Well, after a year of working on Paint and pretty much mastering detail, I figured that I need to try for even better detail, plus that should save me a lot of time by not having to do shading pixel by pixel. Someone in another forum said he made his graphics in Inkscape, but I'm having problems. 1) Certain buttons do different things, i.e. the stars and polygons button. How do I choose which? 2) How do I zoom in to do it pixel by pixel? I don't plan to color this way anymore because of the effects, but I still need it for an outline. I don't know much at all of how to match this other person's graphics at all, so I really need any help.

Inkscape is a vector graphics program, which means it works with primitives like lines and curves, not pixels. If you want a free raster graphics program you might want to try Gimp instead.

Is there a way to make the outline of like a person for example, to be fairly symmetrical and not all messed up looking?

I find that it is necessary to play with the nodes manually for most things. Break out that "Edit paths by nodes" tool on the second-to-top and play with it a lot. For symmetry, try out the "Align and Distribute" window (ctrl-shift-a or Object->Align and Distribute). This works both on separate shapes and on individual nodes.

I also find that getting a photo or other image and then "tracing" it in Inkscape is a good way practice (and even sometimes make pretty good drawings). File->Import let's you bring the image directly into Inkscape.

Doing vector graphics is going to take a while to get used to. It's quite different from raster art and really needs a new mindset. Also check out these nice, but kinda limited tutorials. Make more of them, Trapper Zoid!

Thanks, I'll try some of those things. I followed the tutorial on their site but didn't get too far in terms of what I plan to do.

I'll reiterate the fact that Inkscape doesn't have pixels, for that style of coloring you want Gimp instead. That said, I use Inkscape all the time because it's great for getting a cartoony look.

When I use Inkscape to draw something symmetrical like a person, I draw one side with the Bezier tool, clean it up with the edit tool, then select it, create a clone, flip the clone horizontally, and if you hold down Ctrl while you drag an object with the mouse it will drag in a perfectly straight line, so I use that to move the second half of the drawing to line up with the first. Then if you make any changes to the original half, or color it, the same thing will automatically be done to the clone. You can also unlink the clone if you want to make them asymmetrical, or merge the end nodes of the two line segments to make a single figure.

Here is an example, you can save this and open it in Inkscape to play with it if you like.

Thanks, I think I understand the basic now. I've made a slime (skipped some parts because I got lost), but it looks fine. Now, I'll take some stuff I made in paint and try to redraw them for even higher detail.

Like I said, I'm trying for a more realistic approach. As most of the pixel based games were all back in the 80s and early 90s, it's best if I use a program that doesn't rely on pixels. It's just a convenience issue. I'm sure I can do all the stuff I did with paint, but I'm so used to doing it pixel by pixel that it's really weird. I made my first drawing and it's way better than anything I made in paint. I've tried importing stuff from paint to work on but it's quite difficult. As with most things, it's a learning process.

If your goal is a realistic art style with high detail, you would really be better off with a program like Gimp. Vector programs like Inkscape are particularly well suited to cartoons, icons and gui elements, cell shading, gradients, and animation, but they are not at all suited for detailed realistic textures like, say, sandstone, or wood, or fabric. The pinnacle of vector art is an anime or Disney style, it will never give you something that looks like a photograph or a painting, that's just not what it's intended or suited for. Although it's perfectly possible to do lineart in Inkscape, export it as a png, and color that in gimp or another bitmap program.

One thing you might want to realize is that all these beautiful recent 3D games use bitmap (aka pixel) textures that were probably made in Photoshop (to which Gimp is the most similar free program). Similarly if you look at modern book covers, especially for fantasy novels, a lot of them are digital paintings that were done in Photoshop or Painter, a somewhat similar bitmap program. The difference between ugly old pixel art and gorgeous recent realistic art is merely that the recent art has much higher resolution and more color depth.

But if you are set on learning how to use Inkscape, I'm happy to give advice on it since I use it all the time. I have done what you are talking about, importing stuff from another program (or more usually I import scans of pencil sketches) to work on in inkscape. What's quite difficult about it? If you have the image saved as a png or jpg or something on your computer, you just import that file into an inkscape document. If you want you can resize it, this is useful if you are making a set of monsters or icons or whatever and you want them all to match. Then you just use the Bezier tool to draw over top of your old drawing. If the black line isn't visible enough, turn it pink or something while you're drawing, then make it black again later.

You want to draw by color area, often you draw the outline of the whole object first, then the outlines of various sub-areas. If you want you can have areas that are a solid color and don't have a line/border, or you can do the opposite and have details that are just a line, with no fill. If you can't see your original drawing behind the new drawing you are trying to make over top, you can raise the layer of the original or lower the layer of whatever's blocking your view.

Hm, well Gimp might be more suited for me. I only came upon this because someone told me that's how they made their graphics. Well, I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point.

Maybe it would be better if I showed you some stuff I made with Paint so you can see the style I'm kind of aiming for