charliezip


aseprite (https://www.aseprite.org/)

Aseprite is a great tool for creating pixel art and animations.

I've been using Aseprite for many years, now. In fairness, I need to give GraphicsGale and Cosmigo a fair try, and I haven't yet.

Lots of game development tools have decent Aseprite support. More tools should have decent Aseprite support because its file format is simple and the spec is readily available on GitHub.

c library

If you want a jumping off point for writing your own Aseprite file tools, you can find my little Aseprite loader here: cd_aseprite.h

That file includes stb_zlib.h, which is Sean Barrett's public domain zlib decode, extracted from stb_image.h.

My library does the bare minimum in processing the document data, and it makes lots of tiny allocations, but you should only ever be running it in a debug build anyway!

As an example of what you can do with it, for my last jam game, a build step would suck up Aseprite files, generate spritesheets from them, then "bake" those spritesheets and their animation data as C source code. This allowed me to iterate on the art very quickly.

extensions & plugins

I don't use many scripts or plugins for Aseprite, but the few I do like come from Kacper Woźniak.