Pixel Art Summon Circle: A pixel art summoning: a rune circle writes itself on the floor, sigils rise off it and a pillar of light bursts up with a white flash, inside which a creature forms from the feet up and lands as motes settle.

Pixel Art Summon Circle

A pixel art summoning: a rune circle writes itself on the floor, sigils rise off it and a pillar of light bursts up with a white flash, inside which a creature forms from the feet up and lands as motes settle. Use it for monster summons, pet and minion spawns, boss entrances and tactics game unit calls.

Pixel Art Summon Circle is a pixel art effect that plays once over 3.6 seconds, drawn on a 384 by 384 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 14 particle emitters and 15 glowing strokes. Most layers blend additively, so it glows on dark backgrounds.

Colour

Recolours the preview and the free downloads.

Free download with a transparent background, cropped to the effect, 108 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 3.6, 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 3.6 s clip.

Pixel Art Summon Circle at 8 moments, from 0.23 s to 3.38 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Summon Circle is drawn with 15 glowing strokes, lines with a hot core and a soft glow traced along their shapes, plus 14 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: magnets, a sprite dissolve, paths, flipbook sprites 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 plays once over 3.6 s: "Heptagram" goes off first, and "Star point glints" joins at 1.52 s. To recolour the line, select "Heptagram" and change Core and Glow; Start and End set how much of it is drawn. 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 lightsprite / additiveA placed glow.
  2. Heptagramstroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a star. Its start and end are keyframed, so it writes itself on and off.
  3. Outer ring (far), Inner ring (far), Outer ring (near) +1stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle. Its start and end are keyframed, so it writes itself on and off.
  4. Rune ticks (far), Rune ticks (near)stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle. It is drawn as dashes.
  5. Shock ring (far), Landing ring (far), Shock ring (near) +1stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle.
  6. Floor gather, Core gatherparticles / additiveA stream of streaks from a ring, its rate keyframed over the loop. They are swallowed by a magnet at its centre. Colour runs from teal to white over each life.
  7. Column glowparticles / additiveA single particle at 1.5 s. Colour: green.
  8. Pillar streaks (far), Pillar streaks (near)particles / additiveA stream of streaks along a path, its rate keyframed over the loop. Colour runs from white to teal over each life.
  9. Rising sigils (far), Rising sigils (near)particles / additiveA stream of rings along a path, its rate keyframed over the loop. They sway from side to side and play a flipbook animation. Colour runs from white to teal over each life.
  10. Creature outlinestroke / additiveA glowing line traced along the outline of a sprite. Its start and end are keyframed, so it writes itself on and off.

12 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
3.6 seconds, plays once
Canvas
384 x 384, pixel art at 3x
Layers
14 emitters and 15 glowing strokes
Blend
Mostly additive (glows)
Colours
whitegreentealpale gold
Sprites
Heroes by SpriteLab micro mode (Free to use)
Tags
pixel art, pixel, vfx, summon, summoning circle, magic circle, spawn, monster, rune, pillar of light, rpg, one-shot

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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