Pixel art and animation

I have two questions does anyone know what software was used to make Hyper light drifter's art and animation. If not what is the best for art and animation.

 

Probably photoshop. Im not sure because Im not an artist. However, the reason I am responding is to say that I am making a pixel RPG game myself. I am a programmer though so that means I have to look for a tool that is very easy to use, free, and is pixel art friendly. After a lot of research, I decided to go with Gimp 2. I have created a lot of pixel art so far and I am excited to use it in my game. Here's a sample of what I made:


It might look a little ugly to some but I like how it turned out considering this is the first time I am doing pixel art. So ya, I really recommend Gimp 2 for pixel art.

 

Gimp have very bad animation preview, I prefer piskel, it is free and Web based.

 

If you're on PC, ProMotion hands-down.

http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php

 

You can use GameMaker's animation tool, it has everything you need, animation previews, etc. for pixel art and at $0.00 it's a great deal. Exports to png sprite sheets and all.

 

Check out Pyxel edit, it is super awesome and very cheap

 

I agree with the vote for Pro Motion. The only reason you might not want pro motion is if you are doing something more HD, as in NOT pixel art. Even larger pixel art is still great with Pro Motion, but if you want something of a painterly style, with AA lines making tons of colors on the edges of soft brushes, then Pro Motion won't do it.

But for pixel art of any size, Pro Motion is pretty much the king. It has pretty much all the features you could ask for in a pixel program.

 

Take a look at the FREE GraphicsGale for pixel art and animation.

 

Paint.
One of the big issues with pixel art is that a lot of people think their inability to make it isnt down to lack of skill or practice, its because of the software. They refuse to use something as basic as paint, because it doesnt seem plausible to make good pixel art with.

As for animation, Spine is pretty good.

 

Paint kind of sucks now. They killed the line tool when they tried to make it a vector art program.
Paint is horrible for animating, also.

Also the reverse-eraser color replacement tool... doesn't fracking world 90% of the time, at least on the old paint it only failed inexplicably like 5% of the time.

Setting colors sometimes doesn't work unless you click or right-click a few times in a row.

And undo? Undo sometimes... doesn't actually undo in the typical sense. Sometimes, it just mangles your drawing.

And paint is the worst image program ever for exporting to various file formats. It has no options, and literally just picks whatever settings it wants for the export.

Source: I use paint almost daily.

Generally, it's good for chopping things up and rearranging them without worrying about layers and selections and all that photoshop crud.

 

The line tool is fine, as long as you know what thickness to use.
Colour replacement is easy, its just right click and it puts down the secondary colour. Dont know what on earth reverse-eraser color replacement tool is, but you dont need it for pixel art.

The rest of it, I think your paint is broken mate. I've never had any of those problems.

No need for this fancy software, it doesnt make you any better at pixel art.

 

No, no, no... it's not fine. In the old days I could click and drag and create outlines with the line tool, I was blazing fast with it. Now you have to click, click off to the side to deactivate it and do this process over and over again. Sometimes when you click off to the side, you accidentally begin another line, which means you have to undo, which runs the risk of random mangling of your drawings.

There are some things in this life that I am an expert on. Sadly, MS Paint is one of them.

It won't make you better with drawing static images, but if you want smooth animations you want the features described above, onion skinning and the ability to flip between frames. There's a lot of other concerns also with making pixel art animations, it's a time consuming process so it needs to be easy to do everything else, like preview your work, export to a sprite sheet, import existing sprite sheets, etc.

It won't make you a better artist but it can make you a more productive artist if the software isn't fighting you the whole time.

 

Again, your paint must be broken, because this has never happened to me. Paint is fine for pixel art, this fancy £50 software doesnt make you any better at it, sure it has some fancy shape tools and maybe a nicer looking interface, but it wont make your pixel art skills better. Yes, yes, yes... It is fine.

 

Well, I guess if by fine you mean... passable, acceptable, capable of doing the job but not particularly brilliant at the task... yes,it's "fine".

 

No, I mean it works, and in terms of its ability to produce good pixel art, its just as good as the others