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I was planning to start a new project pretty soon, but my artist and I are looking for a new art program that can make creating game graphics a little easier. (we are using gimp). So does anyone know of any cheap-or-free, really awesome, totally radical art programs?

Thanks - MunkeeBacon

Ugh, Gimp. The only program that packs so many features, yet has one of the worst UIs ever made.

If your looking to do pixel art, then I would recommend Asesprite (http://www.aseprite.org/) great for sprite animation, or Paint.net(http://www.getpaint.net/). Both pretty good, though you may need to learn how to use asesprite as the UI isn't perfect (though not as abysmal as Gimp).

Have you tried out Blender3d? It is a free and open-source 3d CAD software. You can easily model pretty much anything in blender, texture it, animate it and render it to use it as an asset in your game, it will save you a lot of time, specially when animating objects.

I recommend Pixothello for tileset drawing.

Inkscape for making vector graphics (at which point you will need to use its Export feature to convert it to raster graphics).

After years of graphic work, I currently find myself only using three tools:

Paint Shop Pro 9: General editing, pixel art, layer work. Note that version 9 was the last good version (avoid the Corel versions). Windows only, with a few tiny incompatibilities in Windows 7, but perfectly useable. Possibly abandonware?

MyPaint: The best "natural medium" editor I've seen. You MUST have a tablet to take advantage of 99% of this program, but if you do, it's wonderful. Open-source and free.

Inkscape: The best vector art editor I've seen (better than PSP9's vector abilities). Open-source and free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... cs_editors

Here's a more completely list of raster graphics editors (raster meaning pixel-based, as opposed to vector, which is just fancy (or not so fancy) math describing the image).

I know that bacon uses a Mac but he didn't say for what OS he needs "art programs" so here we go:

Gimp is a good editor for Linux, ok for Windows, bad for Mac (bad performance/slow X11 windows refresh/no cocoa). Some Cocoa forks are around but are lite versions or old versions/non updated versions.

There is too many free OK/good editor for Win to enlist them all. Choose one is a question of taste.
A good Animation multi OS editor is Pencil
http://www.pencil-animation.org/

For OSX SketchBook Express can do some nice things for free.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketchbo ... 3625?mt=12

Little know, for Win/Mac and if you can live with old Shareware style time counters you can have a look for this PSD compatible editor Photoline
http://www.pl32.com/

For vectorial Inkscape is for all OS's probably the best option spite of have a lot to improve. It's not solid as corel/illustrator yet. Another good alternative for Linux (Mac broken atm)is
Xara Extreme http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

For 3D
Blender for any OS is the free best solution. But have some learning needed and probably there is another more basic 3D programs there.

For other small gems take a look in this all-round article about open-source editors (of any kind)
http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/02/18/ ... gners.html

For pixel art or sprites I'm quite fond of GrafX2.

Taehl wrote:MyPaint: The best "natural medium" editor I've seen. You MUST have a tablet to take advantage of 99% of this program, but if you do, it's wonderful. Open-source and free.

I installed this after you recommended it. Very nice painting program.