Topic: what program do you use to make you game's art?

[DeadSuperHero]

I'm seriously considering doing characters in 3d in Blender, then using an art program to pixelate it.  Not sure yet.  The thing about Blender is you animate the character once, then just move the camera for different views.  I've done some modeling so that's not that big of a problem.

Honestly, this is a pretty neat workflow that I myself have considered. I believe Blender has a way to render animation frames at a low resolution? You might be able to render a very plain "basic" model to convey movement, and then paint over those frames in a pixel editor to make it look like regular pixel art. In a way, it's like rotoscoping, but using 3D models instead.

[cat]

In a way, it's like rotoscoping

I have not tried it myself, but there is a program for rotoscoping:
Paint of Persia

[Mouth for war]

I use Poser for most of my stuff :-)

[Kyrridas]

i'm not much of an artist (and haven't finished a game yet either), but i exclusively use aseprite. it's simple. does everything i could want. looks nice. and it was pretty cheap. since its software on steam, you might even be able to find it on sale at some point.

[Joseph DiPerla]

So I decided to buy Pixel Studio Pro and AseSprite. Best $30 I spent as far as 2D tools go. I did this in 15 minutes without so much as a tutorial and not really being a 2D pixel artist. It's not much, but I am impressed with myself.: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58931.msg636634348#msg636634348

Goes to show how intuitive and powerful both software is. I drew the different character parts in Pixel Studio Pro (Eyes, hair, glasses, mouth parts, head). Added each part in it's own layer in Aseprite. Each layer had about 12 frames to animate. I was able to pick and choose which parts to show in the animation just like my very own character creator. It is super cool!

x1 x2 x4 x8

Aseprite can be bought on Steam or Itch. Pixel Studio Pro can be bought on Steam. I like Pixel Studio Pro because you can easily draw per pixel like you would in a voxel software. It has tons of tools and the software has a network sharing feature to download palletes and other works to use in your own works. It also is super cross platform working on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. It also has a lot of drawing tools and supports layers and animations like Aseprite, but the animation aspect of PSP is not as easy or intuitive or even feature-ful.

Eitherway, both Aseprite and PSP made me a believer.

[Blondbraid]

I think Monster Mash might have some potential as an animating program if anyone knows a way to convert the animations to a set of 2D frames.

[eri0o]

I use a bunch of mentioned programs here already, but one thing that I recently discovered that I found really handy is GMIC

https://gmic.eu/

Now, I use GMIC through Krita, and my favorite thing in GMIC is this one called Color Preset, which has a bunch of preconfigured presets, all which can be used to quickly color correct a piece.

I have a pillow python code I use to glue a bunch images in a single big image - I use on room backgrounds - and it paired with color presets allows me to quickly correct all the backgrounds in a game.

This video shows a bit of GMIC in Krita

Other cool tool I used recently is Geomorph, it's FOSS and Linux only, it allows hand creating heightmaps. I am also using TerreScope, which is free and Windows only, and gives some extra features for heightmap manipulation - I mostly use it to pretender shadows in the colorset bitmap which will be used as sort of texture on the heightmap.

[Ali]

I'm seriously considering doing characters in 3d in Blender, then using an art program to pixelate it.  Not sure yet.  The thing about Blender is you animate the character once, then just move the camera for different views.  I've done some modeling so that's not that big of a problem.

Honestly, this is a pretty neat workflow that I myself have considered. I believe Blender has a way to render animation frames at a low resolution? You might be able to render a very plain "basic" model to convey movement, and then paint over those frames in a pixel editor to make it look like regular pixel art. In a way, it's like rotoscoping, but using 3D models instead.

I've (sort of) done both of these things. I did pre-rendered, toon-shaded 3D characters in The Fowl Fleet, which I would deeply, deeply not recommend. There's some logic to a 3D protagonist in a 2D game, because it makes doing lots of animations simple. But modelling and rendering all the OTHER characters in 3D is an enormous waste of time. I could have made the characters look so much nicer! With pre-rendered 3D you lose all the advantages of actual 3D and gain none of the nice bits of traditional 2D animation. I think Broken Sword 5 is the only game I've seen do pre-rendered 3D well (I especially liked the way the characters are lit differently based on context). But even BS5 isn't that likeable.

For the full-body shots in this video I did a 3D animation and then rotoscoped it. And I would recommend that, because it can be a big time-saver.

[cat]

For the full-body shots in this video I did a 3D animation and then rotoscoped it. And I would recommend that, because it can be a big time-saver.

This got me stuck in your Youtube channel for almost an hour and I do not regret 

[Matti]

This got me stuck in your Youtube channel for almost an hour and I do not regret 

Same here   

[Snarky]

As a Gunnar Gunnarsdotterson, I feel personally attacked by that YouTube channel.