dotStudio vs Chroma8

dotStudio is a pixel art creation app that lets you draw pixel art and create animations with an intuitive interface. Draw pixel by pixel, combine frames, and bring your artwork to life. Whether you’re a beginner or a pixel art enthusiast, dotStudio makes creating pixel art animations easy and fun. Key Features -Pixel art editor -Frame-by-frame animation creation -R-eal-time preview -Simple and intuitive UI -Turn your ideas into moving pixel art with dotStudio.

Chroma8 is a focused pixel-art studio for iPhone and iPad — draw, colour, layer and animate at true pixel resolution, then export your work anywhere. No account required to start creating. NEW: COLOUR & PALETTES • A palette bar under the canvas with 11 classic palettes: PICO-8, Game Boy, NES, Commodore 64, CGA, DawnBringer, Sweetie 16, Endesga 32, AAP-64, Resurrect 64 • Make your own: generate palettes from a colour harmony, a gradient, a photo or your art, with hue-shifted shading ramps • Import and export .hex, .gpl, .pal, .txt, .ase, .act and PNG palettes for Aseprite, Photoshop and game engines • Replace any colour across a layer, a frame or the whole animation, or remap art to a palette with dithering • Colour groups recolour a whole shade family at once, keeping shading intact • Colour versions: switch a sprite between looks — a night version, a red team — without changing a pixel, and export a sprite-sheet row per version • Add a palette card with hex codes to your exports AI ASSIST Describe what you want and Chroma8 draws it onto your canvas, where you can edit every pixel. Free for everyone. • Text to sprite — "a small green slime with a highlight" becomes pixel art, not a photo • Photo to pixel art on a reduced palette • Auto-shade, auto-outline and a clean-up pass for stray pixels • Turn one sprite into a walk, run, idle, attack, hit, death, explode or spin cycle • Tween between two keyframes, or retarget a video of yourself onto your sprite • Split a sprite sheet into frames automatically • Every generation kept in a history you can revisit or branch into a new Art It all runs on your device, with no network, no account and no API key. Already pay for an AI service? Optionally connect any OpenAI-compatible endpoint or Anthropic — OpenRouter, OpenAI, Groq or your own Ollama. Your key stays in the Keychain on that device. DRAW WITH PRECISION • Grid-accurate canvas with brush, eraser, fill and selection tools • Round or square brush tips, 1 to 6 pixels across • Recolour Only — paint only where there is already colour • Eyedropper, recent colours and any colour from the system picker • Select, move and turn a block of pixels • Reference photos with quarter-turn rotation • Undo and redo across the whole frame LAYERS & FRAMES • Unlimited layers with visibility, lock and opacity • Frame-by-frame animation with onion skinning • Adjustable playback speed ORGANIZE YOUR WORK • Group related Arts into Projects • Search your library by name, or by what a piece looks like • Everything saved on your device — works fully offline EXPORT ANYWHERE • PNG, animated GIF, MP4 video and scalable SVG • Game-ready sprite sheets with a JSON sidecar CHROMA8 PRO Chroma8 is free to use, supported by ads. Chroma8 Pro removes ads and unlocks Cloud Sync (sign in with email, Google or Apple to back up and access your library across devices), offered as an auto-renewing subscription: • Monthly: $3.99/month after a 7-day free trial • Yearly: $24.99/year after a 7-day free trial Payment is charged to your Apple ID account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple ID account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when you purchase a subscription. A complete guide is built in, covering every feature. Terms of Use: https://colondev.com/apps/chroma8/Terms.html Privacy Policy: https://colondev.com/apps/chroma8/Privacy.html Chroma8 — pixel art, the way it's meant to be made.