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About

Pixly is a Pixel art editor made in LibGDX, its focus is to help game developers make their pixel art on Android devices.

Pixly development began on January 10th of 2014 as a toy project, but soon enough it got way better than many of the other pixel art editors that were available for Android at that time. So I decided to rise its priority over other projects of mine.

After around two and a half years of development, Pixly was released on the PlayStore July 12th 2016.

The app is currently being maintained on my free time, and you can check the [Roadmap] to check what are the upcoming features.

Backbone​

Pixly is wrote in Java/Kotlin and libgdx, and all it uses for graphics is OpenGL ES.

Interface​

The whole interface was made from scratch. Windows, dialogs, color choosers, buttons, gestures... No library was used, not even Android's, not even LibGDX's Stage2D.

At first, all buttons, windows and dialogs were only rects, and the first icons (which were made on GIMP), were all 16x16, and very ugly:

Some time around 2014 I decided to give a facelift on the app and spent some time redesigning the UI. I picked up a palette (the Arne palette, you can find it on the app), and re-made all the icons, made a patch-9 for the buttons and the windows. Moved some stuff around, and the result is pretty much what you see today.

And believe it or not, all the icons were made inside Pixly itself. Most of them were done while I was on bus/subway commuting to uni. No joke.

About me​

Photo

Hi there! I'm Gustavo Maciel, also known as Tavo, and some people recognize me by the nickname of Gtoknu. I'm a programmer who makes games and tools to help making games as a hobby.

You can reach me on: Twitter: Gtoknu GitHub: GitHub Email: gus (at) tavomaciel (dot) com

Thanks​

First of all, thank you for using Pixly! And these people here, are the ones that helped me out directly or indirectly, in no particular order:

  • Everyone that participated on the beta-test back in 2015
  • Riko Watashi, for making the current pixel logo and giving me suuuuch a great of a feedback!
  • Amir Uqdah, Guilherme Henrique, Solar Lune, Creator, Marco Aurelio, Vitor Santana and librix for giving me helpful feedback, testing the app and sending me reports, or hinting me of an awesome feature (or all of the three!)
  • Isabel Sousa, my girlfriend, I started the project with the intention to teach her pixel art when no other app would do a good job. Thanks to her for supporting me to continue the app!
  • All the people that gave me great ideas on Reddit, Twitter, Email, and on Trello!