game-editor.com

Hi,
I'm kinda new to the 2d world, and I was wondering what program would be best to create animated sprites. I'm wanting a program that is free, takes up small size, and is easy to use.
In advance, Thanx

I use Graphics Gale.
http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/
It has lots of useful features, plus it's great for working with animations.
The free version has all the features, except for a few save formats, (.gif, .ico, .cur, .ani) which you don't really need for most stuff. And the registered version which includes those formats is only about $25.

Cool, I'll check out the website

Just downloaded it and I LOVE THIS PROGRAM

Hi again,
I've been using graphics gale whenever I get the chance and I really like it
But I can't seem to find very many tutorials on how to use it.
Do you know how I can find out how to use it better
Thank you

Practice and experimenting.
I don't know about any tutorials really. It's rather simple once u learn the basics.
You can always just hover your mouse over most features and a small text box appears describing it's function just like GE.
I'll mention my understanding of my main tabs. They're all listed under 'view' on the top bar.



Frames are each step in a animation showing what ever picture you got for that step.
Open a .gif animation and open frames from view menu up top. you'll see what I mean.
It's just like a flip book picture. You can drag them from side to side to rearrange them. or drag them to trash bin to delete.

Preview tab shows how your image looks in it's normal size and it will animate the preview if you have multiple frames.
(It's a little fast for me. But if you right click it you got options to slow it down a bit and zoom.)

Layers is simply multiple pictures that are kept in one frame on top of each other.
The layer at the top of the list shows it's picture above all others.
Generally white shows as "trasnparent" or clear and will show any layers below. I don't know if this can be changed.
Also newly made always pop up at top so you gotta drag them down to where ever you need them. or drag them into trash to delete.

You can use the smily '=)' '-.-' face to hide or show the picture of a layer in the layer tab.
The cursive 'A' is for alpha channel but never use that. not even sure what it is.
the '...' allows you options for that layer or frame. so you can name each layer for what each layer is meant for.
+ some other options I never use. transparent and alpha again.

Must be careful with layers. Only the selected layer can be edited so if you select a lower layer on the list with maybe a body drawn and try to edit a higher listed layer with hair drawn without selecting it. You'll be drawing on the body instead of the hair.
I've done this a number of times and have had to go back and carefully pick through layers one at a time to make sure everything is drawn on the right layer and looks correct. (epically bad if you got a lot of frames with more layers) thankfully higher layers when complete tend to cover most the body and stuff so don't have to waste to much time correcting what people will never see anyway...

Loupe shows a nice extreme zoom of your cursor on your drawing so if you need to get carefully select or draw it comes in handy since u don't have to zoom in and out of your image as much.

And of course colour pallete for all your colouring, shading, and brush/pencil needs...

Every window except preview and loupe has a little down arrow with a line '->|'..
That is all the options for that window. I'll mention a few.
Auto hide shrinks it until u mouse over it. Saves work space.
Dockable for dragging the window in places like the tool bar and 'dock' it into the window. (never really dock windows so I turn this off so I can freely move windows above toolbars and out of the way.)

Layers has option called Combine:
It merges all your layers pictures together in the exact way they appear on main image into one image.
You can use undo feature if merge some layers you still need access to but if you save and close you can't undo that. only merge when 100% complete if anything.

At all times good to keep a back up graphics gale file saved.

Everything else is pretty default among any image editor.
And drawing style is up to you to develop your own or find a tutorial.
I've got a couple I look at to help in my pixel art.
But it's up to you what art style you think would suit your abilities best.

Pixel art, Line Art, simplest but there is god knows what else kind of 'art' types...

Hope this helps =)

graphic gale looks weried all thought i havent actually used it i like to make sprites with two programs called ink scape and gimp. ink scape is made for making sprites and stuff gimp is made for making things like backgrounds. both of these programs are really awesome and there both free and there is no version that you have to buy. the thing i like about gimp is that you can give you sprites nice glow effects. gimp like photo shop just not as good but so much easyer to use.

if you want any tutorials for gimp just go to gimpusers.com

Thanx to all