Hey, I was wondering if anyone could direct me to the best free tool for creating a texture atlas. I'm hoping this will save me a ton of time. Also any sites that offer great free sprites that could be used in a simple 2d platformer? I'm working on an android game where you are basically a robot that jumps from platform to platform dodging enemies and missiles, while shooting your own gun. I'm doing ok on the programming side, however I am finding that my artistic skills are not so good. Anyways, thanks a lot for any help guys! may pop in periodically with any other questions!

Manual Atlas: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/330742/Texture-Atlas-Maker You might find a more user friendly one though.

For sprites just searching google images for ones that meet your criteria will usually lead you to various directories of images. Most of the ones I used for placeholders were from Might & Magic and some older games. Lots of rpg maker tilesets as well for placeholders at least until you customize your own graphics.

"Tiled" is the program for making maps from tilesets. You can make a map, save it as tmx, open it and copy out the array to use for in a custom tile engine.

That looks like it will help alot! Thanks