I am creating an app, but whenever I create a sprite, or anything for that matter, if it is from my camera roll, it is a big square. I know why this is, but can anyone tell me how to get rid of the background, leaving only the sprite?
The best is probably to use a specialist drawing program to remove the background.
I use (free) Paint.net on Windows. It has a magic wand that you can tap on the background, then press delete, and save as .png (not .jpg), to preserve the transparency. It only works well when the background is very uniform. A typical photo with lots of background variety is probably going to require a lot of careful manual deletion in a drawing program.
Don’t then copy it back to your iPad photo library because this will put a background on it again. Instead, copy it to your Dropbox folder that is linked to Codea (if you haven’t set this up, do, it is essential). Then you can use it in Codea from there.
Thanks, but I have a mac, any ideas? (Is it available for mac)
Yes, Paint.NET is only for Windows. GIMP has a magic wand too, though. You then have to use the eraser tool instead of just pressing delete, though.
If your making a game which needs pixel art, I recommend http://makepixelart.com/free/ should work on both mac and pc.
Edit: Ooops, I don’t know why it had a “IT” at the end, try the link now
THANKS!!! All of the app pixel art! Awesome. I will try this tomorrow.
One of my favorite pixel art programs (compatible with Mac) is Aseprite.
@Prynok I can’t open that page, it seems to not exist… 404 Page Not Found.
Photoshop elements for Mac is very nice, if a bit steep on the learning curve…
Art studio for ipad does the job very well
@tyguy2 - what I should have added is that if you are getting images from the internet, try to get them with transparent backgrounds, to save you the effort of removing the background yourself.
Including the words transparent and png in your search usually helps. If you search in Google images for dog, and then for dog transparent png, the difference is amazing.
Awesome suggestions! Thanks all of you. Tonight I will test aseprite (It seems to bee what I want). Keep them coming for future reference!
How do you save the pics?
In Aseprite, or a generated/downloaded image from Codea?
aseprite
File > Save as > specify folder and name > Save
Thanks!!! This is awesome.
Photoshop is the best choice, cant beat it.
It’s expensive, though. I am saving up for the creative cloud, however. 
When I put the pics into dropbox and synced it with codea, it wont work. It appears as a 0*0
picture.