Pixel Art Shooting Stars: A pixel art night sky: dim stars and faint nebula glow, bright stars twinkling into crosses and three shooting stars per loop streaking past with glowing tails.

Pixel Art Shooting Stars

A pixel art night sky: dim stars and faint nebula glow, bright stars twinkling into crosses and three shooting stars per loop streaking past with glowing tails. Tiles in every direction and loops, for title screens, menus and camp scenes.

Pixel Art Shooting Stars is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 4 seconds, drawn on a 384 by 384 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 7 particle emitters. 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, 120 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 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 4 s loop.

Pixel Art Shooting Stars at 8 moments, from 0 s to 3.5 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Shooting Stars is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 7 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: ribbon trails, sub-emitters set off by other particles, flipbook sprites, keyframed parameters and post filters (bloom).

It loops seamlessly every 4 s, and 2 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 0.35 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Nebula" 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. Nebula, Nebula tealparticles / additiveA single long-lived particle that stays for the whole loop.
  2. Star fieldspriteA placed image.
  3. Twinkling starsparticles / additive11 single particles at set times. They play a flipbook animation. Colour: white.
  4. Star crumbsparticles / additiveImage sprites set off by "Shooting star". Colour runs from white to violet over each life.
  5. Shooting star tailparticles / additiveRibbon trails set off by "Shooting star". Colour runs from white to pale blue over each life.
  6. Shooting star glowparticles / additiveRings set off by "Shooting star". Colour: pale blue.
  7. Shooting starparticles / additive3 single particles at set times. They leave "Star crumbs" behind them, spawn "Shooting star tail" as they appear and spawn "Shooting star glow" as they appear. Colour: white.

DETAILS

Length
4 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
384 x 384, pixel art at 3x
Layers
7 emitters
Blend
Mostly additive (glows)
Colours
whitepale bluevioletdeep blue
Sprites
Built-in shapes only
Tags
pixel art, shooting stars, night sky, stars, twinkle, space, background, tileable

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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