Pixel Art Explosion: Pixel art explosion in the classic dot-art style: a white flash, then hard round fire puffs pop one after another and step from white through yellow, orange and red while grey smoke discs rise and shrink away.

Pixel Art Explosion

Pixel art explosion in the classic dot-art style: a white flash, then hard round fire puffs pop one after another and step from white through yellow, orange and red while grey smoke discs rise and shrink away. Use it for enemy deaths, small blasts and destroyed objects in retro games; it plays once in a seamless loop.

Pixel Art Explosion is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 1 seconds, drawn on a 384 by 384 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 12 particle emitters and 1 glowing stroke.

Colour

Recolours the preview and the free downloads.

Free download with a transparent background, cropped to the effect, 30 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, 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 s loop.

Pixel Art Explosion at 8 moments, from 0 s to 0.88 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Explosion is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 12 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: glowing strokes traced along shapes, particles stretched along their motion, keyframed parameters and post filters (colour grade).

It loops seamlessly every 1 s, and 12 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 0.23 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Smoke discs" in the studio and edit the Colour over Life gradient. 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. Smoke discsparticles7 timed bursts of dots from a disc, 14 in all. They float upward, swell and then shrink away and slow down with drag. Colour runs from light grey to grey over each life.
  2. Fire puff 1particlesA single particle at 0.08 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  3. Fire puff 2particlesA single particle at 0.11 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  4. Fire puff 3particlesA single particle at 0.13 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  5. Fire puff 4particlesA single particle at 0.15 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  6. Fire puff 5particlesA single particle at 0.16 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  7. Fire puff 6particlesA single particle at 0.18 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  8. Fire puff 7particlesA single particle at 0.2 s. It swells and then shrinks away. Colour runs from white to deep red over each life.
  9. Hot coresparticles / additive7 single particles at set times. They shrink as they age. Colours range between white and pale gold.
  10. Flash discparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.08 s. Colour: white.

3 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
1 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
384 x 384, pixel art at 3x
Layers
12 emitters and 1 glowing stroke
Blend
Mostly normal
Colours
whitegoldpale goldorange
Sprites
Built-in shapes only
Tags
pixel art, pixel explosion, explosion, enemy death, blast, sprite sheet, retro

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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