Besides Photoshop, what are other graphic apps for the mac that people here tend to use for the creation of sprite graphics.

I'm thinking it would be good to have a listing of all graphic apps used for game sprite creation on idevgames.com for artists of all levels. (Please include URL if possible.)

I use Photoshop, but it's hardly the right tool for the job, especially if you're trying to do animation. ImageReady is too unreliable to be of any use either.

I have in the past used WebPainter, and for all its crankiness, it's not too bad for making small scale sprites. Unfortunately, it still isn't Mac OS X native, so I'm not keen paying for the latest version to replace the free one I got with a magazine.

Wouldn't it be great if someone here made a really good sprite editor? Any volunteers?

Quote:Wouldn't it be great if someone here made a really good sprite editor? Any volunteers?

If someone here were actually willing to create a highly functional Sprite Editor for OS X, I'd be willing to design all the interface elements, tool icons, and physical package/box design.

Just think...so many people here don't have the resources/money for high-end editors like PhotoShop. Many people are in need for this kind of package. It would, of course, have features highly optimized for game sprite development! This will already set it apart from other apps. Let it have a nice price between $20-$30 and people will definitely buy it!

Sounds interesting; I might attempt it after uDG.

gatti,

Someone is! See Daniel's L. post some place on his very beta sprite editor.

This is the someplace.

I haven't touched it too much as I was helping Jake port Escape to Windows. I still mean to continue with it. It "works", but has a long way to go.

I get a 404 error if I try to download it.

I once had grand plans for writing myself a sprite/tile/icon/anything-else-i-could-think-of-involving-smallish-pictures editor. Like virtually every other project I start I worked feverishly for a couple of days got bored and gave up. As it is, it does the simple drawing stuff (boxes, lines, ovals and flood fill) does the some of basic application stuff like undo and a few niceties like exporting to multiple file formats thru quicktime.

What is doesn't do is anything useful. There's no copy & paste, no scaling, no rotating, no zoom, no animation and the grids broken.

There's a lot wrong with it but maybe someone more talent/patience than me will be able to extract something useful from it.

The RealBasic project is here...
http://homepage.mac.com/atkinson.d/ambri...oject.sitx

The built application is here...
http://homepage.mac.com/atkinson.d/ambri...pDraw.sitx

[edit]
Just found bug with StackOverflowExceptions in RB5.2 that was crashing my flood fill. I put in a work-around and re-uploaded the files.
[/edit]

Daniel_Lurie it seems very cool for its current state. When you're ready to jump back on it and if you need any visual help or even perhaps interface layout assistance just give me a holler. I noticed that you're right in Clifton, NJ. I'm over in Hawthorne, NJ. Probably around 15 minutes away. If you'd want to brainstorm I'm pretty much minutes away.
Later

I used Photoshop Elements with a little bit of IconMachine. Then I animate using GifBuilder.

Iconographer looks pretty good for this sort of thing...

Quote:Originally posted by OneSadCookie
Iconographer looks pretty good for this sort of thing...

Iconographer is only good for anti-alias lines, IMHO. I copy and paste from that and put it into IconMachine. I'm more used to IconMachine, so I stick with it. Iconographer seemed to be too complex for my tastes.

I quite like Iconographer because it's been designed to feel like Photoshop, but it's obviously only useful for still graphics. Are there any programs which can be used as an animation flipbook? Believe me, flipping layers in Photoshop is not much fun!

Quote:Originally posted by gatti
Daniel_Lurie it seems very cool for its current state. When you're ready to jump back on it and if you need any visual help or even perhaps interface layout assistance just give me a holler. I noticed that you're right in Clifton, NJ. I'm over in Hawthorne, NJ. Probably around 15 minutes away. If you'd want to brainstorm I'm pretty much minutes away.
Later

Gatti,

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. I stopped awhile ago because the flood fill kept bombing. Its also slow. Still, I haven't seen anything like it on X yet. I do plan to finish it. I was very frustrated when I moved to a Mac and found there was nothing like Deluxe Paint for it.

NCarter,

The app w/manual and demo file can be downloaded here.

Thanks for that link. It looks promising, don't give up on it!

One particularly spectacular feature you have is the ability to watch the animation play in a window while you're editing it. Incredibly useful!