From learning pixel art in Procreate I found my efforts limited. With the extra money I had, I invested in Pixaki 4 Pro, a $30 USD app on the Apple App Store. I do most of my pixel artwork for personal and game art in Aseprite. With Pixaki, I want a good portable option that I can trade between the two programs for faster pixel art output.
Getting started
The first thing I like about Pixaki is that it has many screen canvases as a default. I’m miffed that I can’t save more canvases. Sometimes I need to work with alternate canvas sizes for different projects. Aseprite doesn’t have the ability to save sprite sizes, so, I’m letting this slide.
The initial UI is easy to navigate. It’s closest to my general digital art workspace. Most of my important stuff is on the right, such as layers and animation tools. Other than being able to slide panels in and out for use, the interface isn’t customizable.
General Drawing
The first thing I decided to draw in Pixaki is a selfie! When you don’t know what to draw, You can’t go wrong with a selfie.
The pixel drawing feels good. It has Pixel Perfect brush toggle for if I need precise lines. Pixaki doesn’t seem to have pressure sensitive brushes, so I can’t do much of my paint style that I do in Aseprite.
Importing Color Palettes
Pixaki accepts .GPL files, which is a pain in the butt if import from places like Lospec. But you can import the .PNG image, and make the swatches by hand with the Eyedropper Tool. Palettes save in your files and set as defaults when you open them, so that’s good.
A good palette to import is the Shovel Knight NES Palette! You can’t go wrong with the palette of one of the largest indie pixel games of all time!
Tap “Load Palette” and you’ll go to the File Manager where you can search for where you saved your .GPL File
Reference Layers
One thing that I love about Pixaki that I don’t see from other pixel art programs, is the ability to put a reference layer of my higher res art!
The reference image’s scale is separate from my pixel art, so I can be more accurate to my original sketch art with less editing.
Animation
I made this Jungle Cat Character to test out animations. I’m getting comfortable with larger sprites with more colors. This’ll speed up some workflow stuff when making game pixel art!
This started as a basic stick figure for the pose. I liked the open hand compared to my first sketch, so I stuck with that. After figuring out the poses and colors, I decided to continue animating her!
At a glance, Pixaki’s Animation set up is Layer-based, similar to other digital art apps like Procreate or Clip Studio Paint. It knows which layers need to toggle on and off for a certain amount of frames. You can set certain layers to be static to not change on different frames. This works for things such as keeping a background seen during character animation.
The animation features aren’t as powerful as Aseprite, and I’d love for future updates to have features such as tags or tiling. But, I’m elated that I can export Pixaki files as Aseprite files. I can make the basic movements in Pixaki on the go. Export as an Aseprite file, and edit the rest of the animation with more layers, frames, and precision!
After all this stuff, I’d say Pixaki is a powerful paid app that’s worth the cash. It’s not as outstanding at pixel art like Aseprite, but it beats hauling my whole desktop in my pocket.