Aseprite
Aseprite lets you create 2D animations for video games. From sprites, to pixel-art, retro style graphics, and whatever you like about the 8-bit and 16-bit era. It has a color mode, which tell you how many colors the image can handle. All images in the sprite are in one specific mode, you cannot mix RGB images with Indexed images in the same sprite. It contains a set of layers. You can see them in the Timeline. The most important concept here is that there are two kind of layers: the background layer for opaque sprites, and transparent layers. A sprite can contain only one background layer, but several transparent layers. It contains animation frames. Each frame has a duration, i.e. how many milliseconds the frame must be on screen when the animation is being played. Integrate Aseprite in your assets pipeline with the command-line interface (CLI). Store several animations in one texture atlas.
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GraphicsGale
Supports many formats, including .ico, .gif, .avi, .cur, .ani., preview your animations in real time while editing sprites - No need to stop working to watch your animation, use multiple layers to make drawing and editing your art easier, onion skinning allows you to see both previous and next frames while your draw, Output your animation frames onto a single sprite sheet, output each frame to its own image file, or export the entire animation as a single .gif file. GraphicsGale's export options are flexible enough to be compatible with any workflow, GraphicsGale also has many pixel-art specific features to help you create your work quickly and easily, including palette control, selectively erasing colors, and tools for quickly replacing and trying new colors. Free download, and get creating!
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Pixaki
Pixaki is the best pixel art app for iPad. It packs a whole load of features into a clean, modern interface, and it works great with Apple Pencil. So now you can make game sprites on the couch, animated backgrounds on your commute, or music videos in the park. Pixaki is packed with great tools dedicated to making pixel art. Drawing on the iPad with Apple Pencil feels smooth and natural. This is the most enjoyable way you can make pixel art. Turn on pixel perfect painting mode to automatically get rid off all those nasty double pixels when doing line art. This is going to save you a ton of time. As well as round and square brushes, Pixaki comes with the matrix dither brush with 13 different dither patterns. It works with the eraser too. The line tool makes it easy to create straight lines, which can optionally be locked to angles perfect for isometric art.
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Inktica
Inktica is a pixel-art and texture editor for creating low-resolution artwork, animated sprites, and game assets on mobile devices. Its drawing tools include a brush with pixel-perfect line mode, eraser, fill, gradient, line, shape, and color-picking tools, plus selection controls for copying, moving, rotating, and flipping artwork. Layers help organize projects, while frame-by-frame animation and onion skinning support sprite workflows. Users can work with classic-console palettes, import palettes from Lospec, and open a reference image while drawing. Inktica can import Aseprite project files and export finished work to image, animation, video, and sprite-sheet formats for saving or sharing. It is intended for pixel artists and game creators producing retro-style graphics, sprites, and textures.
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