Aseprite is an open source program to create animated sprites & pixel: Timeline.

Animations and visual effects are nowadays used to enhance nearly every form of multimedia, including video games. These are created by combining multiple images and effects, with an abundance of applications at your disposal.

Aseprite is one of them and offers a different approach on image editing and creating short animations.

Intuitive design makes it easy to use.

If you're nostalgic about the past era of pixel graphics and effects, you might just find this to be a suitable environment.

This is not only because of the application's aim to create such sprites, but the interface is fully designed this way as well. Although you get the impression of an old video game, with icons and tools being a little difficult to identify, accommodation is no problem at all.

Clever file support and drawing tools.

The result is either an enhanced picture or short animation to use in your project, but until you get there some effort needs to be invested.

Timeline.

This is the timeline:

It shows the layers and frames of the active sprite. You can press the Tab key to show or hide it. Also it appears automatically when you create a new Frame or Layer. (This behavior can be disable from Edit > Options > General > Show timeline automatically.)

You can use Layer > New Layer menu (Shift+N) to create new layers or Frame > New Frame menu (Alt+N) to add frames.

Common Operations.

Layers.

Move Layers.

Use the timeline to move layers:



1. Select a range of layers you want to move.
2. Put the mouse above the selection border.
3. Start dragging the from selection border.
4. Drop the layers where you want.

Copy Layers.

Use the timeline to copy layers:



1. Select a range of layers you want to copy.
2. Move the mouse to the selection border.
3. Hold Ctrl or Alt key and start dragging.
4. Drop the copy where you want, holding Ctrl or Alt keys.

Frames.

Move Frames.

Use the timeline to move frames:



1. Select a range of frames you want to move.
2. Put the mouse above the selection border.
3. Start dragging the from selection border.
4. Drop the frames where you want.

Copy Frames.

Use the timeline to copy frames:



1. Select a range of frames you want to copy.
2. Move the mouse to the selection border.
3. Hold Ctrl or Alt key and start dragging.
4. Drop the copy where you want, holding Ctrl or Alt keys.

Cels:

Move Cels.

Use the timeline to move cels:



1. Select a range of cels you want to move.
2. Put the mouse above the selection border.
3. Start dragging the from selection border.
4. Drop the cels where you want.

Note that you can move cels beyond the end of the animation. In this case new empty frames are created automatically

Copy Cels.

Use the timeline to copy cels:



1. Select a range of cels you want to copy.
2. Move the mouse to the selection border.
3. Hold Ctrl or Alt key and start dragging.
4. Drop the copy where you want, holding Ctrl or Alt keys.

Note that you can copy cels beyond the end of the animation. In this case new empty frames are created automatically.

Copy between documents.

You can copy and paste layers, frames, or cels between different documents using Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste.

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