Best programs for creating and animating pixel art?

[Barney]

Thanks for your advice, people. I'm going to try all of the aforementioned programs to see what best suits my needs.

[SinSin]

Just thought I would stick my oar in here.

I've tried various different art programs over the last few years and I find that different ones aid different art styles.

Photoshop and Gimp are in my opinion for hi-res Peeps and far too tooly for low res artists,
Graphxgale is great, but paying for the ability to export Gifs is not for me as I'm still practising,
ASEprite  is amazing for low res art. I only just found it and now I'm hooked. The tools are so easy and accessible.
MS Paint "Look I just got AGS and now I'm gonna give it a go"

For me Aseprite is the way forward.

[bush_monkey]

This is a great thread. I've always used Photoshop and I thought I knew all the alternatives yet I'd never heard of pro motion (or if I did it got stored in an unused part of my brain)! I'm going to be testing this and pyxel edit now.

[Darth Mandarb]

I have tried most all of the programs in here... still, I always end up back in Photoshop.  I've been using Photoshop since before it had layers (v2.x) and I'm just so completely familiar with it that it's my comfort zone.  It feels, by far, the most "polished" of software (some of the others feel like the software was put together by a blind 2 year old with no idea of margins and proper spacing/design aesthetics).  That probably doesn't bother most people though. 

Dunno... some people feel Photoshop is horrible for pixel-art but they are wrong, it's just horrible for them.  The only real negative Photoshop has is the price, which is ridiculous.

Unless you have either an eye-patch or a peg leg (or a parrot).  Then the price isn't so bad.  Not that I would EVER do and/or condone such behavior.

**Arrggghhh no**  Shut up parrot.

[EchosofNezhyt]

Dunno... some people feel Photoshop is horrible for pixel-art but they are wrong, it's just horrible for them.  The only real negative Photoshop has is the price, which is ridiculous.

Finally someone who agrees. Photoshop is fine for pixel art.

All I ever use.

[Trapezoid]

Photoshop's okay but the pencil tool at 1px makes staircases when you draw diagonally, not a true 1px line. This is something that bugs me even in some programs specifically made for pixel art.

[Khris]

It depends on the speed; if you draw fast enough, you won't get double pixels. But of course you can always click at the start of the line, then shift-click at the end to get a perfectly straight 1px line.

[EchosofNezhyt]

Photoshop's okay but the pencil tool at 1px makes staircases when you draw diagonally, not a true 1px line. This is something that bugs me even in some programs specifically made for pixel art.

Gotta clean up lines anywho

[Trapezoid]

True. Actually, now that I try I can't think of any program that doesn't draw like that. Maybe I just specifically first got annoyed with it in Photoshop.

[EchosofNezhyt]

Just gotta set it up for pixel art and learn some of the tricks and your golden.

[Trapezoid]

Damn, I just realized there's no Flow option for the Pencil tool in Photoshop. Why? You can change opacity. I don't see why Pencil can't gradually "fill in" as you sketch over the same space.
There's also still a Hardness slider that, as far as I can tell, is totally vestigial.
Actually, why is there even a difference between Brush and Pencil? Why doesn't Brush at 100% hardness completely remove feathering? That would be effectively the same as Pencil.

As it is now, there's no step in between these two levels of feathering. Seems like a big gap in control to me.

[Anian]

But that's not actually how you fill in surfaces when doing pixel art, is it? Might as well use the brush, not the pencil tool. I don't really understand what's bothering you.
If you really want to control randomness of a Pencil tool, in the Brush settings (F5) you can set Spacing and Angle Jitter (under Shape & dynamics), which will randomly paint, if that's what you want.

And about the hardness setting for the pencil...I think it's more that it has the same interface as the brush so it's there. For a while now PS has feathering in everything except the Pencil tool.

[Trapezoid]

I know about jitter settings! They're useful.
I'm talking about the Flow setting, which is really helpful for drawing textures in stuff like rocks, dirt, fabric. Especially in backgrounds, where manually placing each pixel (like you might with sprites) is usually unthinkable; you really need tools to help add noise and life to surfaces.


The shape on the left was drawn with photoshop's Brush tool at 1px with Flow at 20%. The one on the right was done with Gimp's pencil tool, which has an "Incremental" checkbox that serves as an equivalent to Flow.

For pixel art, I prefer the look of the one on the right. Photoshop's 1px brush is just too damn fuzzy and indistinct. Full color anti-aliasing looks great at 1x, but for games that are blown up by 2x or 3x, it makes you squint. I see it all the time in AGS games, even ones with very good artwork.

(Also, the one on the left uses 73 colors; the one on the right uses 6.)

Edit: A note, you can actually produce lines like the ones on the right with Photoshop's Pencil tool at a low opacity setting, but the difference is you have to start a new click/stylus drag each time you want to blend lines, which takes longer and quickly eats up your undo history.

[Saltwater Taffy]

Yep, that settles it. I need GIMP.

[selmiak]

Edit: A note, you can actually produce lines like the ones on the right with Photoshop's Pencil tool at a low opacity setting, but the difference is you have to start a new click/stylus drag each time you want to blend lines, which takes longer and quickly eats up your undo history.

I prefer it that way, especially when filling shapes with a low opacity setting on the brush/pencil and I'm not so sure about the shape yet. Also stopping the current bushstroke in your example give you time to think about where exactly you want your shadow to be as crossing the line with low opacity adds up on opacity then.

[Trapezoid]

Yep, that settles it. I need GIMP.

Yeah, I'm just messing around with it right now. Seems cool-- layers while in Indexed mode! Editable palette in a dock! But I'm already running into weird limitations... converting to Indexed mode lacks some of the options Photoshop has (like noise dithering, or variable diffusion, as well as a live preview while you fine-tune these settings.)

I prefer it that way, especially when filling shapes with a low opacity setting on the brush/pencil and I'm not so sure about the shape yet. Also stopping the current bushstroke in your example give you time to think about where exactly you want your shadow to be as crossing the line with low opacity adds up on opacity then.

I guess that's true, I'm just used to shading things in like you would with a real pencil, with repetitive back-and-forth retracing.

[Miez]

So Trapezoid, do you use a Wacom (or similar device)? Because you can simply set the Photoshop pen tool to 1 pixel (or larger if you prefer) and use the pen pressure to control the opacity (Brush Settings > Other Dynamics > Opacity jitter 0%, Control: Pen Pressure).
Works fine for me

[Trapezoid]

Oh, that's a really good point. I do have a Wacom, but I'm not great at it. Or drawing in general. Could use some practice.