How to set up a smooth brush in Aseprite?
It might not be evident at first as Aseprite is mostly streamlined for pixel art, but you can find additional brush settings here:
Jan 4, 2026
Thernz's cool spritework made me think of possible fighting game moves and how could they look if being animated. *dreams in CPS-2*
I figured why not drawing something for fun and an opportunity to yap here. It's a good practice for me, fan art for Akiaji Margo, and a pixel animation breakdown for everyone curious about the process.
Shout outs to Thernz for a permission to work their sprite.
Before starting the process of animation I usually breaking the sprite down into simple to read lineart. For that I use a smooth brush for which is far from being perfect but it does its job. I'm making sketches in twice bigger resolution than the original sprite and then convert them into the reference layer.
The animation process is relatively straightforward and done in four passes.
It might not be evident at first as Aseprite is mostly streamlined for pixel art, but you can find additional brush settings here:
It's basically a layer that preserves its content resolution. So when you change the image resolution, reference layer won't be affected.
I use this to draw sketches in high resolution first and then convert them to reference layers to draw pixel art over them.
I'm going to attach a work file down below if anyone wants to take a look into it.
💾 akiaji-margo.ase Download - 1 MB