Ok so there are some nice tools for windows - ProMotion, GraphicsGale, even PaintShop Pro is not bad for 2d pixel art (also photoshop of course)… but what about on Mac? Surely our only choices aren’t all these photo editors, or GIMP? There just doesn’t seem to be a really good 2d art editor for Mac?
Anyone know if Pixelmator is any good for this purpose? I’m going to be needing an answer to this question as well and was going to look into this one.
Aseprite hands down. http://www.aseprite.org
Gotta say Aseprite looks pretty bad in terms of user interface. Seems like there are quite a few tutorials on setting up GIMP for pixel art. I don’t really see any good tool for making animation frames and previewing them.
I have an Amiga emulator which runs Deluxe Paint 5 which is hands down better than anything else for this, but being emulated its kinda slow and limited palette/resolution.
Yeah, if that’s your preference. I can say that when I was looking for a sprite editor, I wanted something that loads quickly, works responsively, plays at the proper frame rate, supports layers, doesn’t clutter the interface unnecessarily, provides quick customizable shortcut keys for rapid iteration, exports to sprite sheets, manipulates sprites, layers, and frames intuitively, provides extensive palette options specific to sprites, is actively developed, is reasonably priced, or free with open source code, is backed by some independent studios with some popular names in the industry, and aseprite fit the bill.
It’s a pity there isn’t a good animation option in Gimp … it has a bunch of other things like palettes and multiple zoom views and tools etc… but no easy way to quickly see an animation playing. ?
It sounds nuts but I’m seriously thinking of using my Amiga emulator and working with Deluxe Paint 5 and 256-color palettes that I later convert to truecolor. It doesn’t have layers but it is very good for pixel art and animation, if I can tolerate the slower performance.
I’m not associated with aseprite at all, but I’m curious as to what aseprite lacks that deluxe paint 5 running on an emulator makes up for.
Familiarity partly, reputation (massive popularity on the Amiga, used for many games), very easy animation, tools etc.
[edit] I just tried that tool… it’s certainly not bad… but DPaint is still much better.
@imaginaryhuman_1 - what is it exactly you’re looking for? Something comparable to ??? on the pc.
I was going to suggest inkscape, but you mentioned animation ability and I don’t think it has any animation tools. I’ve only played with it for a couple minutes, but others like it a lot.
Apparently grafx2 is available for Mac (haven’t tried it yet) … a blend of Amiga programs Brilliance and Deluxe Paint… Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
Yeah I’d like a modern version of deluxe paint-like tools… animation support especially, onion-skinning, easy playback and recording, brushes, palettes, color cycling, at least 256-color support, fast performance, designed to be comfortable for drawing lots of pixels etc, gradients, all that jazz. I think for now I will have to go with Gimp and just try to work around its clunkiness.
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TvPaint is pretty cool, available for mac, been around since the Amiga days, very geared toward animation… but ~$1300
If you like tv paint but not the price, are you familiar with Toon Boom Studio? Which will soon be known as Toon Boom Harmony Essentials? Basically what I used after I moved on from using Autodesk Animator back in the day. GrafX2 reminds me of AA. There’s also Anime Studio, but not a fan.
Also, Inkscape is great for vector graphics, but I don’t think it has animation, and it’s used more for desktop publishing/print, still graphics.
I just tried out GrafX2, and while it got me all nostalgic about Autodesk Animator, sizing the canvas to something smaller than the screen put it in the upper left hand corner. Not sure I can work like that.
Looked at the toon studio thing but it seemed basted on vectors not bitmaps/pixels.
Oh right. Sorry about that. Looking at the TV paint screens, I forgot it was pixel-based since the results were so finished. I just remember doing some research on pixel-based animators for Android, and I couldn’t find any good ones except for FlipaClip. Reason I mention it is because there’s an Android port of TV Paint available somewhere, but it was horrible.
@imaginaryhuman_1 I haven’t used either of these two but they look promising if aseprite isn’t the thing you’re looking for a simple editor:
For pixel art - Pyxeledit: Pyxel Edit: pixel art and tileset creation tool
For 2D rigged animations - Spriter: http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm (I think there’s also a script that imports animations from Spriter to Unity).
I thought about using DPaint IV via emulator myself, again. Just for fun. But to be honest - it’s not the same any more. It was the best program in the late 90s but using it now isn’t as pleasant any more as it used to be. At least to me. There has to be an alternative you can use as well.
Good find with Pyxeledit! I’ll have to give it a try. Spriter recommendation is probably a little late, considering it was for cheap on the Humble Bundle a week or two ago.
Pyxeledit looks interesting, might give it a whirl. I hear what you’re saying about DPaint being old - it is… there are some things about it that are definitely clunky and it just doesn’t run very quickly in emulator. I’ve kinda drifted more toward using Gimp just because it has such a plethora of features…rather have more features than not enough.
Does anyone using Photoshop CC (the photograph package, $9.99/mo) have any input about using it for pixel art vs using Gimp? I’m considering paying the $120 a year to get all the nice photoshop features.