shmups.system11.org

Can anyone recommend a good free software package for making pixel art? I'm interested in something that would be good for both sprites and map tiles.

For example, I downloaded Graphics Gale and I like it for the most part, but it doesn't seem to be suitable for tiled backgrounds because it can't show a single image tiled so you can make sure it repeats well.

It would be nice if it could assemble multiple tiles into a map, but I am OK with this being a separate tool. Oh, and it should be able to show several images in series as an animation.

Thanks!

tile studio is pretty good but you can't do really big stuff with it.

http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/

Possibly not ideal for pixel art but another superb free art package is the Gimp....

http://www.gimp.org/screenshots/

What fog said, try out The Gimp. Useful not just for pixel art but lots of other things, picture manipulation, changing file formats etc.

Bill

Personal Paint 7 is good for pixel art purposes. It's free, and you can do animation with it, too. It's for the Amiga, but you can easily run it under UAE or whatever.

Just so you know, they not only provide the program to make games, but they provide good resources to find stuff you're looking for.