xantherlogan Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 Hey guys, Hopefully my last lame thread topic (getting over the noob stage...), but I was wondering what everyone's attitudes and methods are to game sprites or the characters, backgrounds, objects etc. What program do you use to create your sprites and why? I'm in two minds at the moment. I'm thinking either photoshop or Illustrator, but leaning more towards Illustrator so I can create scalable graphics cause just because you think a sprite would look good at a certain size, then you code it and demo it and eek.... Too big or too small. With the vector graphics of Illustrator, I can resize the images perfectly to any size I want and still keep a great quality. Plus with layers, I can make a base and then add different layers for different stages of movement. Or is that all wrong? Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarrytheBrave Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Illustrator all the way for me! Vectors win hands-down for everything from the game assets to the gui and logos. You never know what high resolution devices will exist in the future so having the option to go back and re-export the same graphics at any resolution is a great safety net. It's also great in the drawing stage to be able to scale and edit things endlessly without worrying about degrading quality. I would go for Photoshop if I were going for a pixelated retro look though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xantherlogan Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 Ah I thought as much. Definately agree about scaling to your needs. I quite like the pixelated look tho for some things. A game I'm currently playing on iphone is "Storm the Train". It's an addictive 2D side scroller shooter to see how long you can go for. Quite like the graphics of that so yeah i think Illustrator would work better for me cause I quite like the graphics quality of games like that and Angry Birds... Thanks Barry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarrytheBrave Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Photoshop and Illustrator do compliment each other nicely and I use both regularly even though most of my work starts in Illustrator, sometimes Photoshop is useful for creating promo screenshots etc. Depending on budget and needs one of the cheaper Creative Suites that contains both might be a good option. Especially if you're eligible for the education discount Best bet is to download both as 30 day trials and get a feel for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 It depends on the art style you need. For pixel art you'd be better off with GrafX2 or ProMotion, Photoshop is clunky as hell for pixel art. But otherwise yeah Illustrator for vectors, or Flash actually - has some great drawing tools in it. Photoshop for everything in between. BarrytheBrave 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarrytheBrave Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 I hadn't heard of those two rich, I've tried spriting with nothing but the Photoshop pencil tool and it certainly takes a while! There's a great list of tools here too if anybody hasn't seen it yet: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tools/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xantherlogan Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 Oh wow Barry... I'm in love with that site now.... Must do some exploring... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarrytheBrave Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Oh wow Barry... I'm in love with that site now.... Must do some exploring... So many tools...not enough time... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quetzacotl Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Can I export Illustrator project to SVG? I'm gonna give it a try since I'm using SVG in my project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarrytheBrave Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 You sure can, both .svg and .svgz (compressed). Even some of the more advanced Illustrator features like custom brushes get converted to outlines on export so you should be able to get almost anything you need in to SVG format. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doobdargent Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 I stumbled upon Aseprite and love it. It's a pixel art animated tiles editor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazymoth Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 I've used MSPaint for more than 10 years now! The Vista and later iterations of it are horrible, though, and I could only endorse XP's version. I have graphicsgale on the side when its features are handy (the grids are great to lay out and design a GUI components in) and for games with pretty graphics I draw the assets by hand with a tablet in painttoolSAI. It is great to be able to scale vector assets though, Illustrator is great if you have it and are comfortable using it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowren Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 I use Photoshop. For pixel art sprites I use this tool: http://pixenapp.com/ but it's only available for Mac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tybenz Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 The game I'm currently working on has a very pixel-centric design. The tiles are each 9 x 9 pixels and I stick to that grid pretty strictly. So I made my own sprite drawing app http://blacktunnel.github.io/draw/. Obviously this is very specific to what I'm working on. But if you're going for simple why not? Besides the output of the drawing app is the actual JS array of the pixel grid. This is done so I can resize the size of my tiles later. When I initialize my game I draw the sprite from the 9x9 array of colors and cache it as an image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mentuat Posted May 22, 2013 Share Posted May 22, 2013 I would second 'promotion' as a great + easy to use + cheap tool for pixel graphics http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php if you use flash to create and animate your sprites with nested elements, then shoebox is a life saver for spitting out sprite sheets http://renderhjs.net/shoebox/aniSheet.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remvst Posted May 22, 2013 Share Posted May 22, 2013 I've always been making everything with Gimp. I'm not sure you want the same type of result though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solidus Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 A cool program I've been using can be found online or for the iphone/iPad. It's called makepixelart.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackmoondev Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 For pixel-art there most of the guys I know use GraphicsGale (http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/) - it's free to use, you need to pay $20 to unlock the pro version. I use Photoshop myself for the pixels and all the bitmap editing and Flash for vector drawings / basic animations. For more complex 2D character animation - the Spine (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/esotericsoftware/spine) looks like the dream come true;)And you have Texture Packer at the very end - to pack the graphics into a nice spritesheet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daikrys Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 i use Inkscape for vector art, photoshop/gimp if needed and spriter for animationInkscape is really nice to work with and its 100% free Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ByR Posted August 15, 2013 Share Posted August 15, 2013 If you want pixel art, use graphics gale, its wonderful, the only problem is that the program doesn't manage well the transparencies, but i use gimp for that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
becap Posted November 20, 2013 Share Posted November 20, 2013 I would recommend also GraphicsGale for pixel art maybe it is not new and cool looking but it has just everything you will need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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