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[PogueSquadron]

As an illustrator by trade, I'm just using Photoshop at the moment. However, I find if pretty annoying when working with multiple sprites (maybe I have a character on one later with a weapon on another). Is there any software designed with pixel animation for games in mind? I'm using Game Maker Studio at the moment.

It can also be a pain because I like to keep each piece of animation on a layer (easier to line things up) and then I have to save each later individually. I know there's a way to export each layer as its own image, but I've found it to be kind of clumsy (and doesn't work if I have, say, a drop shadow on their own layers).

Any advice? I'm so overreliant on Photoshop for everything and would love if there's an easier way to do things.

[sakuyo]

I've heard very good things about graphicsgale - a lot of people here use it. I believe there's also a thread or two around here devoted to tools in general including art software.

[sharbelfs]

i've heard about graphicsgale too, but i am used to the photoshop.

but if you are interest, in the pixel prospector they have a big list of softwares too, you can try.

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-graphics-programs-windows-edition/

[J. R. Hill]

Once you go Graphicsgale you never go backicsgale.

 

I've used it for a number of different projects varying in scale.  Doing pixel art with Photoshop (or Gimp or w/e) is like trying to do heart surgery with a buster sword.  Graphicsgale has what you need for animation, exporting to spritemaps or individual files, creating and saving color palettes, handling transparency and multiple layers for multiple frames (helpful for larger sprites)  I mean if pixel art is what you want to do a lot of, it's just the hands-down best tool for it.

To be fair you can use really any kind of graphics program to make pixel art and it's been done well from mspaint.exe to Photoshop, but those programs are just not as well-tailored to the medium.

[Crypit]

Aseprites! Hooray!

[FTLRalph]

I'm almost certain that if I got used to it, GraphicsGale would be the way to go, but I just prefer Photoshop too much.

The simple-to-use layers and blending effects, overlayed grid, simple animation frames, etc...  Everything you need is there.

[Blambo]

Aseprites! Hooray!

yeah I vouch for aseprite

[DanFornace]

I have heard Graphics Gale is better as well, but I also use Photoshop and GMS. But based on your issues in your first post, I am not sure that you are using Photoshop to the best of its ability for Game Maker Studio.

If you have each frame as a layer, then you can use the animation window (View, Animation) and put each layer as a frame and then save it as a gif. You can then load this gif into game maker studio and it will have the full animation.

It's a pretty fast workflow for me. Then if I have issues with a single frame, I just copy the whole frame out of photoshop and paste it over the one I am editing in Game maker Studio. (no need to save a new file)

I could see other reasons for wanting to switch away from photoshop to graphics gale though.

-Dan

[RyanB]

Graphics Gale is good.  Pro Motion is better. 

[Fervir]

I think aseprite is great.
Haven't used anything else though.
I also use pickle tile editor for tiles.

[Noogai03]

pyxel edit does it all
tilemaps and tile-based images, animation, 1-pixel wide lines from a pencil (no cleanup required :D)

[JWK5]

Tile Studio is my favorite program to use for sprites and tiling. It lets you test out the tiles and lay them out on a test map and is easy to work with when it comes to testing sprite animations.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention that Tile Studio is free.

[Geti]

Photoshop for the initial art, gale for the animation for me. Would really like to give promotion a go, heard and seen some sweet things.

[Kingel]

Pro Motion is good, although it takes a little while to get used to. It has some nice palette management features, for instance. Ptoing has made some nifty steganographic pixel art using it. One of my favorite features is making animations from undo steps.

More recent features, such as using layers in the tile editor, can be a bit buggy, and it does not run well in Wine. Pyxel sounds promising in that respect, so I might give that a try sometime.

[RiskySafe]

I'm very fond of "Pyxel Edit", since it's making it easy to have several sprites in one file and you can watch your animations as you work on them. I've tried several different programs but often the UI got in the way, but with pyxel it's pretty straight forward and easy on the eye.

Each animation is a seperate file within your main file and you can export them as frames, spritesheets or a gif file.

It's currently in beta and cheap:

http://pyxeledit.com

example:

[Neeko]

Aseprites! Hooray!

I second Aseprites. Very simple to use yet has all the tools and features for pixel art.