Pixel Painting Software ...

[remi]

Artweaver V0.4 with a lot of enhancements is out.

They call it a "simple" Freeware program, but there are full layers like Photoshop and some good brushes.

Remi

[spline]

Promotion from Cosmigo is the most intuitive pixelpaint program because you can setup shortcuts for everything like zooming, changing brush size, etc.

And it is very powerful.

The only drawback of the program is that it doesnt really support layers.
You have to use onion skinning and use different frames as different layers or use other open projects images as a background layers. This is not real layers but does work a bit like layers.
You can also use a spareframe as a background layer. Pressing the J button to access the spareframe.
(The spareframe is like a copy buffer.)

Other than that it has very nice paintmodes and fill funtions, tile map functions, animation funtions saving and painting transparent gifs etc etc.

I have been evaluating most paintprograms as I have been working as a pixel paint artist in the mobile industry for quite some time now and Promotion is the quickest tool.

[staigermanus]

Promotion (as in pro-motion) is well respected indeed for painting and also animation in creating game art. It has numerous formats for various game engines, if I recall. Many of the keyboard shortcuts are the same as in Project DOgwaffle, because both Dogwaffle and Promotion are heavily inspired by a common predecessor, called D-Paint (DeluxePaint) that was a very popular paint app on AmigaOS 20 years ago. For example, in both applications the 'j' shortcut is used to 'jump' to the alternate image buffer (also known as the swap buffer).

For painting without animation there's also Pixarra's Twistedbrush. It's around $79

Pixarra is also one of the very few which have particle brushes with presets for shrubbery a bit like PD Particles (a $19 proggy derived from PD Pro and focusing on the particle brush system).

[Nostaw]

For pixelling images i can strongly recommend Cosmigo Promotion -it's the only tool i know on PC for professional, extreme fast pixelling and animating of low res images. This tool is widely known to pixel animations/backgrounds and tiles for mobile games or handheld game consoles like Game Boy Color. I used it myself for two Game Boy Color titles.
Check out these links:
http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/?Screenshots
http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/sample11.html
http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/?Samples

[Grafixman]

That looks good. Thanks for the tip.

[Ross Macintosh]

Thanks for the tip about ArtWeaver. It looks like a great program for my tool chest!

Another program that I'd recommend everybody check out is ArtRage. It is a painting program available in a feature-limited free version or a $20 USD full version. It is really cool. It is developed by the same programmers who used to make Kia PowerTools so it is very strong on interface design. It sure doesn't seem like $20 software when you use it. Its simple interface also makes it a great program for even young kids.

Regards, Ross

[remi]

Tux Paint 0.9.17 is now available (for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).

"Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program." [1]

Link: http://www.tuxpaint.org/