Spell VFX

224 pixel art spell animations on exact 64x64 cells (1096 frames) in 8 elements: fire, frost, lightning, water, poison, holy, shadow and arcane. Every element has the whole kit: cast, projectile, impact, beam, strike, ground area, aura and shield. For action RPGs, top-down adventures, roguelikes, survivors-likes, platformers and tower defense.

Licence in one line: use them in your commercial games; do not resell the files. No credit required.

What you get

• 8 elements x 28 animations each. Each element has its own shapes, not a recolour: flames and embers, ice crystals, zigzag bolts, water drops and rings, poison bubbles, holy rays and twinkles, shadow wisps, arcane stars.
• Cast (the element gathers in the hand and flashes), projectile (a 4-frame loop with a trail, drawn in 8 directions), impact (explosion, shatter, discharge, splash, splat, burst, implosion, rune burst).
• Beams that can be any length: a start, a body and an end, each a 4-frame loop in sync, in 4 directions. The body repeats every 64 px, so you lay as many as you need.
• Strikes from above on a 64x128 cell: meteor, icicle, lightning bolt, water geyser, toxic eruption, pillar of light, shadow spikes, falling star.
• Ground areas (8-frame loops): burning ground, ice patch, static field, puddle, toxic pool, holy circle, dark pool, rune circle.
• Auras around a character and shields that form, hold and shatter.
• 16 element icons (16x16 and 32x32) for your skill bar or spell book.

Made to drop in

• Top-down and side view: projectiles in 8 directions, beams in 4, strikes and areas on the ground.
• A JSON for every sheet with every frame's rectangle, the suggested fps, loop or play-once, the anchor point (the hand, the projectile head, the hit point, the ground or the feet) and the hit frame where damage should land.
• Every frame also as its own PNG, plus sheets, at 1x, 2x and 3x, and the palette (.hex, .gpl).
• Exact cells (64x64, strikes 64x128), 1-bit alpha, no outlines: they sit on any floor. The build checks that every beam seam joins.
• The screenshots use Gridwright Dungeon Tileset, Top-Down Characters, Pixel Monsters, Platformer Tileset and Side-View Characters (each sold separately, not included).

Try before you buy

The free sample has 23 animations (102 frames): the fire projectile in all 8 directions, the fire impact, the frost beam in 4 directions, the lightning strike and the holy shield, with the same sheets and JSON.

What it does not include

No sound, no Aseprite files, no engine project files or particle systems. Beams come in 4 directions (not diagonal). No melee slashes (those are in Gridwright Combat VFX). The art is drawn at 1x; the 2x and 3x files are scaled copies.

Licence

Use and modify in personal and commercial projects. Shipping the effects inside your game is fine. No resale or redistribution of the assets, modified or not. Credit is appreciated, not required. Not for AI training or NFTs.

How it was made

Every frame is drawn by code: each spell is a rule that draws flames, crystals, bolts, drops, bubbles, rays, wisps and stars per frame in the spell's own direction and bands them onto a 5-tone colour ramp per element. The code was written with AI-assisted tools. No image generator was used, and no third-party art is included.

Missing a spell, an element or a direction? Leave a comment: the pack gets updates.