Tech Walkthrough: Compiling Aseprite from Source - A Step by Step Guide

🎨 What Is Aseprite?

Aseprite is a beloved open-source pixel art tool used by indie game developers, artists, and hobbyists to create animated sprites, tilesets, and game assets. With its frame-by-frame animation timeline, intuitive interface, and customizable workflow, Aseprite has become industry standard for crafting everything from 8-bit heroes to UI elements in a variety of games.

You’ve probably seen its touch in acclaimed indie titles like:

Celeste – the critically acclaimed platformer with lush pixel landscapes and emotional storytelling
Dead Cells – a rogue-lite action game with fluid animation and vibrant pixel visuals
Starbound – a sprawling sandbox exploration game

Whether you're designing assets for Unity or Godot, or just experimenting with pixel art for fun, Aseprite offers the flexibility and precision that all artists dream of, drawn from the nostalgic charm of the classics.

🙌 Supporting the Aseprite Team

I originally bought two copies of Aseprite, one for myself and one for my wife. We’d spend cozy evenings sketching pixel art, tweaking animations, and swapping creative ideas. Then something unexpected happened... our kids, ages 11 and 8, began watching us, fascinated by the little characters and animations we brought to life.

Soon they wanted to try it too. They started doodling pixel foxes, animating bouncing blobs, and giggling at their own creations. At that point, I realized they didn’t need full licenses just to explore and have fun, especially since their usage was purely for fun. So, I decided to compile an open-source build of Aseprite just for them. It gave them space to create freely while giving me a chance to learn something new myself.

But before diving into this guide, I want to make something crystal clear: Aseprite deserves your support. The developers have generously allowed compilation from source under their license, and this tutorial isn’t about bypassing their work. It’s a solution rooted in practicality and respect. If you're planning to use Aseprite for serious or commercial work, you NEED to purchase a license, it helps the team continue building the tool we all love.

🔗 You can support Aseprite here:

🧰 Tools and Dependencies You’ll Need

We will need a handful of essential tools and libraries to compile Aseprite from source. Here is a list of them and don't worry, we will cover them one by one in the following sections.

📦 Build Essentials

CMake: for configuring the build system
Python(3.x): needed by Skia build scripts
Git: to get the source code of Aseprite
Depot Tools: for managing dependencies across multiple Git repositories

🖥️ Compiler Options

C++ Compiler, such as
- MSVC: for Windows systems and we will use this in this walkthrough
- Clang: better performance than MSVC, recommended for macOS
- GCC: for Linux systems

🎨 Graphics Backend

Skia: Google's 2D graphic library that Aseprite relies on
- We need to build Skia separately from binary
- This is the most important dependency for Aseprite

💡 System Considerations

Operating System: My OS is Windows, if your system is different, then choose a different C++ compiler mentioned previously
RAN: 8GB should be enough
Disk Space: While Aseprite itself is about 25 MB, but tools and dependencies required is about 10 GB lol 😂

Step 1️⃣: Installing Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition on Windows

To compile Aseprite, we will need a C++ development environment, so we will get the Visual Studio Community Edition 2022, which is free for individual use.

1.1 Download the Installer

Head to the Visual Studio Community download page and grab the installer.

1.2 Run the Installer

Launch the downloaded .exe file and follow the prompts.

1.3 Select Workloads

Choose Desktop development with C++. This includes the MSVC compiler, Windows SDK, and build tools required for Aseprite.
Optionally, you can also select .NET desktop development and Game development with Unity, this includes support for C# and necessary tools for working with Unity.
In fact, this is not optional, I mean you want to build some games in Unity and/or Godot, don't you? 😎

install visual studio community with required packages

1.4 Install and Wait

Click Install and let Visual Studio do its thing. It may take a few minutes depending on your internet speed.

Step 2️⃣: Install and Configure Git

If you're not a developer and just want to download Aseprite's source code without diving into complex Git setups, worry not! Git can be run in a way that's beginner friendly and doesn’t require keys, terminal magics, or secret handshakes. So, let's get to it!

2.1 Download Git for Windows

Visit git-scm.com
Go to Download and click Download for Windows, then run the installer and leave most settings at their defaults

2.2 Sign up Github (Optional, as all repositories we clone are public, so we can clone them without signing up)

If you have Google Account (you do, right? LOL 😆), then simply visit GitHub Sign in page, and click Continue with Google, then follow the prompts.
- if you don't have, then you can visit the GitHub main page to sign up.

Step 3️⃣: Get the Aseprite Source Code

Now we need to grab the source code of Aseprite from its repository. There are two ways to do this:

Using Git or
Downloading the Aseprite-v1.x-Source.zip file from the lastest Aseprite release (Not Recommended)

Using Git

If you have Git installed on Windows, go to your desired folder(e.g. C:\aseprite), then Right Click -> Show More Options -> Open Git Bash Here then get the Aseprite Scource code by executing:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite.git

Git may ask you to enter your GitHub username and password the first time you pull code.

This will pull the Aseprite code along with its internal dependencies like laf,pixman,and freetype.
If you have already cloned the repository without

--recursive

you can fix this by running:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Downloading the source file directly

This is NOT the recommended way for getting the Aseprite source file, as you have to fetch Aseprite's internal dependencies by yourself, which is very risky and error prone! I will not cover how to get those dependencies in this tutorial.

Go to the Aseprite repository, then click on the Latest button, at the time of writting this blog, it is version Aseprite v1.3.14. github latest release button Then scroll all the way down, you will see several files, click the Aseprite-v1.x-Source.zip to download the source files. Extract the files from the Aseprite-v1.x-Source.zip. For this, you can use 7zip or whatever app you prefer. Now you have to follow the instructions inside the extracted folder to fetch all the internal dependencies, that's why this is really NOT the recommended way to go.

Step 4️⃣: Get CMake, Python 3.x and Depot Tools

Now we need getting more tools for compiling our Aseprite 😊. So, let's get CMake, Python 3.x and Depot Tools.

CMake

CMake can be downloaded directly from its download page, remember to grab the correct version for your system!
CMake installer binary page For me, it is the Windows x64 Installer: cmake-4.1.0-rc1-windows-x86_64.msi.
After you have the installer downloaded, simply execute it and follow the prompts.

Python 3.x

Visit the Python.org and download the lastest version of Python. At the time or writing this tutorial, it is Python-3.13.5. Screenshot from python.org, showing download button for python 3.13.5 After you have the installer, simply execute it and follow the prompts. Remember to check the Add Python.exe to PATH in the installer.

Google Depot Tools

Simply visit the Depot Tools Download link to directly download from Google. Or, you can visit the Depot Tools tutorial page to follow the official manual.

After you have the depot_tools.zip file, it is recommended to extract its contents to a folder such as C:\dependencies,
so it becomes C:\dependencies\depot_tools. Or ofc, you can extract it to wherever you want, just keep in mind that we need its path soon.

So after you have extracted depot_tools, we need to add it to SYSTEM PATH so our system knows where it is. To achieve this, we need to open Windows Settings, then System -> About -> Advanced system settings Then on the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables. This will open another window where there are two sections, User variables for "your username" and System variables. We need to scroll down in the System variables, and find Path. Double click it , then click New. Now we need to copy and paste the path of the depot_tools, which is C:\dependencies\depot_tools, or whatever you have set it to be ☺️. After this, click OK, then Ok, then Ok. Yes Triple OKs 😆. Setting up enviroment variable path for depot tools

Step 5️⃣: Get Skia (and successfully compile it)

Now comes the big guy we have been prepping for, aka. Skia! This is the most important part of this tutorial. In fact, most of the tools, dependencies we have set up in previous steps, are meant for compiling Skia. A (successfully) compiled Skia is about 10 GB while Aseprite is 25 MB 😆. But yes, I mean we need this!

Let's get the source files of Skia first. Go to C:\dependencies (or wherever you want Skia to be), then Right Click -> Show More Options -> Open Git Bash Here and execute this in the terminal

git clone -b aseprite-m124 https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git

This will download the Skia source files from the branch specifically meant for Aseprite.

After this we need to execute a series of commands, however this is not done in the terminal where we just ran git, but we need to open the Windows Command Prompt by clicking windows start, then search for cmd, right click on it and then Run as administrator. Windows Command Prompt from search result in windows start

Then we need to run

call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" -arch=x64

This command sets up the Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt environment for building 64-bit applications.

Or ......
Just search x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022 in windows start, this one already has the developer environment ready 🤣

Now we have the command prompt open, let's execute the series of commands we just talked about. Frist, we need to go to the depot_tools folder,
for me it is at C:\dependencies\depot_tools, so

cd c:\dependencies\depot_tools

then, execute

gclient sync

this command may print some error in the end like Error: client not configured; see 'gclient config', this is fine and can be ignored.

now we need to go to the Skia folder, for me it is at C:\dependencies\skia, so

cd c:\dependencies\skia

then we execute

set GIT_EXECUTABLE=git.bat

and then

python3 tools/git-sync-deps

now, this command will take a while to run ... and it is very likely that will fail due to error: RPC failed; HTTP 429 curl 22 The requested URL returned error: 429. This means GitHub is limiting our requests, aka. rate-limiting. And the fix is ... well, wait a bit then run the command again! 😆
Anyway, the error may looks something like this

remote: [type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.RequestInfo]
remote: request_id: "b8224f589c084060be3412e118f606f4"
fatal: unable to access 'https://chromium.googlesource.com/angle/angle.git/': The requested URL returned error: 429
...skia\third_party/externals/libjxl > a205468bc5d3a353fb15dae2398a101dff52f2d3
...ia\third_party/externals/freetype > 66a04dd6f858e92766d77deda44a6d8d5dfee5bc
...skia\third_party/externals/brotli > 6d03dfbedda1615c4cba1211f8d81735575209c8
...ia\third_party/externals/harfbuzz > 4cfc6d8e173e800df086d7be078da2e8c5cfca19
...\skia\third_party/externals/icu4x > bcf4f7198d4dc5f3127e84a6ca657c88e7d07a13
...ia\third_party/externals/perfetto > 93885509be1c9240bc55fa515ceb34811e54a394
...es\skia\third_party/externals/icu > a0718d4f121727e30b8d52c7a189ebf5ab52421f
...d_party/externals/opengl-registry > 14b80ebeab022b2c78f84a573f01028c96075553
...third_party/externals/swiftshader > bbe6452b420c5ddc4b0fd421b0a3ce271262f4ca
...s\skia\third_party/externals/dawn > bac513d0ae286600ea0f75a75223a5b52a198b9b
...hird_party/externals/unicodetools > 66a3fa9dbdca3b67053a483d130564eabc5fe095
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\dependencies\skia\tools\git-sync-deps", line 279, in <module>
    exit(main(sys.argv[1:]))
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "c:\dependencies\skia\tools\git-sync-deps", line 267, in main
    git_sync_deps(deps_file_path, argv, shallow, verbose)
  File "c:\dependencies\skia\tools\git-sync-deps", line 237, in git_sync_deps
    multithread(git_checkout_to_directory, list_of_arg_lists)
  File "c:\dependencies\skia\tools\git-sync-deps", line 254, in multithread
    raise Exception("Thread failure detected")
Exception: Thread failure detected

You may also notice some lines mentioning Failed to read environment variable <something something>, these can be ignored too.

After this, execute

python3 bin/fetch-ninja

Now last step before we compile Skia, we need to generate build configuration for Skia using Generate Ninja (GN) build system, and store the build files in the out\Release-x64 folder, so execute

gn gen out/Release-x64 --args="is_debug=false is_official_build=true is_trivial_abi=false skia_use_system_expat=false skia_use_system_icu=false skia_use_system_libjpeg_turbo=false skia_use_system_libpng=false skia_use_system_libwebp=false skia_use_system_zlib=false skia_use_freetype=true skia_use_harfbuzz=true skia_pdf_subset_harfbuzz=true skia_use_system_freetype2=false skia_use_system_harfbuzz=false target_cpu=""x64"" win_vc=""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC"" extra_cflags=[""-MT""]"

Then compile Skia by executing

ninja -C out/Release-x64 skia modules

Step 6️⃣: Compile Aseprite

If you have successfully compiled Skia, then you are basically already 95% done, and we can finally compile Aseprite 😊. Now we need to go to the Aseprite source file folder, for me it is C:\dependencies\aseprite

cd c:\dependencies\aseprite

then make a folder for our compiled aseprite, we can named it build

mkdir build

then go to the build folder

cd build

!NOTE
We should be in the same command prompt as we used for compiling Skia. If for some reason you have closed it, then open it again by searching
x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022
in windows start, or execute
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" -arch=x64
in a cmd command prompt.

Now we need to configures the Aseprite build system to use the Skia library we compiled as the graphics backend and sets up the build environment and generates Ninja build files. Execute

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DLAF_BACKEND=skia -DSKIA_DIR=C:\dependencies\skia -DSKIA_LIBRARY_DIR=C:\dependencies\skia\out\Release-x64 -DSKIA_LIBRARY=C:\dependencies\skia\out\Release-x64\skia.lib -G Ninja ..

If you have compiled Skia to a different location than what mentioned in this guide, you need to change these variables according to your systems:

-DSKIA_DIR=your skia source code path
-DSKIA_LIBRARY_DIR=your skia compiled binaries path
-DSKIA_LIBRARY=your full path to the actual skia.lib static library

This command may occasionally fail. I tested compiling Aseprite on three different machines, and one of them failed with the following error:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:23 (project):
 Running
  'C:/dependencies/depot_tools/ninja' '--version'
  failed with:
   unknown error
CMake Error: CMAKE_C_COMPILER not set, after EnableLanguage
CMake Error: CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER not set, after EnableLanguage
-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

And this is because cmake can't decide which ninja🥷 to ~~hire~~, I mean use ... basically this is because there are multiple ninja versions on the systems. If this happens, we can modify our previous command by forcing it to use the version inside the visual studio, like this:

cmake -DCMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM="C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/Common7/IDE/CommonExtensions/Microsoft/CMake/Ninja/ninja.exe" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DLAF_BACKEND=skia -DSKIA_DIR=C:\dependencies\skia -DSKIA_LIBRARY_DIR=C:\dependencies\skia\out\Release-x64 -DSKIA_LIBRARY=C:\dependencies\skia\out\Release-x64\skia.lib -G Ninja ..

Alright, now we have but one command left for compiling Aseprite, execute

ninja aseprite

This will take a while, so relax ☺️ executing ninja aseprite, final step

Aaaaand finally, we have compiled Aseprite! It should be located in the C:\aseprite\build\bin\ folder, though the exact location might vary depending on your system. There are several files there, you don't necessarily need all of them for running/playing Aseprite, but these are the required ones

aseprite.exe
data (entire folder)
icudtl.dat

Epilogue: Support the Pixel Wizards Behind Aseprite 🙌

This guide began with something small, a dad compiling code so his kids could draw bouncing blobs and pixel foxes. But beneath the surface, it's also a tribute. Aseprite isn't just a tool, it’s a labor of love created by developers who understand the joy of making something. Their choice to keep the source code open, while offering a polished version for purchase, is generous and inspiring. It lets people like me and maybe also you, to explore freely, learn something new, and share that knowledge with others. Still, it's important to understand that compiling Aseprite isn’t the same as buying it. Here’s why:

⛏️Manual updates: With each new release, you’ll need to recompile from scratch
📦No auto-updates or installers: Unlike the purchased version, there's no one-click setup or streamlined user experience
🛟Limited support: The compiled build isn’t officially supported. You rely on community help
📃Personal use only: The compiled version must not be redistributed or used commercially unless you have a proper license

So if this guide helped you, here’s how you can return the favor:

⭐Buy a license if you haven’t already
- Aseprite Official Site
- Aseprite on Steam
💬Tell others about how great Aseprite is
🧡Support the pixel wizards who made this all possible

Every contribution keeps the magic going, for hobbyists, families, professionals, and pixel dreamers everywhere. Support the pixel wizard!