Top Down Sprite Maker – Pixel Art Character Creator
Top Down Sprite Maker (TDSM) is the ultimate pixel art character creator. Developers that care about an unrivalled degree of control, extensibility, and customization need look no further!
Sprite styles
While most similar programs are built around a specific sprite style (art style, directions, supported animations, etc.), TDSM is built to support multiple sprite styles. Furthermore, these sprite styles can be distributed as ZIP files, and can thus be created, modified, and shared by the community.
Sprite styles featured in promotional images and videos are freely available but distributed separately.
Flexibility
TDSM sprite styles define their own composition layers, supported directions (whether 4, 6, or 8), and animations.
Getting and using sprite styles
The program launches with a basic "Default" 8-directional 32-bit sprite style that acts as a sort of tech demo.
You can download/buy additional sprite styles online. Sprite styles made or approved by me are added to this collection. Sprite styles inspired by established IPs, such as Pokémon, are always distributed for free.
Making your own sprite styles
As of the release of v1.2.0, the scripting API has not yet been properly documented, and the DeltaScript language specification is outdated and does not reflect the semantics of the language interpreter that runs in TDSM. These resources will be updated as soon as possible.
Making sprite styles for TDSM consists of two main components:
- Programming a
manifest.tdsscript file that defines the sprite style's composition logic - Drawing the assets that are composed according to the rules defined in the script
Scripts are written in DeltaScript (a scripting language I designed for use with specific applications) and the TDSM scripting API.
A full tutorial and additional resources will be available shortly.
Features
Customize
TDSM gives you complete freedom to customize every facet of your character, yet the sprite assembly rules still ensure that sprites always look good and production-ready.
- Controlled randomization: Generate random sprites with the click of a button. Randomization can be constrained by locking customization layers you wish to exclude.
- Smart layering rules: Customization layers update dynamically based on changes to other layers they depend on. For example, changing your body type from "average" to "small" in the Pokémon Gen. 4 Trainer style will render your head a pixel lower and switch to the small body clothing assets, but the outfit choice will stay the same.
Configure
Configure your sprite sheet to your exact needs. Have TDSM adapt to your existing projects rather than having to rework code or sprite sheet slicing configurations.
- Sizing: Crop or pad individual sprites to your liking, ranging from 1x1 px to 128x128 px
- Sequencing: Determine which directions and animations to include in the export, and in which order
- Layout: Determine the axis along which directions and animations are exported in the sprite sheet, as well as how distinct animations follow one another
Export
Export sprite sheets and associated data from TDSM in seconds.
- Sprite sheet as a PNG image
- Sprite sheet metadata as JSON [optional]
- Sprite sheet with customization layers separated as Stipple Effect project (
.stip) [optional]
Save and load sprite data
Sprite customization data can be loaded into TDSM by uploading a JSON metadata file that matches a sprite style present in the current program session.
Contribute
You can help me develop TDSM by reporting bugs.
License
TDSM is released under an end-user license agreement.
You may...
- Use TDSM for personal or commercial projects
- Clone the TDSM source code and privately modify it to suit your needs
- Distribute or sell TDSM sprite styles consisting of original work
You may not...
- Distribute or sell copies of TDSM (whether modified or not)
- Use TDSM for NFT or crypto-related projects
- Use TDSM to train generative AI models
You may also be interested in...
Stipple Effect is a scriptable pixel art editor. It is the recommended art program for drawing and configuring sprite style assets for TDSM and doing post-processing on exported sprite sheets.
Purchase
In order to download this tool you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $10 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
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Hello! I am now in a position where I can try looking into how sprite styles work, yay! What's your process to make a manifest file? I figure I could do it by hand and trial and error it but is there a simpler way, maybe with Stipple Effect?
Hey again!
I’ll be 1) documenting the scripting API and 2) making tutorial videos about creating and editing sprite styles in the next few days, so stay tuned!
The
manifest.tdsfile is just code, so it’s just a plain text file. I use VS Code to write them. I’ll be publishing a VS Code extension that adds syntax highlighting for TDSM scripts imminently as well.The primary use case for Stipple Effect when it comes to making sprite styles is programmatically separating and saving assets from project files, which I’ll be covering in the tutorial videos.
For now, I’d recommend using the Pokémon sprite styles as examples to study how sprite styles work. Have look at how their
manifest.tdsfiles and other subdirectories are structured, if you haven’t had the chance to do so already. You can also experiment with modifying the script or CVS files and assets in thebasessubdirectories in the if you feel confident.Thanks for your continued interest in the program; let me know if you have any other questions!
Alrighty! That's pretty much what I've been doing, I'll let you know my success rate :3
Sounds good!
Oh hey one thing: if you fuck up the manifest the program only says you encountered errors, not what the errors were. An error log would be helpful to know what the problem is... :')
I figured out how things work, defining animations is pretty easy to understand (some pattern recognition and a lil bit of counting!), on the other hand layer logic is a bit overwhelming. I think I'll figure it out, but a basic layer example would be pretty helpful (suppose I don't need any offsets or anything like that for instance)
It doesn’t give you an error log if it’s a syntax error, but it does if it’s a semantic error. That’s because I didn’t write the code for syntax error checking myself; it’s handled by ANTLR, the parser generator library that I used. I can probably find a way to address that though.
If you can, please file a bug report describing what’s happening and what you feel should be happening instead, with the ZIP you are attempting to upload as a sprite style attached, and I’ll have a look and debug it myself.
Thanks!
This might be human error, but I don't know how to save it at the correct size for the sprite themselves. In the Pokemon Leaf/Red games it's 32x48 for each individual sprite so the sprite sheet should be 128x192. It keeps saving the sprites half that size and much smaller. Am I doing something wrong?
You have to crop/pad the sprite according to your desired dimensions on the configuration screen. I’ve attached a GIF as an example.
By default, the Gen. 3 (FireRed/LeafGreen) sprite style is set to 40x40 pixel dimensions per frame. When you adjust the values in the padding section, the “Individual sprite size” section under the textboxes tells you how big your individual sprites now are, and the preview in the top left shows you how an example frame from your sprite sheet is sliced.
Let me know if this helps you achieve your desired result, and let me know if you have any follow-up questions!
And just to add, [-4, -4, 4, 4] isn’t the only way to pad/crop 40x40 sprites to a size of 32x48. If you find that leaves you with too much blank space at the top, for example, you could just as easily set it to [-4, -4, 2, 6].
can you add eyeless/remove eyes feature ?
I have one question. What designs are there for Gen 3 Pokemon Sprites? I might use that for my game, if it has some things that I'm looking for
does this software have faceless/no face feature ?
Great work! Left a strong rating. I prepared a video review if you want to share that someone independently also said it is a great piece of software :)
https://youtu.be/YAW_QkgHzD4
Thank you so much! Just gave your review a watch and will leave a more detailed comment under your video!
Hi! Considering buying this but I can't see any weapons or tools you can add to the sprites. Is there anything like that? And if not - are you planning to add it? :)
First of all, I’m so sorry for the late response. I’ve taken some time away from the program but I’ve got some good news regarding your question. I personally don’t plan to add that – but you can!
As of the update I just released, you can now create and edit your own sprite styles for TDSM. Adding a weapon layer is somewhat complicated and requires programming, but I’ll be releasing tutorials and documentation in the near future that should make it more accessible.
Thanks for your interest!
Hi! I'm in a tiny pokemon discord where we make trainer cards for fun to show our style & favorite pokemon. Despite the popularity of the franchise, there are basically NO pixel art avatar makers in this style so we're stuck using or editing premade assets.
It's just for fun, but would you ever be interested in/consider making a picrew (or something like that) for people who want to make static front-facing sprites in this style, since you have all the assets?
Thanks! What an awesome tool. I will purchase regardless.
Hi, thanks for reaching out.
Wouldn’t a static front-facing sprite just be the front-facing idle sprite, or do you mean something else. If so, TDSM does let you choose which directions and animations to export, so you can already limit the export to that single sprite, since the idle animation is only a single frame in this case.
I’m actually hearing about Picrew for the first time. But no, I don’t see myself making a dedicated avatar maker in this style.
I’m actually releasing a major update in a couple days at the latest that will make it possible for users to make and upload their own styles to TDSM. Using the tools that already exist in the program, it will be possible for you to make your own avatar styles.
Let me know if that addresses your question :)
Thanks! It basically does; I was wondering if you would host (or be open to hosting) your assets for this project on a site such as picrew for those who want to make "dolls" for fun but don't need/want to pay for the full program or animation capabilities. The final product would be the same as the front-facing idle sprite.
If you are open to it, I would be happy to try and port it over myself, with full credit and links here of course! Thank you for your response and your continued work on this very cool project.
is it possible to get an option to make the sprites bigger in scale?
No, there’s no scale up option.
This is primarily because sprites intended for game development should never be stored as scaled-up image files. This is a best practices thing to keep the asset file size as low as possible.
If you intend to use exported sprites for something that requires them to be scaled up, then you can scale them up in an image editing program. I would recommend my own: Stipple Effect.
yeah i tried that and i have to scale up every individual sprite, i cannot scale the sprite sheet because it distorts the sprites if i do that
that is why i asked for that option.
What do you mean? You should be able to scale up the entire sprite sheet without distortion as long as the scale factor is the same for both axes (X and Y) is a whole number integer.
For example, for a sprite sheet of 128px x 96px, consisting of 4 sprites by 3 sprites, you can scale it up by a factor of 5 to 640px x 480px. This will be a perfect upscale without distortion in Stipple Effect (or in practically any other image editing program, as long as the resize mode is nearest neighbour).
i do not know how you can get 128 x 96 with a 4 sprite by 3 sprite. mine come out as 192 x 144
but that doesn't address the problem i have. which is that if i get a 1 sprite by 1 sprit it will be 48x48. which is really hard to scale if you work with 32x32 or 64x64. it would help immensely if you could set them to the size you want.
Oh, I see what you mean. You don’t want to scale the sprite in that case. You can’t scale 48x48 to 32x32 or 64x64 without some distortion of pixels.
What you want is to either pad or crop the sprites. If you look at the Configuration screen after the Customization screen, the top right has a section titled Padding. You can manipulate these values until the individual sprite size matches your desired sprite size.
Let me know if that makes sense.
This is really cool and well made! The only thing I'd say it's lacking right now is hair style diversity, once there's the possibility of making our own that issue should go away anyway. (though maybe splitting bangs and back hair might help make it more modulable?)
Thank you!
Splitting bangs and back hair is a really good suggestion.
I’m going to workshop user-customizable sprite styles in the next few weeks and will be asking users for feedback when I do, so stay tuned for that!
I’m thinking about those doll maker browser games I played when I was a kid, or the more recent trends like picrew, you could look into how the more modulable ones pull it off. Splitting things is def one of them (ex. To have the option of eyes being different colors)
If/When this gets the ability to add custom sprites like clothes or new hair options gets added I bet this program will REALLY take off.
Oh sure pre set resources are nice and we have a wide variety of possibilities with what we're given BUT why settle for a mere drop when we could have vase boundless oceans of possibilities with the ability of setting up folders for custom bits and pieces to pull content from.
Like you provide a wonderful framework for people to play around with and if there was some sort of centralized resource people could post and share ohh neat clothes or say someone makes like 6-7 hair cuts or something... Others could use shared resources to swap around and inevitably grow the possibilities ENDLESSLY!
Yeah, that’s a good idea/point. I’m thinking about adding a feature where users can upload assets to a category (e.g. hairstyles, headwear, etc.) and add options to categories that way.
The included customization options are stored in the art repository on GitHub, which you can check out to familiarize yourself with what the assets actually look like under the hood.
I’m planning on setting up a contribution guide so that the community can add customization options to the official program as well.
If you want to formally request what you’re describing as a feature, you can do that by making a new issue in the main TDSM repository.
Hi just wanted to ask if all the elements are drawn or were they taken from the games since I would like to use it for game development and not sure if it can be use for other than pokemon fan games?
Hi! There is no reason why the use of TDSM sprites would have to be limited to Pokémon fan games.
The base assets that are used to customize sprites in TDSM are stored in this GitHub repository. Elements in the styles based on Pokémon games are drawn. Many are adapted from overworld sprites from the original games, but are modified to comply with TDSM’s customization code and to make the elements more suitable for customization.
Also, most of the content in the program will eventually be unrelated to Pokémon. Besides the styles based on the Gen 3 and Gen 4 Pokémon games, future styles added to the program will be original and not based on any existing IP.
Cool thanks for clarifying, you really made an awesome tool and I'm buying it right now. Looking forward to all future updates!!
Thank you! Looking forward to continuing to improve the program for you
Where are the image files stored at? You can upload your own images to this, correct? They do not seem to be in the Top Down Sprite Maker for Program Files.
The base asset files for the sprite styles supported by the program are stored directly in the program executable. For the cross-platform build, this is the
tdsm.jarfile, while for the Windows build, it is thetdsm.exefile inC:\Program Files (x86)\Top Down Sprite Makeronce you have installed the program. You can look inside the executables with an archive viewer like 7-Zip and find the base assets in thesprite_assetssubfolder.The program doesn’t let you define your own sprite styles using custom assets yet, but it is a stretch goal. I’m still thinking about how best to implement this. If you want to get involved with the implementation of the feature, or just follow along, you can subscribe to this issue on GitHub.