Pixel Art Shadow Bolt: Pixel art shadow bolt: a black orb with a violet rim streaks in trailing dark wisps, sucks everything inward on impact, then bursts in dark mist, a ring and violet sparks.

Pixel Art Shadow Bolt

Pixel art shadow bolt: a black orb with a violet rim streaks in trailing dark wisps, sucks everything inward on impact, then bursts in dark mist, a ring and violet sparks. Use it for dark magic, curses and warlock or necromancer attacks in RPGs; it plays once, then loops.

Pixel Art Shadow Bolt is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 1.6 seconds, drawn on a 384 by 384 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 15 particle emitters and 2 glowing strokes. Most layers blend additively, so it glows on dark backgrounds. Some particles draw ribbon trails.

Colour

Recolours the preview and the free downloads.

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 Shadow Bolt at 8 moments, from 0 s to 1.4 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Shadow Bolt is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 15 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: glowing strokes traced along shapes, ribbon trails, sub-emitters set off by other particles, collisions 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 11 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 0.64 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Flash 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. Floor lightparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.64 s. Colour: violet.
  2. Dark wispsparticlesSmoke puffs set off by "Bolt halo". They wander on turbulence and grow as they age. Colours range between violet and deep violet.
  3. Violet sparksparticles / additivePixels set off by "Bolt halo". They sway from side to side. Colour runs from white to violet over each life.
  4. Bolt ribbonparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.1 s. Colours range between magenta and violet.
  5. Bolt haloparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.1 s. Colour: violet.
  6. Bolt glow, Bolt heartparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.1 s. Colour: magenta.
  7. Bolt rimparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.1 s. Colour: pale violet.
  8. Bolt coreparticlesA single particle at 0.1 s. Colour: black.
  9. Inward streaksparticles / additiveA stream of streaks from a ring, its rate keyframed over the loop. Colours range between pale violet and magenta.
  10. Imploding ring, Burst ringstroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle.

5 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
1.6 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
384 x 384, pixel art at 3x
Layers
15 emitters and 2 glowing strokes
Blend
Mostly additive (glows)
Colours
violetmagentapale violetwhite
Sprites
Kenney Smoke Particles by Kenney (CC0)
Tags
pixel art, shadow bolt, dark magic, projectile, void, curse, spell

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.
Blend mode
This effect is made of light. For the same glow in your game, draw the sprite with additive blending, or export it on black from the studio for additive shaders.

Step by step: Unity, Godot 4, Roblox, GameMaker, Phaser and PixiJS, Aseprite, Web games (live runtime). Drawn with additive blending: see glow effects without a black box.

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