Pixel art softwares for game salad.

alexgav02alexgav02 Member Posts: 4
in Working with GS (Mac)

I am new to game salad and have recently been making a simple platform game and I have come to the point where I want to incorporate pixel art into my game. I have been looking everywhere for good pixel art software but I haven't had any success. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone would kindly point me to some good pixel art software so I can get started with becoming a developer. If there isn't much pixel art websites or software that will work with game salad I would be just as happy with vector art too. P.S I have tried Inkscape but you need some sort of installer for it and I'm not sure if it's safe. :smile:

Comments

  • BBEnkBBEnk Member Posts: 1,764

    Pixen and Gimp are both free.

  • alexgav02alexgav02 Member Posts: 4

    I have Pixen and it's £7.99, but I am a bit stuck with that too because the graphics go very blurry when I import them but I always see pixel art games that use only a few pixels and they work perfectly and aren't blurry and I am trying to get graphics like that. And I will try Gimp, is there any particularly good tutorials for Gimp? :smile:

  • Chr0nosChr0nos Wondering Vagabond AustraliaMember Posts: 113

    Hi,
    Piq is an awesome pixel art site. Its simple, no downloads, and you can choose to save your artwork straight to your hard drive, or upload it to your profile on the site where others can view and comment on it.

  • jsorr2jsorr2 Member Posts: 279

    Gimp has a pixel shape option, under the pencil tool :)

  • alexgav02alexgav02 Member Posts: 4

    Thanks guys! I will try Piq and Gimp, thanks for the help! :smile:

  • alexgav02alexgav02 Member Posts: 4

    However, with piq I'm not sure how to make the background transparent.

  • A_ConstantinA_Constantin EnglandMember Posts: 79

    Piskel is also really good. There is an online, Mac and PC version

  • ChunkypixelsChunkypixels Member Posts: 1,114

    @alexgav02 your pixel graphics are appearing blurry when you import them into GameSalad due to one of the following:

    1. Your creating small pixel graphics in your pixel editor, say 32x32 pixels as an example, and then your scaling them up in GameSalad to make them look the scale your wanting and so that they look pixelly (say to 128x128). In this case, you need to actually decide on the scale/size you want them to appear in GameSalad, then pre-draw or scale up to that size in your graphics package BEFORE you bring them into GameSalad. If you scale graphics up in GameSalad it will try to blur/blend the pixels.

    2. Your NOT saving out your graphics with a DPI/resolution of 72. If you save your graphics, and use a different DPI size, your images will import into GameSalad at a different size than you expect. Needs to be 72 dpi.

    With regards to good pixel graphics software, I'd have to say ProMotion from Cosmigo is probably one of the best. Its been around for ages, and is probably the most widely used pixel editing software in the games industry.

    http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php

  • SLOCM3ZSLOCM3Z Member Posts: 797

    @alexgav02 I will make my images 5 times larger than I want them to be like @Chunkypixels said. GIMP has a scale image function that allows me to do this. All you have to do is make the canvas the size you want, draw it, then scale image to double or more. Just make sure that the interpolation is at 'none' and you make the scaled image divisible by the beginning number. That works for me and the images are really clear when I scale them down in the Creator. Hope this helps :)

  • joshiwujoshiwu Member Posts: 207

    If you have an iPad, try inkscape. Its open source but it is legit. Just remember that layers will export as "groups" wehn you send it to your PC for final touches.

Sign In or Register to comment.

© Vanilla Keystone Theme 2025