klad v0.2.0: pixel art

klad 0.2.0 adds pixel art. There are no downloads here: build it from source (see the README) or sign up for the pre-built app at klad.studio.

What is new:

• Pixel layers. A layer of whole pixels, each one bound to a palette colour: change the colour and every pixel drawn with it follows. The editor zooms in whole steps, shows a grid between the pixels and has a Real size panel.
• Tools on the grid. A pencil and an eraser, fill, rectangles, ellipses and lines, a mirror line, and a box that selects pixels to move, flip, turn, recolour or copy.
• Shading. Ramps of five steps, lighter and darker inks that step pixels along their ramp, dithering, and a one-pixel outline.
• Animation. Frames, holds, clips and onion skins work on pixel layers, and a keyed pixel layer moves by whole pixels.
• Tiles. A drawing can wrap at its edges to make one repeating tile, or be cut into tiles and exported as a Godot TileSet.
• Palette variants. One sprite, several colourings, like a blue team beside a red one, exported one by one or all at once.
• In and out. Exports at whole-number sizes that stay sharp, sprite sheets, animated GIFs, Aseprite files in both directions, and pictures turned into pixels.
• Checks. klad check, or Check the pixels in the editor, marks stray pixels, doubled corners, jagged lines, banding and colours outside the palette.
• For agents. klad pixel --grid draws a sprite from text with one character per pixel, klad pixels reads it back, and a third skill, klad skill pixel, covers the craft and animating a sprite.
• Samples and a guide. Two pixel samples, sprout and ground, and the guide Drawing pixel art.

Drawings are saved in format klad/7. Older drawings open unchanged.

Every change is in the changelog.

klad v0.1.17

The first tagged version of klad, a 2D painting and animation app you share with a coding agent. There are no downloads here: build it from source (see the README) or sign up for the pre-built app at klad.studio.

What klad does at this version:

• The agent loop. An agent paints through the klad command line while you paint in the editor, on the same drawing, and each sees the other's changes about a second later. The agent reads the notes you pin on the canvas and what you select, every change is a step in one shared history, and two agent skills come with it (klad skill, klad skill drawing).
• Drawing. A pen with pressure, brushes as data, fills against line art, vector shapes with editable points, masks, clipping, lasso and transform. A stroke stays a stroke: recolour, resize, bend, move or delete it later, yours or the agent's.
• Painting. Two dozen brushes and a brush editor (textures, colour dynamics, wet paint, smudge, blending, paint with body), layer effects, blend modes, adjustment layers, depth, picture layers, generators and text in open fonts. Erasers, smudges and blends stay with the strokes they were drawn over. Paint over turns any picture into brushwork, and compare measures a drawing against a reference.
• Animation. Frames, a timeline, onion skin, clips, in-betweens made from your key drawings, and keys that move, turn, scale and fade layers. Exports as PNGs, frames, sprite sheets or straight into Godot.
• Bones (a preview). Bones layers, chains and IK, parts attached to a bone or bent by weights, poses, and a Godot rig and parallax scenes as exports. Posing may still change; drawings keep their rigs when it does.
• The editor. Menus and a command palette, a start window with first steps and six sample drawings, align and distribute, transforming a whole layer, problem reports, and a daily check for a new version that you can turn off.
• Drawings in git. A drawing is a folder of plain files (format klad/6, documented under the MIT licence). An edit changes only the files of what it edits, so drawings edited on two branches merge.
• Platforms and licence. klad runs on macOS, and builds and passes its tests on Linux and Windows. It is source-available, not open source: free to build and use for yourself, and inside a company with less than 500,000 euros a year in revenue.

Every change is in the changelog.