Slime Pixel Art Template
A 16×16 starter character in five colors — the fastest way to learn silhouette, ramp and recolor workflow in one sprite.
Palette · 5 colors
Create your own
Design breakdown
01Silhouette: one mass, two anchor pixels
The body is a single rounded blob that widens toward the ground — heavy shapes read as 'creature' instantly. The two bottom corners that flare out are the only asymmetric pixels, and they do the grounding work that a cast shadow would.
02Ramp: dark edge → mid body → top highlight
Three greens build the form: the darkest sits on the lower-left edge (away from the implied top-right light), the mid tone fills the mass, and the light green runs along the top arc as one connected cluster. The dark navy appears only in the pupils — which is why the eyes pop.
03Face placement
Eyes sit just above the vertical midline with a two-pixel gap. That placement is what makes it read as 'looking forward'; one row lower it would read as a mouth, one row higher as antennae.
How to customize
- Fill the body (G) with any mid color, then swap the two ramp greens to match — a full reskin in under a minute.
- Move the highlight cluster to the opposite side to flip the light direction.
- Widen the bottom two rows for a heavier creature, or add a 2-pixel antenna pair for a 'sprout' variant.
- Change the pupil color to red or yellow to turn it from friendly to hostile.
Animation ideas
- Bounce idle: duplicate the frame, squash it 1px shorter and 1px wider, alternate at ~200ms.
- Hop: three frames — squash, stretched-tall, landing squash — with the bottom shadow pixels split from the body.
- Death: melt the outline down row by row, keeping the eyes until the last frame.
Related
How to Draw Pixel Art Characters
A step-by-step approach to pixel art characters: proportions that read at small sizes, where the face pixels go, and how to keep a character animatable.
OpenExample16×16 Slime — Character Example
Why the classic slime works at 16×16: a single-mass silhouette, a 4-color ramp with hue-shifted shadow, and eyes placed for instant readability.
OpenTutorialStart from a template
Take apart a finished sprite to learn its palette and shading, then remake it in your own colors.
Open