2D sprite drawing programs?

The best software is Photoshop. The later versions are also very suited for sprite-based animation. The Lite-Version is more than enough at the beginning and if you are a student you can get it cheaper. Don't be discouraged by the multiplicity of functions. I'm using Photoshop for over 10 years now and there are still funcions I just ignore because I never needed them.
The best alternative is the free Gimp software. Maybe you try this one first. But I don't know if you can animate in this one.

 

Photoshop, illustrator and Flash

I use a combination of Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash.

Illustrator is the best for flat graphics and objects you want to bring into flash and because they are created in vector format you can enlarge them to any size without any loss in quality.

Photoshop however is great if you want to add more detail and textures or shading. I then drop the sprites into Flash to preview the animation or animate the characters body parts on different layers and then export the frames as individual PNG files straight out of Flash.

To create sprite sheets we use a program called Texture Packer, it works really well and has some great features which save on file size.

TIP: Make sure to keep your sprite sheets 1024 pixels in height or width max or you might have trouble with older devices trying to render larger sprite sheets and your game will crash. If you need more frames generate several sprite sheets and spread the frames over a few rather than creating one huge sprite sheet.

 

Texture Packer is unbelievably useful

 

I found these tutorials very helpful when learning Illustrator:
http://www.vickiwenderlich.com/

 

If you have a Mac, Pixelmator is very worth checking out, not too expensive either, only £21 on the Mac AppStore.

 

Acorn (check Mac AppStore) is cheap yet very powerful!

 

I actually find the iPhone/iPad app "Sprite Something" to be really useful for simple stuff. Worth checking out. Here is their site:

http://terriblegames.com/spriteSomething/

They have a few youtube videos showing some of its functionality but its pretty intuitive.

 

Have any of you used Crazy Talk?

http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/default.aspx

 

Is it possible to import a sprite?

 

where did u hear about crazytalk?
did u watch some of the youtube tutorials?
looks insane

 

I believe you can - through iTunes

 

Has anybody used CrazyTalk with Unity3D?

 

I like to use graphicsgale
It might be a bit to simple for some, and it could use a few more features. But I found it very straightforward and easy to learn and use.

http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

I'm also a fan of oldschool pixel graphics wich might ad to me liking this software =p

 

I'd like to chime in with another gimp recommendation. I'll learn photoshop eventually. But this will do for now.