Icons, clip arts? what is the best tool?

[Sunchaser]

Because I need some 2d graphics for a game (items) i would like to try to teach my wife to design icons and clip arts.

She is good at drawing things so i'll give it a try, so you all will have an additional potential graphic artists for your future games ! 

What is the best tool around to draw icons/clip arts? i checked awicons and seems good.

[gnoh]

lol, I do the same,  she uses GIMP to make my images though; after a while we got a wacom bamboo and that's helped her out a-lot.

[Sunchaser]

A "wacom bamboo" can be used also for icons and miniature design? i guess not...

[133794m3r]

A "wacom bamboo" can be used also for icons and miniature design? i guess not...

O_o it's a drawing tablet... and it would help with drawing and things. The only thing i can think of is to show her some pixle art tutorials. I'm currently saving up to buy my fiance a drawing tablet so she can help me with some of the artwork also. Since she doesn't have one, she can do amazing drawings on paper and such, but it's a bit of a hassle to attempt to get those scanned in and not have them get distorted etc.

Also isn't it odd that so far three people, have loved ones who are artists yet all three of us are all coders? If this isn't the definition of weird coincidence i don't know what is.

edit: If she's going to be drawing things for you, it'd be alot better for her to be able to draw them directly on the pc especially with pixle art. It's well pretty much impossible to do it with paper but for the actual artwork it'd be either a) mouse drawing or b) using a drawing table. The second option would make it alot easier and faster. Also she could with a bit of pratice get used to drawing on it, and thus be able to draw with it more naturally. And in the end, be able to make more things with less of a headache on her part.

[gnoh]

heh, the first thing I suggest you teach yourself/her is that image editing software has the ability to scale the image

[Sunchaser]

So, if i need an apple image, let's say 15x15 pixel, can she draw it on the drawing table and then colour it with - for example - gimp?

[gnoh]

Well if you wanted it that size she'd probably draw it at 60x60(or larger)   drawing small icons using any tool would be a nightmare,  you'd be better of creating it large then shrinking it.

[Nox]

Such a drastical (%-wise) reduction in such a small resolutions would have poor results, 15x15 is just 225 pixels, an image small like this you're better of creating directly, even with per-pixel touch-ups

A tablet is sure a great asset in drawing but should be solely such a small images than I think it would not be that beneficial, otherwise for sure

GIMP is free, that's a great feature and most likely sufficient for this task

[jannesiera]

I have a wacom bamboo too and it's awesome . Definitely should get one, it's not that very expensive so give it as a chistmas present or something like that.