As we have not found a 2d artist yet, we're learning to do the art ourselves with a distinct goal of not looking like "programmer art". It's a lot easier to make this stuff when you have the right tools. Personally, I'm a big fan of open source, free programs. Gimp. Blender. Inkscape. The usual suspects. I happily use all three of these and am thankful they exist. That said, some tools are worth purchasing.
Enter Esoteric Software's Spine. If you're not familiar with it, it does bone/mesh animation for 2d sprites. Skeletons have slots where you can create different slots for different skin textures which can be mix-and-matched at run-time on the fly. No need to mess with sprite sheets either; just export from the program. It creates a skeleton file, a texture atlas, and a json file that you can drag right into Unity (after adding their run-times to the project).
Personally, when I compare similar software to decide on which one to purchase (or to go with an open source option), I choose whichever one is most intuitive for me to use. I don't mind paying for ease-of-use. I have found ease-of-use to always be worth it. Spine's interface is easy on the eyes and just makes sense to me out of the box. I'm still figuring out how to use the API inside of Unity, but that will come with time.
That said, I have only had it for a few weeks and haven't delved deep into the program. It certainly shows promise for what we want to do. However, the beginner's mind is full of possibilities. Will I still feel this way in six months? I certainly hope so.
Tutorials, demos, and start-to-finish workflows on Youtube.
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