HI my name is Reza and I'm very new to gaming, just started to program using a game book called game programming for teens by Maneesh Sethi. I have been going along the book but curious as to hoew I can make my images and animations, but I want to create my own images in my game not implement already made sprites and images into my games. So im only 14 and very young and fairly new to this, so I was wondering if there is anyone who may help me with this because I have been using Graphic Gale, but have no idea how to use it, Can anyone help me!?!?!? <!–EDIT–><span class=editedby><!–/EDIT–>[Edited by - Ravuya on February 19, 2007 3:40:54 PM]<!–EDIT–></span><!–/EDIT–>

I will assume you are refering to Pixel Art, in which case you should probably look at So You Want To Be A Pixel Artist?, along with various other tutorials at Pixeljoint under the features tab which can help give you a good place to start.

Making your own art can take alot of trial and error, and in alot of instances you just need to play around with it until you get something you like. Keep practicing and i'm sure you'll do fine.

i'v found that paint.net is very good for small 2d sprites

Hey, I used that same book as my first book! I second Paint.NET. It's best unless you have Photoshop like me.

If you have questions about programming in the book, blitzbasic.com has forums for that language and everyoen there is very knowledgable.

Can paint.net make animated .gifs?

Does anybody know what program to use , because as dumb as it sounds my friend uses panit, off of microsoft, but i have no idea how he animates them. Should i start out first off with 2d or get right into 3d?

What format files are you looking for? How do you handle transparency? If your transparency is just "programmer pink" and you use multiple files for animations you can just use MSPaint. Otherwise you could give the GIMP a try, it's free and it has more file formats. Painter has a free demo version you can try, and so does Freehand (vector files but you can export them as bitmaps.)

(not sure how I managed to double post as anonymous, feel free to get rid of the duplicate)

Quote: Does anybody know what program to use , because as dumb as it sounds my friend uses panit, off of microsoft, but i have no idea how he animates them. Should i start out first off with 2d or get right into 3d?

MSPaint works fine, it just doesn't have as many extra features as other programs, i use it all the time with Microsoft Gif Animator (free, just have to look for it). Really you can do Pixel Art with anything, MSPaint, Grahpics Gale, The Gimp, Photoshop, Paint.Net, it just depends on what your comfortable with.

As for 3D, thats upto you. Its not really much easier, but if you like you can try looking up Blender or Wings3D.

I have a related question with Photoshop - I've never been able to effectively make pixel art with it. Even when I choose a hard, square, 1 pixel brush, and set it to 100% hardness, it bleeds over into nearby pixels.

Currently, I hit M (square selection tool), drag a 1 pixel circle, and then click inside it to paint exactly in that one pixel.

Is there a way to do this more easily?

Quote: Original post by Avatar God
I have a related question with Photoshop - I've never been able to effectively make pixel art with it. Even when I choose a hard, square, 1 pixel brush, and set it to 100% hardness, it bleeds over into nearby pixels.

Currently, I hit M (square selection tool), drag a 1 pixel circle, and then click inside it to paint exactly in that one pixel.

Is there a way to do this more easily?

you could use the pencil tool (right click on brush tool to select pencil) if you want no bleed,
This is why i use paint.net, it has brushes that bleed just enough to give it a anti-aliased effect but not so much it looks like a blurry mess, another way to accomplish this in photoshop is to make your art about 2-4 time bigger than you want it and then resize it after your done