It’s ideal for my needs as I’ve adopted an art-style reminiscent of old school anime shows. The brushes in particular are the best in the business and truly aid in the creation of manga / comic book art. Manga Studio is the package I use to sketch character & mechanical design and subsequent line and colouring work. It’s simply not suitable for this job and there are other better options. Let me stress that I don’t use GraphicsGale for any illustration work though. Such limitations are not present with GraphicsGale but the option is given to work within various limits, some handy presets are also included. With OCP Art Studio that was exactly the case, one had to make the most of the ZX Spectrum’s resolution of 256 x 192 pixels and 8 colours. The artist has no choice but to master working within limited resolution and colour parameters. GraphicsGale will therefore not help a weak pixel artist, no such filters come available and I couldn’t be happier. The result is often a muddy mess that is sadly passed on as pixel art. An artist may go about drawing an object conventionally and then simply use a filter to pixelate the image. The other problem with fully-featured packages is that they offer plenty of plug-ins giving lazy artists workarounds. I would even recommend MS Paint over Photoshop for pushing those pixels. Photoshop is a fantastic tool for illustration and photo editing but not necessarily great for pixel art. GraphicsGale is the best contemporary pixel editor I’ve seen Youtube tutorials of people doing pixel art on Photoshop and it’s just such a cumbersome process. Where GraphicsGale truly excels in that the pixel editor is exactly as it should be and does everything to save the user time. I prefer to do all that within the game engine where I can change sprite speeds and frames on the fly. Sprite animation and onion skinning are also features of GraphicsGale but I seldom use it for those purposes. GraphicsGale is all about the pixels and nothing but the pixels – just the way I like it! Incredibly intuitive to use without any unnecessary features that often impede the creation process. This is the absolute best pixel editor I’ve ever used and I think I speak with some degree of authority. Three years ago I discovered GraphicsGale and quite honestly have never looked back. Yes, pixel art at a resolution of 1280 x 720 which was completely nuts but it helped me improve my detailing. When Gimp came to my attention I used it in tandem with Paint Shop Pro and worked on some HD-quality pixel art. Somewhat limited when compared to Photoshop but definitely better as a pixel editor. I went with Paint Shop Pro which I thoroughly enjoyed and significantly improved my pixel art capabilities. The famous digital illustration of the Pharaoh showcasing the capabilities of Deluxe Paint IIĪs I moved onto Pentium hardware it was time to make another switch to a more advanced art application. I liked this one quite a lot, an impressive and professional package that I still use on occasion. Eventually I switched to Deluxe Paint II, a port of the original Commodore Amiga version. It lacked some of the charm of OCP Art Studio but it was competent enough for pixel pushing. Essentially a Macpaint wannabe for DOS-based systems of that period. When I got hold of my first IBM PC compatible I started using another drawing program called Dr. ![]() In subsequent years as I upgraded to new computer hardware I was always on the look out for similar graphics software. ![]() Generally an easy-to-use pixel editor that truly deepened my interest in the art form. My initial foray in pixel art was with a nifty little program called OCP Art Studio on the ZX Spectrum.
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