Sprite · PixelLabPixelLab
Fast, Balanced or Max, from quick drafts to your most detailed sprites. Every option shows what it uses before you run it.
AI · with PixelLab
AI that hands you real pixels, not a blurry picture.
PixelLab's pixel-art models, plus Pixelart Makers' own clean-up, turn a sentence into a sprite on your grid and your palette, as a draft you review before it joins your art.
Five jobs AI takes off your plate. Each one works on what you've selected, right on the canvas.
Describe a sprite and get it on a new artboard.
Pick the engine for the look you want. Sprite engines, powered by PixelLab, return pixel art on your grid. The Illustrative engine paints a picture, and Pixelart Makers rebuilds it into real pixels.
Illustrative
A painterly take, rebuilt on your grid: hard edges, a transparent background and the colour count you choose.
Rendered with Pixelart Makers' own pixel clean-up.
Same idea. Your game's palette. Lock the palette and every generated sprite, edit and fill uses only the colours your game already has. Pick a palette below to see what the lock does; in the editor you set it before you generate.
In Pixelart Makers you choose the lock before you generate.
Rendered with Pixelart Makers' own pixel clean-up.
Tune the pixels after the picture. On an Illustrative result, change the colours, dither, palette or size and the draft redraws from the original image. No new job, nothing more from your allowance.
Ask for art without leaving your sprite. Select something, press ⌘↵ and describe it. No side panel, no export–import round trip.
Review every result before it joins your art. Results arrive as a locked draft. Flip variations with ← →, ask for changes with ⇧↵, press ↵ to keep, and one ⌘Z removes the whole AI step.
Keep drawing while it generates. Queue a few ideas and carry on. The Jobs chip tells you when each one is ready to review.
Let AI do the chores. Better prompts, tidy layers, a starting palette, clean pixels and names for everything, one step each.
Beat the blank prompt
The wand turns “slime” into a detailed art brief. Press Tab to use it.
Name every layer
Rename layers with AI turns default names like “Layer 3 copy” into names your team can find.
A palette from a mood
Describe a place or a feeling and pick from three palettes built as dark-to-light ramps.
Tidy stray pixels
Clean up pixels and Restyle to palette run on your device, free, on a layer, an artboard or a run of frames.
Put art into words
Describe selection writes what's in your selection, and the prompt card can turn it into a prompt for the next job.
Name tags and swatches
Name tags labels your animation tags and Name palette colors labels every swatch, so the file reads like a game.
Take a sprite out of a finished scene. Draw around it and press Erase: the background carries on behind it. Press Isolate instead to lift it onto its own layer.
Your teammates see it coming. Everyone in the file sees an AI job's placeholder and whose it is, and the person who asked decides whether it stays.
Know the cost before you press Make. Every account includes a monthly AI allowance. Each prompt card shows the estimate first and every result the real cost after, the biggest jobs ask before they start, and if you run out, AI pauses until next month while everything else keeps working.
AI questions
What is PixelLab?
PixelLab is an AI made for pixel art. In Pixelart Makers it powers the Sprite engines for Make a sprite, Edit with prompt and Fill selection, plus Remove background, Animate from here, Generate in-betweens, Rotate to directions and the prompt wand on Sprite engines. Variations, Render sketch, Erase and Isolate object, Edit frames and the clean-up actions can run on a Sprite engine too.
Do I need a PixelLab account?
No. Pixelart Makers connects to PixelLab for you, and what you generate comes out of the monthly AI allowance of your Pixelart Makers account.
What's the Illustrative engine?
A second image engine that paints a more illustrative picture. Pixelart Makers then rebuilds it into real pixel art: hard edges, a transparent background, and your colour count or palette.
How is AI usage counted?
Every account gets a monthly AI allowance. Every prompt card shows an estimate before you run it, every result shows the real cost after, and the biggest jobs ask first. If you use it all, AI pauses until the start of next month, and everything else in the editor keeps working.
Will AI overwrite my work?
No. Results land as a draft layer or a new artboard, and you keep or discard them. If you leave a draft undecided with the file open, Pixelart Makers keeps it after 10 minutes; set Keep results automatically to Never in Preferences › AI to always decide yourself. One ⌘Z undoes the whole AI step, and a merge is refused if that layer changed in the meantime, so a result never paints over newer strokes.
Does AI use my palette?
Turn on palette lock on the prompt card before you generate, and every sprite, edit, fill and animation frame is matched to your artboard's palette. For art you already have, Restyle to palette snaps it to your colours.
Can I cancel a PixelLab job?
You can press Cancel, but once PixelLab starts a job it finishes it, so a cancelled job still counts against your monthly AI allowance. That's why Pixelart Makers shows the estimate first and asks before Max-quality jobs.
Can teammates see my AI jobs?
Yes. They see the placeholder with your avatar and its progress. The result waits for you: only you can keep or discard it.
Sprites on this page are hand-drawn to show the workflow.
Describe your first sprite. Sign up free, then press ⌘↵ on an empty canvas.
Start making. It's free.
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