Pixel Art Arrow Hit: Pixel art arrow hit: an arrow flies in and thunks into a wooden target with a shake, splinters and paint chips, a dust puff and a quivering shaft.

Pixel Art Arrow Hit

Pixel art arrow hit: an arrow flies in and thunks into a wooden target with a shake, splinters and paint chips, a dust puff and a quivering shaft. Use it for bow attacks, archery minigames and trap darts in pixel-art RPGs and platformers.

Pixel Art Arrow Hit is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 1.6 seconds, drawn on a 384 by 240 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 11 particle emitters and 1 glowing stroke.

Free download with a transparent background, cropped to the effect, 48 frames at 30 fps. Use it in commercial games, no credit needed.

Licence: use it in any project, including paid commercial games such as a game sold on Steam. There is no per-project licence to buy and no credit needed. Terms.

Roblox: the download is a flipbook for a ParticleEmitter. Set FlipbookLayout to Grid8x8, FlipbookMode to OneShot and Lifetime to 1.6, then emit one particle per cycle. Roblox setup.

REMIX WITH AI

Try:

Left empty, it just opens in the agent, free. Each change is one AI build, and you start with free builds.

Engine data for Unity, Godot, GameMaker and Aseprite comes with a plan: open it in the studio.

OPEN IN THE STUDIO

Change the colours, timing or size, or export for Unity, Godot 4, GameMaker, Phaser, PixiJS and Aseprite.

Try variations: new colours, motion and shapes of this effect, free in the studio.

FRAME BY FRAME

8 evenly spaced moments across the 1.6 s loop.

Pixel Art Arrow Hit at 8 moments, from 0 s to 1.4 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Arrow Hit is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 11 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: glowing strokes traced along shapes, sprite modules, collisions, particles stretched along their motion and post filters (bloom and colour grade). 3 scene layers (ground and props) show in the studio for context and stay out of every export.

It loops seamlessly every 1.6 s, and 10 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 0.41 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Impact glow" in the studio and edit Colour A and Colour B. Size on the same layer sets how big its particles are. Pixel size in the Pixel art panel sets how chunky it looks.

Layers, in draw order

  1. ArrowspriteA placed image. Extras: smear frames and keyframed motion.
  2. Air streaksparticles / additiveA stream of pixels along a line, its rate keyframed over the loop. Colour: pale blue.
  3. Arrow stuckspriteA placed image. Extras: keyframed motion.
  4. Impact frameparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.38 s. Colour: white.
  5. Impact starparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.38 s. It shrinks as it ages. Colour: white.
  6. Impact glowparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.38 s. Colour: pale orange.
  7. Thunk linesparticles / additiveOne burst of 7 streaks at 0.38 s. They slow down with drag. Colours range between white and pale gold.
  8. Impact ringstroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle.
  9. SplintersparticlesOne burst of 12 pixels from a disc at 0.38 s. They fall under gravity, bounce when they hit something, spin and slow down with drag. Colour: orange.
  10. Paint chipsparticlesOne burst of 7 pixels at 0.38 s. They fall under gravity, bounce when they hit something and slow down with drag. Colours range between pale gold and red.

4 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
1.6 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
384 x 240, pixel art at 3x
Layers
11 emitters and 1 glowing stroke
Blend
Mostly normal
Colours
orangewhitepale goldpale blue
Sprites
Kenney Smoke Particles by Kenney (CC0)
Tags
pixel art, pixel, vfx, arrow hit, arrow, archery, bow, projectile, impact, target, splinters, rpg

USING IT IN YOUR GAME

Phaser, PixiJS
The PNG sheet is a plain grid of frames that both can slice. A TexturePacker JSON atlas comes with a plan, from the studio.
Unity
Import the PNG sheet as a Sprite with Mode set to Multiple and slice it, or open the effect in the studio for a ready-made grid.
Godot 4, GameMaker, Aseprite
Open it in the studio and pick your engine in Export: with a plan, it writes the files that engine imports.
Web and chat
The GIF plays anywhere; the APNG keeps soft edges on any background.

Step by step: Unity, Godot 4, Roblox, GameMaker, Phaser and PixiJS, Aseprite, Web games (live runtime).

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