Slate - Pixel Art Editor

When you want to create a video game, you basically need two important pieces of knowledge: coding and graphic. Both are important if you want to make an outstanding release.

If you are good at coding but lack a bit when it comes to graphical design, then you can instead opt for 2D games instead. Drawing in pixel art isn't as complex as 3D graphics, and Slate - Pixel Art Editor is a tool that can help you.

This program is more like a Microsoft Paint on steroids. It has a pretty simple interface with fairly intuitive commands that make it easy to draw in pixels.

The only aspect where it loses out to the preset Windows tool is that it doesn't have multiple types of brushes. In Paint, you can choose to use either Air Brush, Calligraphy Brush, Pencil or Oil Brush. Slate only offers one, the pencil style.

However, you can still change its size and choose if you want it to have a round or square shape.

That was as far as Paint could keep up with Slate. Aside from the aspects discussed above, the latter has multiple advantages over the former.

One of them is the split-screen view. If you are editing a 32x32 tile, for example, you would normally zoom in a lot in order to see what you are doing. But you would also zoom back out to see how it looks at its normal size.

Instead of having to do this over and over, you can keep the zoomed-in version on one side and the regular-sized on the other. That way you can constantly see how your work will look like in the game.

As with other, more advanced graphic editors, Slate also offers the option to use layers, making it much easier to edit and control images.

Not only that, but you can also add animations to your creations. When you are finished, you can export them as GIF files.

This is not the best graphical editing program ever created, but it has its perks.

It is a bit annoying to control sometimes, as no matter how zoomed in the image is or how small you make the window, you do not have sliders to maneuver through it.

But when you look at the features that it offers and its simplicity, you may want to consider giving it a chance.