Pixel Art Blizzard Vortex: A frost warrior spins up a pixel-art blizzard vortex: snow spirals in along the floor, then a swirling column of snow, wind streaks and tumbling ice shards whirls around him over a cold floor ring before it bursts outward and the flakes drift down.

Pixel Art Blizzard Vortex

A frost warrior spins up a pixel-art blizzard vortex: snow spirals in along the floor, then a swirling column of snow, wind streaks and tumbling ice shards whirls around him over a cold floor ring before it bursts outward and the flakes drift down. Use it for a blizzard or frost storm skill, an ice ultimate or a winter boss phase in a pixel-art RPG.

Pixel Art Blizzard Vortex is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 3.4 seconds, drawn on a 432 by 432 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 62 particle emitters and 30 glowing strokes. Some particles draw ribbon trails.

Colour

Recolours the preview and the free downloads.

Free download with a transparent background, cropped to the effect, 102 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 3.4, 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 3.4 s loop.

Pixel Art Blizzard Vortex at 8 moments, from 0 s to 2.98 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Blizzard Vortex is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 62 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: glowing strokes traced along shapes, ribbon trails, sub-emitters set off by other particles, paths 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 3.4 s, and 16 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 1.95 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Release 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. The colour swatches by the downloads recolour every layer at once.

Layers, in draw order

  1. Frozen floorparticlesA single particle at 0.5 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: blue.
  2. Cold light poolparticles / additiveA single long-lived particle that stays for the whole loop. It grows as it ages.
  3. Floor sparklesparticles / additiveA stream of pixels from a disc, its rate keyframed over the loop. Colours range between white and pale cyan.
  4. Cold ring (far), Cold ring (near)stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle. Its start and end are keyframed, so it writes itself on and off. It is drawn as dashes.
  5. Rune ticks (far), Wind band (far), Wind band (far) +21stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle. It is drawn as dashes.
  6. Shock ring (far), Gust ring (far), Shock ring (near) +1stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle.
  7. Column glowparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.5 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: cyan.
  8. Snow body (far), Snow body (far), Snow body (far) +1particlesA stream of smoke puffs, its rate keyframed over the loop. They travel along a path and spin. Colours range between pale blue and blue.
  9. Vortex snow (far), Vortex snow (far), Vortex snow (far) +8particlesA stream of pixels, its rate keyframed over the loop. They travel along a path. Colours range between pale blue and blue.
  10. Thrown shards (back), Thrown shards (front)particlesOne burst of 7 shards across a box at 1.95 s. They set off "Shard chips" on impact, fall under gravity, bounce when they hit something and spin. Colour runs from white to blue over each life.

41 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
3.4 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
432 x 432, pixel art at 3x
Layers
62 emitters and 30 glowing strokes
Blend
Mostly normal
Colours
whitebluepale cyancyan
Sprites
Kenney Smoke Particles by Kenney (CC0), Heroes by SpriteLab micro mode (Free to use)
Tags
pixel art, pixel, vfx, blizzard, vortex, snow, ice, frost, whirlwind, spell, aoe, 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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