As the title reads i want to know what you guys use to draw, sprite, animate whatever you guys call it when you design characters and stuff. Anyways, i am currently using Krita and i am really enjoying it, Krita is a very good software that i find can customize my set up for my artistic needs.
Have a look at artrage, spriter and inkscape. Personal choice is xara designer 11.
You might also look at gimp. It is free.
I made a few there after I figured it out and I am a very slow learner.
I am using Inkscape but I am always looking for new ways to create amazing graphics and animations
Are free versions of ArtRage and Spriter enough to make fine game art or do I have to buy full version?
They are , of course, limited compared to the full versions. Being able to make artwork is more down to the artist rather than the tools used.Why not try the free versions and see if they are any good to your workflow ?
Im using PyxelEdit.
Photoline, with a hint of InkScape (Photoline allows for round-tripping with InkScape, which is awesome). Also Blender and Spriter. For specific pixel work I use Pro Motion 6.5
I really like Pyxeledit for tilesheets. I still use Photoshop for some pixel stuff, and I also use a few programs on my iPad air that are actually really good for making simple animations while sitting on the couch.
I uses the Blender, is free can be useful to animation 3d modeling sprite sheet rendering.
Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.
Adobe Flash for characters, sprites, particles, etc...
Adobe Photoshop for UI elements, text, etc...
Adobe Premiere / After Effects for videos...
If am surprised that no one has suggested Aseprite. If you want a slick pixelart sprite editor that excels at sprite animation and is constantly being updated, there is nothing better out there. At $10 it is an absolute steal. PyxelEdit is still better for pixelart tilemaps, but alas it has seemingly been abandoned by the developer.
http://www.aseprite.org/
Aseprite is really good, I bought Pyxeledit but it needs a lot of work to be great, whereas Aseprite is really quite full featured for spriteing, and it has some cool pixelart tools like spray tool to breakup patterns nicely. The UI is also oldskool style which is nice.