pxart 0.1.0 free software, MIT licensed

Pixel art
as text.

A sprite is a small plain-text file: a palette, then a grid of characters. It renders to PNG. Language models can write it, git can diff it, and you can read it.

Get started Tutorials GitHub

$ pip install git+https://github.com/thethirdbearsolutions/pxart

One Python file. Pillow is its only dependency.

edit me

—

01 Write, render, look, fix

The tool is built for one loop. Every step is plain text in and a picture or a number out, so a person or a model can run it.

write
```
k #3f2631
g #43e1b3
y #fee761

....kkkk....
...kggggk...
..kgyggygk..
...kggggk...
....kkkk....
```
Type rows of palette keys in any editor. The sprite's size is the grid's size: there's nothing to declare or count.
render
pxart render draws each pixel as a block, with a grid and coordinate rulers so you can count pixels.

look

$ pxart anim hero.px:walk/down
walk/down/1  110ms  vs walk/down/0: shift +0,+1 then 26px (7%) (no shift: 205px)
walk/down/2  110ms  vs walk/down/1: shift -1,-1 then 82px (23%) (no shift: 278px)

anim, onion, stats and diff print what changed as numbers, so a 1px jump that's too faint to see still shows up.

fix
```
$ pxart check face.px
FAIL face.px: 1 error(s)
face.px:8: E_UNKNOWN_KEY (row 2, x=[8]): keys 'q' aren't in the palette
```
check reports every problem at once, each with a stable code, a line and a pixel. Edits rewrite only the lines that changed.

02 Why text?

A model can write it

A sprite is characters on a grid, with no binary format and no coordinates to get wrong. A language model writes the rows, renders them, reads the numbers and fixes what's off, in the same loop you'd use.

Git can diff it

--- face.px
+++ face.px
@@ -9 +9 @@
-...kggggk...
+...kgyygk...

Two pixels changed, so the diff is two characters. Review art in a pull request the way you review code.

You can read it

Open any .px in an editor and the picture is right there. Comments say what each key is for, and shared palette files keep a whole pack on the same colors.

03 What it does

02 · Animation

Animation you can measure

Frames, timing and pivots in the file. anim prints what moved between frames once the whole-body bob is removed, so a walk cycle that's secretly a bob shows up as a number.