The best low cost tools for game art

gamedeveloper.com:

Whether you've been making art for games since the 1970s or you are picking up your first digital paintbrush today, asset production for games does not need to be wallet-shattering. We’re following up with our best free art tools resource with a few additional low-cost options for your practice or project.

I picked a somewhat arbitrary price of $50 USD as the limit, and have prioritized tools that appear to have good documentation, support, and/or community resources to help new users get up to speed making art. Unless otherwise noted, all prices are approximate, accurate at time of writing, and listed in US dollars (USD.)

I've also decided against featuring software that is only available via subscription: everything featured on this list has a one-time fee structure. It's worth noting that there are multiple well-regarded art tools with an "indie" or personal license for a relatively low monthly fee: for example, the 3D modeling packages Vectary at $15 USD monthly, and ZbrushCore around $10 USD monthly. As they'd add up to over $50 over a year of use, they went over my (gut instinct) limit. I'll let those options sit here as honorable mentions for interested parties.

Be sure to check out our overall list for the best game development software right here for all of our free and low cost resources!

Aseprite is, in the opinion of your humble list-writer, one of the best toolsets for its particular use case on the planet. The suite is used widely for pixel art (think 8, 16, or 32-bit 2D assets, though that’s really just the beginning) and animation, and works on PC, Mac, and Linux machines.

Aseprite runs around $20, and features a strong community (with plenty of scripts for extending the tool and adding functionality), and a