Pixel art?

Game Play & Game Design
#21

I use GIMP.

Contrarily to what is usually said, GIMP is easy to use for pixel art:

  1. use the pencil tool
  2. with a 1 pixel brush. Done.
    Plus you have all of GIMP’s powerful features ready, would you need them.

Tried few others software specialized in pixel art, never liked them that much.
For me the decisive feature of GIMP is complete freedom with keyboard shortcuts.
They can be customized, so I can really enter into “the flow” because they totally suit me.

In the end, the tool doesn’t matter much, it’s how comfortable and productive you are with it.
I tend to use as few tools as possible, so I become really productive with them.

#22

As an added note to anyone viewing who has an iOS device, I use SpriteSomething, and it does exactly what I need. I still recommend using tiled for maps over the tilemap editor, however.

#23

I vote for GIMP. It’s what I used and have come up with some pretty dang good stuff with it.

#24

I use Grafx 2. This tool is really nice for pixel art, it has a lot usefull functions like a Sieve mode etc…

https://code.google.com/p/grafx2/

#25

Just throwing my vote out there for paint.net! I always felt like photoshop was overkill for basic image editing, and I think we can all agree its way too expensive (thank god for thepiratebay). Ms paint always felt way to basic and it couldn’t perform some of the rather simple operations that I depend on. Paint.net has always been good for me!

#26

Gimp - since 2.8 - sucks for pixel editing.
They messed up the brushes, very cumbersome now
and saving does not allow to save to png directly without an annoying popup.

#27

I don’t feel like pressing enter twice instead of once is going to really lower your progress rate. I haven’t used GIMP a lot for pixel art, but when I did I didn’t have any trouble at all. I just made a transparent canvas (is that what it’s called?) and then used the pencil on 1 size and it was as easy as that. The eraser is kind of annoying however since it erases gradually which I don’t want.

#28

I use GIMP but my pixel art is pretty average - learning to pixel is pretty hard work.

Cheers,

Kev

#29

I use it for all my sprite-editing. Supports onion layers, and is dead easy to use… Not sure on the license, as nothing is told or included in the downloaded archive. You’re also able to add sounds and static images to your “project” and it exports a zipped XML-file containing image data, the duration of each frame of the animation and other goodies…

#30

This thread is kinda supporting something I read on many gfx forums/sites… ‘programmers love GIMP, artists hate it’

GIMP<3

#31

What if you’re a programmer AND an artist?

#32

Use graphicsgale/PyxelEdit. That, or write your own pixel editing tool and use THAT.

#33

I would if I had more time. I really need to switch to Linux properly.

I think I’ve worked out how to code it all.