what programs do you use for pixel art?

[glitterpigeon]

I like hearing about the different programs people use for things, and what they like/don't like about them! are there any programs you love? any that you hate? I want to know!

[Sailor_Fabulous]

Thanks for asking this question - I'd actually been wanting to ask it myself eventually 

I primarily use the mobile app Pixel Studio on my phone and my tablet (it is also available on PC via Steam). It's nice and easy to use, the layout is pretty simple and all of the tools have little explanations if you click for it, which is very handy, especially as I tend to get overwhelmed by more complex programs (reasons why I use Paint Tool Sai and IbisPaint over Clip Studio Paint even though I bought it). I still have some small things I can't figure out - I somehow always accidentally set off saving a single layer individually when I don't want to, but can't figure out how to do it on purpose when I would actually like that! But overall I am very happy with it, it has layers and animation functions, and it can be used for free with ads (they only pop up when you're in the main menu, which can be annoying but is mostly reasonable) or can be bought for a pretty reasonable fee - I've just been lazy on making the purchase lol

Before I got into it though I did try some pixel art on Paint Tool Sai a couple of times, and I've occasionally made use of Microsoft Paint for simple things.

What program do you use? OR are you just looking for ideas on ones to try?

[glitterpigeon]

What program do you use? OR are you just looking for ideas on ones to try?

it's mostly looking for ideas haha i've done some stuff using fireAlpaca, but I am very unsatisfied with it for pixel art, though I've seen some people that like to use it for that somehow, it's not really built for it, and I've used a handful of apps on my phone I can't really remember the names of right now.

but because of the kind of pigeon that I am, I have actually mostly done pixel art non-digitally! I like to make pixel art paintings on canvas with acrylic paint (I've mainly done flowers) and have been playing around with doing little drawings on graph paper! it's quite tricky and i'm not very satified with the results, but it's been a fun thing to experiment with. it feels a bit weird to call it pixel art though cause paint on a canvas doesn't exactly have pixels but like, whatever.

[Sailor_Fabulous]

but because of the kind of pigeon that I am, I have actually mostly done pixel art non-digitally! I like to make pixel art paintings on canvas with acrylic paint (I've mainly done flowers) and have been playing around with doing little drawings on graph paper! it's quite tricky and i'm not very satified with the results, but it's been a fun thing to experiment with. it feels a bit weird to call it pixel art though cause paint on a canvas doesn't exactly have pixels but like, whatever.

That's really neat! Even though it may not technically be "pixel art" in the traditional sense, I think it still counts in an expanded, inspired one. I mean, you're essentially using the principles of pixel art in another medium 

In fact, a friend of mine who does some nice pixel art, mostly scenery and Pokemon sprites, sometimes recreates her traditional pixel work in cross stitch form, and I think it's really cool :)

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Hi.

I use GIMP; some of the pixel art created for "The Vaults of Minos", my friend and partner in crime did with Photoshop - but he recently changed over to a combination of GIMP and Krita.

I also use a tool written by myself, the "Wondrous Pixel Turtle". Its a very slow, but somewhat powerful standalone pixelate-filter that supports different modes and allows to apply and fine-tune color profiles.

I love my programs - they do what I need  .

All linked tools are free (both as in freedom and free beer).

[zawieja]

I've written a little bit about what I use on my website. Generally I can recommend Piskelapp if you want a free program or Aseprite if you don't mind paying for something. Although pixel studio is looking pretty decent, I should also check it out I can't really imagine using programs like Fire Alpaca for this.

but because of the kind of pigeon that I am, I have actually mostly done pixel art non-digitally! I like to make pixel art paintings on canvas with acrylic paint (I've mainly done flowers) and have been playing around with doing little drawings on graph paper! it's quite tricky and i'm not very satified with the results, but it's been a fun thing to experiment with. it feels a bit weird to call it pixel art though cause paint on a canvas doesn't exactly have pixels but like, whatever.

That's pretty cool! Pixel art can have some traditional usage. At one point I used to do pixel art for some old lady so she could do embroidery :P Something similar can be done with beads, too. No one said we have to limit ourselves to digital art.

[larvapuppy]

I do use FireAlpaca as well, and it's not THAT bad...  Though I am currently considering purchasing Aseprite in order to make use of its animation features. Here are some I've made drawing the frames in FireAlpaca and animating them with the online gif maker tool ezgif- you can get ok results without paying for anything, which I love. 

(hi zawieja!)

[sokil]

it's been a long time since i've created any pixel art, but when i did so regularly i'd use paint tool sai! the binary tool that sai has is perfect for it. it is paid (i think it's about $35?), although cracked copies have been widespread for as long as i can remember. i noticed in paint tool sai 2 that there's a specific brush called "pixel art pen" - haven't tested it out yet so i'm not sure how it differs from the binary tool. perhaps this thread will inspire me to check it out! ^^

i've never tested this one myself but i know of a program called pikopixel that's specifically for this purpose. it is free to use! the only downside is that it might not run on windows, if that's the OS you regularly use.

[Memory]

I have actually mostly done pixel art non-digitally!

Math course plus graph paper turns into a Pixel Art course, always...

-------

For pixeling at the computer, I use the built-in sprite editor of the OHRRPGCE.

Very swift workflow:
Left-click, draw in the currently selected color.
Right-click, change active colour to the colour which is below the cursor now.

This is very handy if 3 or more colours are around. So when colouring the piece for example. Colour limits are the choice out of 256 colours and only 16 of them per image.

MS Paint is better if only two colours are needed, like when drawing the outline (black / white). Left and right mouse buttons are accosiated with a different colour each, so I imagine this is the easiest way of drawing a two-coloured pixel image.

At least the Windows XP version of MS Paint will get into limitations on big screens, as only 8x zoom is possible (with a lucky hack, 10x). Just enough on 1024x768. As pixeling is precision work, every pixel really has to be targetable realiably.

[2010]

honestly , just ms paint or paint tool sai which r my main programs :"D
when i use paint , i tend to put on the gridlines

[fragbait]

Paint.Net is very good for pixel art. It's straightforward, free, and has been my go-to for not only pixel art, but image editing in general. When it comes to animating sprites, I'd recommend using Pyxel edit although its not as free, ($9 as of typing this).

But yeah, turn off anti-aliasing, set the Quality settings to "nearest-neighbor", and Paint.Net will do you justice.

[rhenn]

If you want something specialised and have ~$20 to spend I'd recommend Aseprite! It's got a bunch of useful tools for animation and tilesets, really anything you'd want. It's what I use for most/all of my pixel art nowadays.

In the past I used photoshop, but really anything with a decent binary/pixel tool is probably good.

[Cyan]

I still use good ol' MS Paint, the old Windows XP version. It has absolutely no features and that's what I love about it. Left click = colour, right click = background and I almost exclusively use the line tool. If/when I want to fine-tune the colours I open the image in Photoshop.

[ngoomie]

I bought Aseprite a little while back, It's pretty great. I'd tried some fork of it from before it switched from a more normal open source license to its own weird license and it was  great but also lacking in some areas, which made me want to see what actual Aseprite to see what it was like. I ended up keeping it. Says a lot because I tend to hate buying software unless it's something I direly need.

[Zunne]

I mostly use IbisPaint for Pixel Art! I just disable anti-alising in the settings, use the "Digital Pen", put "Gap Recognition" on both the Magic Wand and the Paint Bucket, changed some stuff with the Paint Bucket so it doesn't overflow, and that's about it! When I'm on PC, i use Photopea (Clone of Photoshop)! Someday I might try Krita (FOSS drawing program that is like, really powerful).

Oh yea, Libresprite exists (Asesprite but Free! Because yes, Asesprite is Open source.)