First known instance of a David Blocks themed character sprite

Character Sprites or (unofficially named by the community as Emojis, Figurays, retropixles and RetroCutes), are pixelated David Blocks themed character sprites of RetroStudio players.

The first instance of these character sprites was based on David from David Blocks. It was originally created by Ayray and was originally used for David Blocks 1994 UI around 2019, along with the sprite being added as a Discord emoji to the Retro Dev server. ^[1]

Around 2020, the character sprites would later be used as RETROBLOX's (and later RetroStudio's) return-to-lobby screen. From 2020 to 2026, the only character sprites displayed in-game were exclusively of Retro Dev's developers GuestIsJustBest, cristiano100 and robloxandtyler.^[2]^[3]

On the Discord side, more sprites based on (old) Retro Dev staff team were created as Discord emojis. Most of them were made by Vodotix until he retired. ^[4]

On September 28th, 2026, Ayray updated the return-to-lobby screen to show a random selection of sprites depicting other notable Retro Dev members. The list now included admins, event team members, esteemed architects and other prominent community members.^[5]

How to Make a Character Sprite

The process of making a character sprite's body parts is very easy. The legs and torso are 11x10 pixels, the arms are 5x10 and the head is 9x8. After you are done with the body, design on the accessories begins. You can take inspiration from Ayray's public works, especially if you wear accessories and parts of players who have been publicly drawn in David Blocks character sprite form. For instance, players wearing the iBot package have already been designed, giving an insight on how the package would look in a sprite form, allowing players to copy the sprite to make a sprite of their own iBot outfits.

Emoji Sprite Gallery

This gallery preserves all official emoji sprites made for the Retro Dev Discord server, including ones no longer available. Most were made by Vodotix.

Fan-Made Character Sprites

When character sprites were first introduced, people made custom sprites based on other people's avatars and OCs, however they were not popularized and very niche.

The following sprites were made before 2026 and were uploaded to Retro Dev under #wacky-art:

However after the September update, artists started uploading their custome character sprites again. The first message of this trend started when markerton published his own character sprite on September 30th, 2026^[6]. From then on, artists followed up by making their own pixelated avatars and OCs.

Trivia

According to AyRay, the character sprite was actually traced over the "character.png" asset from old Roblox clients. ^[1]
As of writing of this, there are 38 character emoji sprites on the official Retro Dev Discord server.
The term RetroCute was invented a day after the other two terms. It's inspired by the Doom community term DoomCute. All three terms (Figuray, Retropixles and RetroCute) were made by Leostickluke.
On October 4th, 2026, user Ceqell made a free online tool to make Character Sprites called FigurayMaker on his post titled "Make your own figuray/retropixie with the Ceqell™ sprite maker! (And my thoughts on AI slop)" with features such as reference images, starter templates and exact dimension guides.

References

[:0-1] 1.0 ^1.1 https://discord.com/channels/645632117455323136/1536119856968241262/1555991382319964293

[2] ttps://discord.com/channels/645632117455323136/662393979072937994/715276926607949894

[3] ttps://discord.com/channels/645632117455323136/1536119856968241262/1555992413582004447

[4] ttps://discord.com/channels/645632117455323136/662393979072937994/732628608295895100

[5] ttps://discord.com/channels/645632117455323136/791501037898956881/1553980018768748576

[6] ttps://discord.com/channels/645632117455323136/670464958387060767/1554894380727537734

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