the canvas state to browser localStorage every time you paint — if you close the tab accidentally or the browser crashes, your work is there the next time you open the tool. The saved state includes the grid size, all pixel colours and the current undo history. The Import Image as Pixel Art feature converts any uploaded image into pixel art at the current grid size by down-sampling the image and mapping each pixel to the nearest palette colour. This is useful for creating pixelated portraits, logos and references.

Export Scale and Output Dimensions

1× export downloads the PNG at the literal grid resolution — a 16×16 grid exports as a 16×16px PNG. This is the raw pixel art at native size, useful for game engines that render at this size and scale up themselves, or for further editing in Aseprite, Photoshop or Piskel. 4× export scales each cell to 4×4 physical pixels — a 16×16 grid becomes a 64×64 PNG with sharp, blocky pixel scaling. 8× export is the most useful for display and sharing — a 16×16 grid becomes 128×128px, a 32×32 becomes 256×256, clearly visible at normal screen sizes. For further scaling to a specific output dimension after exporting, use the Image Resizer with nearest-neighbour interpolation (Image Resizer handles sharp pixel art scaling without antialiasing).

The Colour Palette — 24 Colours and Custom Picks

The built-in 24-colour palette covers the essentials: pure black and white, six greys, primary and secondary colours, earth tones and pastels. This is intentionally constrained — working with a limited palette produces more cohesive pixel art because colour harmony is forced by the available choices. The active colour picker above the palette lets you use any of the 16.7 million colours in the full spectrum. Set a custom colour with the picker, then use it on the canvas — it does not replace palette swatches, it sits as the active colour until you click a palette swatch. For palette-based work, sticking to the built-in swatches is recommended; for more painterly colour work, the picker opens the full spectrum.

Pixel Art Workflows — What People Actually Make

App icons: 32×32 or 64×64 grids, exported at 1× then imported into the Favicon Generator to produce the full suite of browser icon sizes. Game sprites: 16×16 or 32×32 characters at 1× for use in Godot, Unity, GameMaker or PICO-8. Profile pictures: 32×32 self-portraits exported at 8× for a sharp 256×256 avatar.Animated sticker frames: Create individual frames as separate exports and combine them in an external GIF tool — the GIF Frame Viewer is useful for reviewing existing GIF animations for reference. Pattern tiles: 8×8 or 16×16 seamless patterns that tile across a background — export at 1× and use as a CSS background repeat tile, or pass through the Image Tiler to generate the full repeated pattern canvas.

Working With the Import Feature

The Import Image as Pixel Art function converts any raster image to the current grid resolution. A portrait photo imported at 32×32 produces a recognisable pixelated version of the face; at 16×16 it becomes an abstract character study. The import maps each of the down-sampled pixels to the nearest colour in the current palette — so the output automatically uses only palette colours. For clean results, use source images with high contrast and clear subject boundaries. Import is a starting point, not a final result — use the pencil and fill tools to clean up edges, fix colours and add detail after importing. Portrait photos, logos and icons work best; complex scenes with many colours and fine details produce abstract results at small grid sizes.

✓Verified by ToollyX Team · Last updated June 2026