Hi, if this is in the wrong section of the forum I’d like to apologize ahead of time.
What program do you guys use when making 2D Sprite animations? Currently I have to draw each frame out with Paint.Net (more advanced but similar to MS Paint if you’ve never heard of Paint.Net), I can also get access to CS3 if
that software is dramatically better.
Do you guys draw out each frame or have a more advanced way of creating it?
I do not claim to be at all an expert on this subject so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
From what I understand most of the time you do it frame by frame. There are many programs that help streamline this you still make stuff frame by frame.
I have used a few programs that take a 3D model and animation and will output 2D images. But if your creating 3D models and animations you really should then just make the game 3D.
Photoshop is very powerful but is not geared towards creating sprites. Google around a little and you should fine several programs that are designed for making sprites and pick the one you like most.
Photoshop is probably better than Paint.NET for sprite animation and game art in general. It’s also a software you should learn if you plan to get serious with game design / art / development. But it’s not really geared toward pixel art, so when you start getting more into it you’ll start wanting some more specific features.
Check these out:
GrafX2 - http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
ASEPRITE - http://www.aseprite.org/
Tile Studio - http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/ (Windows only)
Graphics Gale - http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/ (Windows only)
Pixen - http://pixenapp.com/ (Mac only)
Making impressive pixel art is very challenging, and animating it is even more difficult. An alternative to having to draw each frame is to break your characters into parts (legs, head, arms, torso) and animate those parts using a software like Flash, After Effects, or even 3D software like Maya or Blender.
Another alternative is to use a 3D program to animate your characters, and then render them to 2D. I disagree with StumpyStrust – just because you’re using 3D to model/animate doesn’t mean your game may as well be 2D. There are lots of 2D games that use this technique (Starcraft for example).
We use
Gimp
Photoshop
Paint Tool Sai
3ds Max
Anime Studio
and soon rotoscoping in combination with that software
basically animating is a lot of work, so we sometimes use prefer easier solutions like using bones in 3ds max / anime studio or trying to rotoscope
btw CS3 is horrible imo… I went from CS2 to CS5, now 5.5. 4 and especially 3 seemed awful for a couple of reasons
Thanks for the information everyone ;D
If you want a fast and simple one, especially for retro style use “Pickle”.
@jonjava
:cranky:
It’s created by one fan of LD, written in AIR platform. Currently it’s free because alpha staging but on future it’ll cost some bucks.
We use Photoshop and 3dsmax with lots of scripts. Then painstakingly assembled animation scripts in XML (yuk).
Cas 
I think you mean it should be 3D if you are doing 3D and not 2D and I hope you are referring to starcraft I and I am not sure they did 3d models for the 2d images.
Anyways, I don’t claim to be all that proficient in pixel graphics and I am surprised so many people use things like 3ds max and what not. It seems like a lot of work for 2D but then i guess thats how you make great 2d graphics.
I can also say that CS 3 is bad. have not used CS 4 or 2 but 3 is bad. I like 5 a lot.