Gridwright Studio
Pixel Planets cover

What's in the pack

62 pixel art planets and moons that turn, each drawn natively at 32, 64 and 128 px (186 looping animations), plus 6 suns, 4 black holes, 3 spiral galaxies, asteroids, comets, twinkling stars and 6 seamless space backgrounds. 302 pieces, 14424 frames. For space shooters, 4X and strategy maps, idle and incremental games, roguelites, menus and title screens.

Licence in one line: use it in your commercial games; do not resell the files. Credit "Art by Gridwright" with a link.

The planets

terran (5), ocean (4), jungle & swamp (3), forest (1), savanna (1), tundra (2), toxic (3), desert (4), ice (4), lava (4), barren rock (4), moon (8), gas & ice giant (8), dwarf planet (3), crystal (2), cloud-veiled (3), city world (1), dead world (1), glass world (1). 5 of them have rings.

  • Every planet makes one full turn per loop (48 frames at 32 px, 64 at 64 px, 96 at 128 px), and the last frame leads straight back into the first: no jump.
  • Each size is drawn on its own, not scaled: small planets get bigger shapes, big ones more detail.
  • Clouds that drift faster than the ground and cast shadows, city lights on the night side, glowing lava, embossed craters, atmosphere rims, and rings that throw the planet's shadow and their own on it.
  • Light from the top left on every sprite, 1-bit alpha, one ordered dither.

The rest of space

  • 6 suns (yellow, orange, red dwarf, blue giant, white, violet) with boiling surfaces and coronas, 24-frame loops, 3 sizes.
  • 4 black holes with turning accretion discs and a lensed arc, 32-frame loops, 3 sizes.
  • 3 spiral galaxies that turn (64 and 128 px), 12 asteroids tumbling in 16 frames (16 and 32 px), 8 twinkling stars, 3 comets.
  • 6 seamless backgrounds (Indigo, Violet, Teal, Crimson, Emerald, Amber): base, nebula and star layers that tile both ways for parallax, a twinkling star layer and a merged picture each; 12 free-standing nebula clouds; 3 seamless asteroid belts.

Planet Generator included

  • One HTML file that runs offline in your browser: pick any of the 62 planets, roll a new seed, choose 32, 64, 128 or 256 px, shift the hue and saturation, switch clouds and a ring on or off, and export the sheet (1x, 2x, 4x), a frame or the settings.
  • It runs the same planet model as the pack: with a planet's own seed it draws exactly the pack's sheet (checked pixel for pixel in headless Microsoft Edge). Works in Chrome and Edge on Windows.

Made to drop in

  • Sprite sheets at 1x and 2x (frames left to right, then down) plus one still of everything at 1x, 2x and 3x.
  • planets.json: every sheet with frame count, columns, cell size, suggested fps and whether it has a ring.
  • A GIF of every planet, to pick from quickly. Palettes as .hex.
  • The UI and text in the screenshots are previews (not included).

Licence

Use and modify in personal and commercial projects. Shipping the sprites inside your game is fine. No resale or redistribution of the assets, modified or not. Credit is required: "Art by Gridwright" with a link to gridwright.store or this page, in your game's credits or on its store page. Not for AI training or NFTs.

How it was made

Every frame is drawn by code: each planet is a surface map made from 3D noise on the sphere, turned a whole number of columns per frame and lit in four bands with an ordered dither. The code was written with AI-assisted tools. No image generator was used, and no third-party art is included.

Ships for them: Gridwright Space Shooter.
See our packs in a real game: Gridwright Survivors (free demo).
Make your own game: Gridwright Survivors Template.

Want another planet type or a generator feature? Leave a comment: the pack gets updates.

Goes well with