Pixel Art Footstep Dust: Pixel art footstep dust: at each step of a run, shaded dust puffs kick back and up from the feet, swell and fade, with a ground scuff and flicked pebbles.

Pixel Art Footstep Dust

Pixel art footstep dust: at each step of a run, shaded dust puffs kick back and up from the feet, swell and fade, with a ground scuff and flicked pebbles. Loops four steps, to attach to a running character in platformers and action games.

Pixel Art Footstep Dust 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 3 particle emitters.

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 Footstep Dust at 8 moments, from 0 s to 0.88 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Footstep Dust is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 3 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: flipbook sprites, collisions and keyframed parameters. 3 scene layers (ground and props) show in the studio for context and stay out of every export.

It loops seamlessly every 1 s, and 3 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. To change its colour, select "Dust puffs" 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.

Layers, in draw order

  1. Ground scuffparticles4 single particles at set times. Colour: dark grey.
  2. Dust puffsparticles4 timed bursts of rings across a box, 20 in all. They float upward, grow as they age, play a flipbook animation and slow down with drag. Colour runs from pale orange to grey over each life.
  3. Pebblesparticles4 timed bursts of image sprites, 8 in all. They fall under gravity and bounce when they hit something. Colour: grey.

DETAILS

Length
1 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
384 x 384, pixel art at 3x
Layers
3 emitters
Blend
Mostly normal
Colours
orangegreydark greypale orange
Sprites
Heroes by SpriteLab micro mode (Free to use)
Tags
pixel art, footstep dust, running dust, dust, pixel smoke, platformer, movement, loop

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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