PickCells – Procedurally Generate Pixel Art

In plain words

PickCells is a tool that generates pixel art sprites procedurally based on mask-defined areas. Designed for game developers and artists, it helps brainstorm ideas, prototype artwork, and create temporary sprites for 2D games during early development or game jams. The tool produces rough sketches rather than final assets, using procedural generation to quickly explore visual possibilities based on loosely defined input constraints.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hi all, I hacked this little tool on a couple of train rides during my vacation to procedurally generate sprites based on loosely defined areas in a mask. You can use it to brainstorm ideas, to prototype art or to generate some temporary sprites for your 2d game. It's likely not good enough to give you a final…

• 
  Little Procedural Pixel Worlds2022 · jason.today · ▲227

  Took a break from the falling sand simulation blog posts this week to work on another small project. It's a little pixel world generator- each time you visit, you'll see a new little world. I really like this stuff and had a blast building it yesterday!

• CP
  ClojureScript pixel game engine with Blender live-reloading2019 · mccormick.cx · ▲285

  Hi HN! 2d spritesheets for game development are often distributed as a PNG image, sometimes with a separate JSON or XML metadata document describing the layout, including any animation sequences within the sheet. Sometimes there is no metadata document and you have to work it out and manually write custom code to chop up the spritesheet and reference the sprites you want. I think it would be good if it became standard practice to distribute spritesheet PNGs with the metadata inline inside a PNG "chunk" so the whole thing is self-contained. That way artists can just distribute one file, and…

• 
  CryPixels2018 · crysoftware.itch.io · ▲84

  Procedural Sprite Generator

• 
  Pixelied Color Palette Generator2024 · pixelied.com · ▲259

  Pick, edit & visualize - your free palette generator tool

• 
  Pixel-Art.ai2024 · pixel-art.ai · ▲98

  Generate vibrant pixel art

• 
  Offline sketch to image geneartor in a whiteboard2024 · drawing.pics · ▲87

  I'm excited to share my indie product, https://drawing.pics In this post, I'll share all the technical details behind it. So, what exactly is DrawingPics? It's an image-to-image and sketch-to-image generator that runs in a whiteboard, allowing you to draw your draft directly on the canvas and easily generate the desired image. How does it work from a technical perspective? TLDR: Miniconda + Diffusers + Electron + Excalidraw One of the most important aspects of creating this tool was finding a stable diffusion locally inference solution. There are many solutions available, such as…

• 
  SimCity, but with Permits▲887

  A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.

  Life & fun · 24h ago · permit.petercai.com

• IV
  I've been paying for a rural Tanzanian's education for 10 years▲778

  Life & fun · 13d ago · tanzaniaeducationproject.org

• 
  Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app▲728

  Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.

  Life & fun · 14d ago · bigwords.page

• 
  Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard▲573

  Play a free virtual guitar online with your keyboard or by touch. Slow songs down and see every chord, string and strum. Acoustic, classic, electric and bass.

  Life & fun · 8d ago · guitoro.com

• 
  See *almost* any carriers phone settings▲432

  Carrier settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware, decoded and compared: APNs, VoLTE, 5G and Wi-Fi Calling per carrier, and what each build changed.

  Life & fun · 12d ago · carrierexplode.com

• 
  The whole Solar System and every tracked satellite, live in the browser▲407

  Life & fun · 22d ago · space.bl2.net

• 
  Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android▲1,521

  Hi HN! I’m proud to share that we have built a real 3rd party iMessage client for Android. We did it by reverse engineering the iMessage protocol and encryption system. It's available to download today (no waitlist): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beeper.ima and there's a technical writeup here: https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works. Unlike every other attempt to build an iMessage app for Android (including our first gen app), Beeper Mini does not use a Mac server relay in the cloud. The app connects directly to Apple…

  Work · 2023 · beeper.com

• 
  Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers▲1,063

  Hey! I made Heynote entirely for my own use case. For many years, I always had an Emacs instance running with the scratch buffer open, even long after I had abandoned Emacs as my programming editor in favor of more recent IDE:s. The simplicity of having just one big scratch buffer appeals to me, but I still want to separate the different things I jot down somehow (without using tabs or similar). Previously, my solution was to insert a bunch of blank lines between the notes, but hitting C-A would still select the entire buffer. That's why I came up with the concept of "blocks", which turned…

  Work · 2023 · heynote.com

• 
  LogoFast▲988

  Make beautiful logos with AI, fast & free

  AI · 2023 · logofa.st

• 
  FuseBase▲939

  Client collaboration platform for professional services

  Dev tools · 2023 · thefusebase.com

• 
  Beep! 2.0▲871

  Fastest tool to assign and share visual tasks with your team

  Work · 2023 · justbeepit.com

• 
  Inbox Zero▲821

  Clean Up Your Inbox In Minutes Newsletter management, AI automation, and email analytics. Inbox Zero is the open-source email app that puts you back in control of your inbox.

  AI · 2023 · getinboxzero.com