You can use smaller or larger pixels, but this pixel size on US Letter-sized pages gives us a resolution of 31x40 px which is great for the simple animations we’ll be creating. “31x40” is mildly infuriating and our character will be more centered if the number of horizontal pixels is even, but trying to change all column widths equally only results in odd numbers for some reason, so to get the resolution down to 30x40 I had to change the widths of columns A, B and AC, AD to 0.65cm. There, change the Row Height to 0.55cm and the column width to 0.55cm. To make the cells into square pixels first select all (Command-A) then go to the Cells > Format menu, in the Home tab. Now the pages always stay in the same position whenever you scroll. In the zoom level dropdown menu select One Page: So first, let’s setup our Excel file. Start a new document and select Page Layout either in the Layout tab or with the bottom left buttons: This tutorial will show you everything you need to make eye-catching pixel art animations using just a trusty spreadsheet. Excel pages will be our animation frames, and cells will be our pixels. We’re going to be making what I like to call “scrollbooks.” They’re the digital version of the good old fashioned flipbooks, with scrolling replacing the flipping of the pages.

It just so happens that Excel is pretty great at getting the same treatment. The original 'motion picture,' flipbooks give the illusion of animation by quickly flipping through the pages, where each page holds the same character in a progressively different position.

It’s very unlikely that you’ll ever think of fun, creativity or animation with spreadsheets, but maybe we can do something about that!Īs a child, you may have turned a school textbook into a flipbook animation. When you think of Excel, you inevitably think of numbers, calculations or finances.

Hexels basic tutorial