Sprite animation as a service
Great sprites from one picture
GreatSprites turns your picture into a game-ready animation in about half a minute. It plays at the screen's own frame rate, ships as GPU-compressed files with a small runtime, and you see what it costs a phone before you make it.
How it works
From a picture to your game in five steps
- Bring a pictureA character, an object or a background. Upload it, or make one on the site.
- Choose the motionPick from suggestions read from your picture, from the motion library, or write it in your own words, in any language.
- See the cost firstEvery planned animation shows its phone and desktop memory and download before you spend a credit.
- Make and reviewWatch it in the real runtime in a phone frame and a desktop frame. Name the moments your game should react to.
- Export and playDownload the runtime and your animation files, or fetch them by API. A few lines of code play them.
What you can make
Three kinds of great sprites
Characters
A hero, a mascot, a creature. A calm idle loop, rare idle variants, and actions and reactions your game triggers. Named moments let the screen shake on the exact frame a fist lands.
Objects and icons
Items, pickups, card faces, slot symbols. Pops, spins, shines and landings that start and end on your art, so the animated and the static version swap without a jump.
Living backgrounds
Your background, with only the parts that should move moving: water, fire, leaves, lanterns, smoke. One seamless loop, the rest stays a still. Opening soon. More about living backgrounds
Why great sprites
Measured on real devices, not promised
Every claim on this site links to a measurement. These come from games animated with the same runtime you download.
Light on the CPU
On a 4×-throttled phone profile, a game spent 4.4 ms of JavaScript per frame (p50) with its animated character and without it. Another game measured the same way spent 6.6 ms with skeletal rigs, about 2 ms more than without them.
Among the lightest on a real phone
Against 23 of the most-played web slots on a major operator, measured on the same Android phone, an animated game was 2nd lightest in JavaScript per frame and had the shortest blocking task while loading.
Clips that chain
Every clip starts and ends on your own picture. Any clip can follow any other, and the static art can take over at any time without a visible jump.
Cost you can see
GPU memory and download per device class, per animation and per project, before you make anything and exactly after. The recommended budget for a whole game is shown up front.
In your game
A few lines of code
The runtime is a small module for PixiJS v8. You host it and the animation files yourself: no external requests at run time, which is what store and operator reviews ask for.
import { GreatSprites } from './greatsprites/runtime.js';
const gs = await GreatSprites.init(app);
const hero = await gs.character('/sprites/hero/');
app.stage.addChild(hero);
hero.play('idle'); // loops
hero.on('impact', () => shake()); // a named moment
await hero.play('jump'); // back on the stillProjects
Work management built for a game, not a folder
An animation budget
Each project shows its phone and desktop memory and download against a recommended line, and every new animation shows its effect before you make it.
Versions and review
Every make is a version. Compare side by side, mark clips draft, in review or approved, and comment on a moment in the clip.
Review links
Show your client the animations playing in the real runtime with a link they can watch and comment on, but not download.
One style per project
Pace, size and motion style stay the same across every element, so a new animation matches the old ones.
One-click export
The runtime, every animation in use and one weight report for the whole game. The same export by API.
Costs per project
See what each project has used, so an agency can bill its client. Unlimited projects on every paid plan.
Pricing
Pay for what you make
Credits pay for each animation you make; your plan unlocks qualities, tools and how many animations you make at once. An object or character animation starts at 125 credits (1 credit = $0.01) and is priced by its length. Two free tests, no card.