Paint of Persia is an interesting pixel art rotoscoping pixel art tool I came across recently, and it looked interesting. Animating is one of my least favorite tasks, and while I don’t particularly like rotoscoped styles, I can appreciate it.
There are a wide variety of uses for a tool like this, ranging from simply wanting a game with a rotoscoped style, to wanting to draw over reference easier.
Keep reading for my thoughts on Paint of Persia!
The program works by overlaying a simple pixel art editor in a transparent window over whatever source you’re rotoscoping. By changing the opacity of the background color and the animation, you can easily draw directly over top of the source animation.
Pros:
- It includes a good “quick tour” option for learning the program for the first time.
- There are a number of export options, including exporting as a sprite sheet.
- It has intuitive controls that are easy to use.
- It’s currently free to use.
Cons:
- When using two monitors, the program’s separate windows spread out between the two monitors, which can get a little annoying.
- It’s a fairly simple program, and similar results can be achieved in other image-editing programs such as Graphics Gale, by saving a gif of the source image and then drawing in a layer over top. That may be an easier method, since it seems more difficult to pause the source on the exact frame you want in Paint of Persia in order to paint over top.
You can download Paint of Persia on itch.io
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