Software with Gif Export

Flipnote Studio 3D allows users to create short animated sketches known as Flipnotes. Flipnotes can be made up of hundreds of frames, and can be played back at a variety of speeds. The software offers users the option to create 3D Flipnotes by drawing different parts of the animation on up to three layers. The main tools include a pen, an eraser, and a paintbrush. New to Flipnote Studio 3D are tools that draw shapes, fill enclosed areas (paint bucket), and insert text. The application features a limited color palette, including black, white, red, blue, green, and yellow. This is a slight improvement upon Flipnote Studio, which did not include yellow and green as selectable colors, but were still possible using color mixing. The selection tool is used to copy and manipulate parts of a frame. Users can also use the 3DS system's camera and microphone to add audio and photos to their creations. These animations can be shared by exporting them as GIF or AVI files.

The program is now discontinued and can only be used on a 3DS that already have it installed or a modded 3DS.

The image is resampled to an internal grid from 32 to 512 px, with optional color reduction to the Game Boy, NES or PICO-8 palettes, adjustable dithering, posterization, contrast, saturation and black crush. Extra effects include chromatic aberration, scanlines, grain and a wobble effect that exports a 4-frame looping GIF. Export at native size, x2, x4 or 1080p with nearest-neighbor scaling.

Images are processed locally in the browser and never uploaded. No account or install required. Interface in English and Italian. Built by a solo developer while making pixel art for his own game, as a quick way to test how a palette looks on a reference image. Bug reports and feedback are welcome.

Draw 

Pencil with Clean Stroke for crisp 1-pixel lines, brush, spray, fill and symmetry. The shading tool walks through your colour ramp, with a soft gradient from the centre or from one side. Turn any selection into a custom brush and save your favourites for every project. Tiled mode shows your image repeated around itself, so seamless patterns line up as you paint.

Colour

Load palettes straight from Lospec (.hex, .gpl, .pal or the PNG) and save your own. Replace a colour across a frame, a layer or the whole sprite. Reduce a photo to a palette, and add light and drop shadows on their own layer that you can change at any time.

Animate

A layer × frame timeline with tags, onion skin and linked cels. Play your animation right on the canvas.

For games

Tilemap layers: paint a tile once and it changes everywhere it's used. Export PNG, GIF, spritesheets with a JSON atlas, Godot 4 scenes, or code.

spritebit gets new features regularly and listens to feedback. The desktop app tells you when an update is ready and installs it with one click. It's open source (MIT), and what you draw is yours.

Available in English and German.