What's everyone's preferred method of creating sprites, art and animations for their games?

I'm a professional Animator for many years, Pixel-Art is VERY new to me but animation isn't.

Since pixel-art workflow is very different than what I'm used to (frame by frame animation, vectors, post production effects, etc..) I had to try something new.

I started with a software called Aseprite, it is very easy to use in my opinion, you can make animated pixel art, you can animate, you even have dynamic onion skin so you can see any number of back/forward frames.

I still have much more to learn about pixel art, but as I'm working on my first official game I'm learning the art... of pixel art. I believe that the secret is to practice like in anything else.

There are many softwares out there for pixel art, just choose one you feel isn't too complex or scary for you and start creating simple things, after that you will forget about the UI of the software and as you'll get used to it you will focus on the CREATION progress which is the most important thing.

I hope that some of my tips helped you or at least encourage you to give it a try.

I wish you good luck with your creation journey! :)

* Sorry about my bad English

Example of a simple character IDLE Animation I made in Aseprite:

I use photoshop almost everyday (not for pixel art, it is too slow for an animation workflow).

I have Pyxel Edit on my PC, I even used it for some tiles but for animation I don't know, it's not simple as in Aseprite where I do both: Animation and Tiles.

The newest software I purchased is Pro Motion NG which is the most advance of all of these, it have so many features of almost any professional 2D Animation software I used but it's dedicated for pixel-art.

I should give it a try, the Tileset in Pro Motion NG is the most amazing one I've seen for designing and tweaking full levels in a super simple way based on their UI, but still... I need to give it a try as it's already installed and waiting for me to try it.

For now... Aseprite is my best friend as it's a lite software and I already got used to it's workflow.

I do recommend you to try other tools.

All these pixel-art softwares are wonderful and mostly lite especially Pyxel Edit and Aseprite, not so hard to learn them compare to Photoshop or Pro Motion NG which are much more complex and rich with many extra features that not everybody needs.

On my daily job (Animator at the Studio) I'm using Toon Boom Harmony and it's a none-pixel art animation software, it works on Vectors and Rasters (Yes, even combined!) so I believe it will have a dedicated work flow pixel-art environment in the future but, consider it's price it is not for everyone.

My best tip for you:

1 Software that does many tasks will provide you a much faster workflow than few softwares together for example Pyxel Edit + Photoshop I do all in Aseprite, and probably it will be easier in Pro Motion NG.

I hope this helps

Pro Motion is super ultra complicated and you end up wasting more time than saving from using something with less features like pyxel edit or aseprite, it's made for old people who used old software that isn't available anymore

I must agree: if you want to get into creating fast just start play with Pyxel-Edit or Aseprite.

Pro Motion NG isn't for old people. it's inspired by Amiga work flow and it's out there for a while and works on Windows 10 and still updates and new extra features are still coming on every update and it's used by "old people" or should I say talented artists such as Yacht Club Games team, the makers of "Shovel Knight" and others.

Pixel-Art isn't a new digital art style invented yesterday and still kicking to these days, it's not a time machine... yet. ;)

In my opinion Pyxel-Edit is very confusing with it's spread-sheet-like layout frames all over the place, you can see that on the video above it's very confusing and harder to follow compare to working with 1 screen, 1 frame on the timeline + onion skin options like in Aseprite which is much simple UI again, this is my opinion.

Maybe you'll like Pyxel Edit, maybe Aseprite or Pro Motion NG?

only you can tell.

* Sorry about my bad English