Here I will post small tutorials for how I make graphics.
I recently downloaded LibreSprite to make animated pixel art. I made that button yesterday (June 30 2026).
I started with making the not animated parts. I colored the whole button dark purple and drew the frame and text on it. Plenty of art programs will let you type text, but for pixel art I prefer drawing the letters. I call that font "Noah S attempts pixel art".
Then I added more frames. That button has 31 frames, which is a completely random number with no significance. LibreSprite assumes that you want to make changes from the previous frame and copies it to the new frame, so I ended up with 31 identical frames of the button with no twinkling. I picked 2 colors for my twinkling stars, light blue and light blue that's almost white.
After that I went to a random frame and drew a one pixel spot in one of the colors in a random place that wasn't right next to the text. Then I colored the same pixel with the same color for the next 4 frames too, so that it lit up for 5 frames. After that I went back to the middle frame of the ones I had colored and also colored the pixels directly above, below, to the left and to the right of my spot, so that it looked like a +.
I repeated this process, starting at random frames and switching between the 2 colors I had picked for the twinkling. After I had made a few of those animations, I started making single pixel spots on random frames without doing anything on the frames next to that spot. That way there's variation in how long the twinkles last.
