What are the best graphic editors for sprites?

What are the best graphic editors for creation of sprites?

You know how id did most of the sprites in DOOM? They built physical models then took pictures of them inside a a box with even lighting and blue background for transparency. From what I understand after this process the sprites were then re-colored which is a lot easier than trying to make something from scratch. Either way it won't really matter what graphic editor you use as long as you can edit pixels.

Something that lets you rotate and animate the sprite in real time (as you're editing it) might be one step above a plain old pixel painting program?

I always like to refer to Eriances's spriting tutorial
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13992#p284700
This guy is just fantastic, whether he creates monsters or weapons.

While he is using Photoshop, one can use Gimp or Paint.net of the freeware variety or Paint Shop Pro. Some even use MSPaint with success.

The only real barrier for creating sprites is ones imagination.

Hmm, for rotating while creating one could use a 3D editor like Blender or Sculptris. And then taking screenshots of the various poses like mentioned above.

I'd do it the id way to capture Doom's style but I guess whatever works easiest is the best method.

I find MS Paint way better than Photoshop or Gimp for that matter.

Scypek2 said:

I find MS Paint way better than Photoshop or Gimp for that matter.

I don't do a lot of sprite work, but what about Paint.NET?

IrfanView

IrfanView is certainly an excellent program to manipulate an image after the fact,
but it would be very difficult to create an image with it from scratch.

Someone posted an online tool a little while back that seemed pretty cool for making sprites. I can't seem to find it though.

edit: nvm I think it was this and it's for pixel art don't know that it would be too good for sprites.

Modern version of Deluxe Paint, FTW!
https://code.google.com/p/grafx2/