Pixel Glade

Dithering Brushes

free pixel art brushes

This page compiles dithering brushes I made for Clip Studio Paint, Krita, and Aseprite. They are all donationware, every donation is appreciated but is not required.

Example dither patterns are displayed at the top including a flower, dot, cross, half tone, and spaced dot pattern. Beneath are example pixel art gradients from dark purple to light blue, and an example pixel art beneath of a city. The gradient was extracted from the sky.

Contents

Clip Studio Paint

I made a pixel art brush set for Clip Studio Paint (CSP). Get the brushes from Ko-fi or find the brush set from the Clip Studio Assets store.

As of April 2022 it has over 7k downloads. The useful feature is it shows previews of what dithering pattern you have selected, and includes a broad range of patterns used in PC-98 games. It contains x22 .sut files which are a CSP format.

Download Link

Download CSP-Pixel-Art-Dithering-Brushes-pixelglade.zip (1.63MB, ZIP)

Krita

A pixel art brush set for Krita based on the CSP one. Get the brush set on Ko-fi or this website.

The x25 brushes in this set are formatted as a .bundle file which can be loaded using the Resources Manager in Setting and selecting Import. Here is a preview of the 25 patterns:

A preview of the 25 dithering patterns in the Krita brush set. It includes a half tone, flower and cross patterns, lines, zigzags, and variable dot patterns.

Download Link

Download Krita-Pixel-Art-Dithering-Brushes-pixelglade.zip (735KB, ZIP)

Aseprite

Aseprite brushes can be made by manually selecting a region and pressing Ctrl+B on an image or by loading a user.aseprite-brushes file into Roaming Data. The aseprite-brushes file is in .XML format so you can delete entries as you like. The file name needs to be the same.

Download Link

Download the user.aseprite-brushes file along with reference images as a single ZIP file pixelglade-Aseprite-brushes (14KB, ZIP) on this site or from Ko-fi, or download the parts separately.

You can download the aseprite-brushes file (10KB, .aseprite-brushes) along with the images below that show what area to select if you want to manually create the brushes. If you want a PC-88 style, when changing the pixel ratio of your document the brushes will change too.

Dithering patterns in black and white with a red outline to indicate the selection area.

The above example is shown at 500% for clarity. Click here for the 100% size version to use in the program.

The dithering brushes sometimes behave a little strangely. You need to have a transparency on your palette as the background colour and a colour of choice as the foreground colour. Sometimes the change will not register unless you click on and off a colour.

How to draw pixel dithering gradients

I made a YouTube video with instructions on how to use the brushes in Clip Studio Paint.

How to make pixel art text and gradients in Clip Studio Paint (CSP)

This video also captures my voice after four months on testosterone.

Examples of dithering patterns

Examples of dithering patterns on pixel art of a woman's face from the game Clone Doll Kagai Jugyo for the PC-98. Dithering has been applied to the hair, skin, and irises.

In this example, the gradient varies from a half tone, to a four dot and cross or flower pattern.

Examples of dithering patterns on pixel art of the sky from the game Custom Mate 3 for the PC-98. Dithering has been applied to the clouds and the blue sky behind them.

In this example, the gradient varies from a half tone, to a four dot and cross or flower pattern. The pattern is applied to convey varying lightness and darkness in the image. The pixel density varies in sparseness.

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