About Character Builder
Build custom pixel art characters with customizable head shapes, eyes, mouths, hairstyles, outfits, and color palettes. Free, no sign-up required.
How to use
- Pick a head shape from the four base silhouettes — Round, Square, Long, or Wide. The choice determines the underlying skull proportion and adjusts eye spacing automatically so later parts align without manual tweaking.
- Layer features in order: eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, hair, facial hair. Each slot offers 4-8 pixel-art variants drawn for the 32-by-32 grid, and the live preview updates after every click so you can audition combinations fast.
- Add a top, bottom, and shoes from the outfit panel. The body proportions follow standard 8-bit RPG hero conventions, so anything you put together drops into a tile-pitch game without scaling.
- Adjust palette colors per slot — skin tone, hair color, shirt, pants, shoe color, accessory color. Each color updates the relevant pixels independently so you can recolor for a winter palette, a desert palette, or a clean monochrome look.
- Hit Randomize to shuffle every category at once and discover combinations you would not have built deliberately. Use the lock controls to pin parts you want to keep — common pattern is to lock the head, hair, and outfit while rolling the face.
- Click Download PNG for a 32-by-32 native sprite or a 4x (128-by-128) display version. The native size is what you import into Unity, Godot, Phaser, or GameMaker as a player character; the 4x is for store screenshots and social posts.
- Save to Library pushes the build into your 3D Assets dashboard. The full pixel data and slot selections store together so reopening the asset rebuilds the character exactly — useful for generating a cast of NPCs you reuse across multiple game projects.
Examples
Build the entire cast for a 16-bit RPG
Generate the player hero, two companions, three town NPCs, and four enemy types in under an hour. Save each to your library, export the 32-by-32 PNGs, and import them into your Phaser or Godot project as the cast — no artist on retainer required for prototyping.
Create a matching Twitch streamer avatar set
Build a streamer character, two follower-tier avatars, and an alert mascot in coordinated palettes. Save them all to a Collection, then drop the PNGs into your OBS scenes for instant on-stream branding.
Frequently asked questions
Are these characters ready to drop into a game engine?
Yes. The 32-by-32 PNG export aligns with the classic SNES and GameBoy Advance sprite pitch, so it matches the most common tile size in retro engines. In Unity, set Filter Mode to Point and Pixels Per Unit to 32. In Godot, disable filtering on the texture. In Phaser, call setPixelArt true on the renderer. The PNG carries an alpha channel so the background drops cleanly over any tilemap.
Can I use these sprites commercially?
Yes. Characters you build with Character Builder are yours — sell them in commercial games on Steam, itch.io, mobile stores, console eShops, or anywhere else with no royalties or attribution required. The pixel data is generated on your device from the part library and ToolFluency claims no rights to the output. There is no licensing string attached to your sprite.
What about animation — does it export walk cycles?
The current Character Builder ships single-frame static sprites. For walk cycles, pose variants, or attack frames, take the saved character into Sprite Sheet Generator (linked in Related Tools below) which generates multi-frame animation grids from a base sprite. Or paint additional frames in Pixel Art Maker using the export as your reference layer.
How does this differ from Avatar Mixer?
Avatar Mixer outputs portrait-style head-and-shoulders compositions for chat avatars, profile pics, and dialogue UI. Character Builder produces full-body game sprites with body, outfit, and shoes — the whole character you actually move around the screen. Build the body in Character Builder, then optionally crop a head version for a dialogue portrait that visually matches.
Can I save the build and edit it later?
Yes. Save to Library pushes every slot selection (head shape, eyes, hair, outfit, palette overrides) into your 3D Assets dashboard. Reopen the asset from My Assets and every layer reloads exactly. This is the right workflow when you need a consistent NPC across multiple game prototypes — build once, save, reuse forever.
How big is the part library?
Four head silhouettes, eight eye types, five eyebrows, four noses, eight mouth shapes, plus distinct sets for hair, facial hair, tops, bottoms, shoes, and accessories. The combinatorial space runs into the millions of unique builds, but the procedural draw logic keeps every build internally consistent (eye spacing matches head, mouth sits below nose, etc.).
Part of ToolFluency’s library of free online tools for Creative. No account needed, no data leaves your device.