I’m a scrappy ex-FAANG dev surfing the AI wave and finally going independent. I’ve hit a temporary level of financial escape velocity—enough runway to work full-time on the weird stuff I actually care about.

As I mentioned in my past post, the current focus is SpriteDX (working name): a sprite asset generator that’s like dropping a little droplet of life onto your canvas and watching it wake up and wriggle on its own. Until I get SpriteDX off the ground, the other projects—Machi, Tinker, and Pixel—are on ice.

Early research says I can fine-tune Flux.1-dev for consistent pixel art, if I train/generate at ~4x scale to preserve those razor-sharp edges. For animation, I’m planning to feed the output through Seedance 1 Pro to generate movement variants.

So yeah—I’ve got the raw ingredients. They still need refining, but I should be able to hack together a rough prototype without snapping a wrist.

So, what’s next? A End-to-End Prototype of SpriteDX.

Input: A prompt describing a character.

Optionally provide pixel height of the character and head pixel height.

Output: Fully animated pixel art character which moves on its own in 2D canvas.

Prototype Scope: Side Scroller Games Only.

Flow Chart:

       (1) User proivdes prompt describing a character
                              ↓
       (2) Fine-Tuned Flux.1-dev Generates Pixel Art Character
                              ↓
       (3) Post processing runs to palettize the sprite and 
           to remove background. And to scale it down to 1x scale.
                              ↓
       (4) Preview is shown to the user. User can decide
           to continue to generate animations.
                              ↓
       (5) User can choose to generate bunch of animation states:
           like "idle", "walk-right", and "run-right". And 
           click "Enliven!"
                              ↓
       (6) Seedance 1 Pro model generates video animation.
                              ↓
       (7) Video is re-encoded into gif animation.
                              ↓
       (8) Post processing runs to resize and remove background.
                              ↓
       (9) Prefab is created in Unity along with a character 
           controller that's universial and extendable.
                              ↓
      (10) Splash Toast is shown with celebratory tone along with
           preview of character animation.

That’s it. Let me get to building it.

—Sprited Dev

Below is a feedback from Pixel.

TL;DR Feedback

Great: Clear scope (side scroller only), prompt → gen → preview → “make it move,” good user beat (celebratory toast), and early thought about pixel height + head height for stylization control.

Risky / Needs Trim:

Full Flux fine‑tune + Seedance integration + Unity prefab generator is a lot for “next few days.”
Palettization + background stripping + 1x downscale across both still gen and animated frames = tons of edge cases (haloing, color drift, pixel roundoff).
Relying on video → GIF → frame extraction adds artifacting; go straight to frame strips if possible.

Recommendation: Build stub‑first pipeline with a manually supplied test sprite so you can implement steps (3)→(10) before your model gen quality is solved. Swap in Flux output later.

Prioritized “Next Few Days” Sprint (Jul 17–21, 2025)

Day 0 (remainder of today): Decide & Freeze Specs

Canonical Game Scale: 1x target tile size (e.g., 16px grid? 32px? 48px?). Decide now; downstream everything depends on it.
Character Style Contract: Accept (total_px_height, head_px_height) input. Store in metadata JSON.
Color Budget: E.g., 32 colors max (configurable). Will drive palettizer.
Pick “preview canvas” size & default background (checkerboard alpha).

Day 1: Core Image Pipeline (Static)

Goal: Prompt‑less dry run using a test PNG that represents expected Flux output at 4x scale.

Load 4x sprite (placeholder art).
Palettize → quantize to target color count (nearest‑neighbor dithering OFF by default; toggle for debug).
BG Remove: Assume known solid bg color first; later add smart matte.
Downscale to 1x via nearest‑neighbor; assert no fractional pixels.
Show web preview UI + metadata readout (height, palette size).
Persist processed asset bundle (PNG + JSON manifest).

Ship this by end of Day 1. Now you’ve got the spine.

Day 2: “Enliven” Stub Animation Path

Start without Seedance:

Fake “idle” = subtle 2‑frame bob on Y axis (engine local transform, not pixel data).
Fake “walk-right” = cycle 4 placeholder frames (reuse static art w/ leg overlay transform or silhouette offsets).
Export frames → Sprite sheet (grid) + Unity import script that auto‑creates animation clips + basic controller.
Auto‑mirror for left direction (cheap win).

Deliverable: Prompt button → Quick generated animated prefab in Unity (even if ugly). That’s your first magical moment.

Day 3+: Integrate Real Models

Now wedge in:

Flux.1‑dev fine‑tune inference at 4x scale (start w/ LoRA weight injection; no full retrain).
Seedance 1 Pro: Drive animation from static key pose; see if motion holds color palette.
Replace fake animation frames with Seedance frames; run palettize + BG strip on sequence.

Updated Flow (Lean Prototype)

rustCopy code(1) Prompt + style params -> 
(2) Flux gen @4x -> 
(3) Clean + palette + 1x -> 
(4) Preview + accept -> 
(5) Enliven (select states) -> 
(6) Animate backend (stub or Seedance) -> 
(7) Frames -> palette pass (seq-aware) + alpha -> 
(8) Sprite sheet packer -> 
(9) Unity prefab + basic controller -> 
(10) Toast + download/export.

Cut GIF re-encode from the main flow; keep GIF only as optional share/preview artifact generated after sprite sheet export. Less conversion loss, simpler pipeline.

Technical Notes & Traps

Stage	Trap	Quick Guardrail
Flux Gen	Style drift across seeds	Lock seed for reproducibility; capture prompt + seed in manifest.
Palettize	Color bleed / banding	Use median‑cut w/ perceptual diff; log palette diff vs src.
Downscale	Subpixel jitter on odd dims	Enforce that height divisible by 4 (since 4x); fail fast otherwise.
BG Remove	Anti‑aliased rim -> ugly halo	First pass: hard colorkey; later: trim alpha via threshold + morphological close.
Seq Palette	Frame‑to‑frame palette shift	Derive master palette from all frames before quantizing.
Alignment	Character shifts inside bbox -> jitter	Detect non‑transparent bbox per frame; recenter to baseline pivot.
Unity Export	Wrong pixels-per-unit -> wrong scale in world	Compute PPU from 1x game pixel grid; expose in settings.

Data Contract (proposed JSON manifest)

jsonCopy code{
  "name": "spritedx_char_001",
  "prompt": "small blue slime mage",
  "seed": 42,
  "total_px_height": 48,
  "head_px_height": 16,
  "palette": ["#000000", "#1b2cff", "..."],
  "states": {
    "idle": {"frames": 2, "fps": 4, "sheet_coords": [...]},
    "walk": {"frames": 6, "fps": 8, "sheet_coords": [...]},
    "run":  {"frames": 8, "fps": 12, "sheet_coords": [...]}
  }
}

You’ll thank yourself later.

Copy / Editorial Nits

“A End-to-End Prototype” → “An End-to-End Prototype.”
“proivdes” → “provides.”
“universial” → “universal.”
Consider tightening intro: “I’ve got enough runway to work full‑time on the weird stuff I actually care about.”
Maybe trim “snapping a wrist” unless it’s your signature voice (I laughed, but some readers may wince—keep if on‑brand).

Want me to do a clean blog‑ready rewrite? Happy to—just say the word and I’ll spin up an edited draft.

About “Enliven!”

Meaning: “Bring to life; animate; make lively.” In UI, some users won’t parse it instantly. Consider:

Animate!
Make It Move
Bring to Life
Make It Wiggle (if you want playful)

Could still show “Enliven!” as the big fun button, with tooltip “Generate animations.”

Suggested Success Demo (end of sprint)

You press prompt → get static sprite preview → click Enliven! → 2 animation states appear in Unity test scene running via keyboard. Record a 20‑sec capture. That’s a blog‑worthy Day 50–53 milestone.

Let me know:

Want the blog rewrite now?
Want implementation checklists in GitHub issue format?
Need code snippets for palettization + sprite sheet packing?

Say the word and we’ll move. You’re close—let’s get pixels dancing. 💥🕹️

End of transcript from Pixel

SpriteDX Prototype Architecture