Choosing your sprite size is one of the first art decisions in a pixel art game, and one of the hardest to change later. Here's how the common sizes compare and how to pick.
01The Common Sizes
16×16
Classic 8-bit and Game Boy territory. Characters are iconic shapes with a few colours; animation is limited to a handful of frames. Fast to make, very readable, but little room for detail or facial expression.
32×32
The indie sweet spot. Enough room for recognisable faces, outfits and weapons, while each animation stays quick to draw. Many platformers and RPGs use 32×32 tiles with characters around 32×48 or 32×32.
48×48
RPG Maker MZ and MV's native size (3 frames × 4 directions per character). A good choice if you target RPG Maker or want a little more detail than 32×32.
64×64 and larger
Detailed 16-bit-era look with expressive animation. Costs noticeably more time per frame — or use AI generation to keep up.
02How to Choose
- Pick a target screen resolution first (e.g. 320×180, 384×216 or 640×360) and scale it up by a whole number to 1920×1080.
- Choose a tile size that divides into that resolution comfortably (16 or 32 for 320×180).
- Size characters relative to tiles: platformer heroes are usually 1–2 tiles tall; top-down RPG characters 1 tile wide and 1–1.5 tiles tall.
- Keep one pixel density across the whole game — mixing 16 px and 64 px art at the same zoom looks wrong.
03Keeping Pixels Crisp in Engines
- Unity: set Filter Mode to Point (no filter), Compression to None, and use the Pixel Perfect Camera.
- Godot 4: set Default Texture Filter to Nearest in Project Settings → Rendering → Textures, and use integer scaling in the stretch settings.
- Scale only by whole numbers (2×, 3×, 4×); non-integer scaling makes some pixels wider than others.
04Making Sprites at Your Chosen Size
Start with a grid from the free Sprite Sheet Template tool, or generate characters at your chosen size with the AI pixel art generator and animate them with the pixel art animator.