I have no tablet, but I have some decent paint programs (Paint.NET, Inkscape) and I was wondering if any of you guys had tips for drawing art for skill icons.
You could ask someone to do it. I think that's the thing I'll do. Otherwize, my skill set might have meme images and random images (I have David Guetta face for my first skill set :s).
you could also modify some of the existing ones, simple edits at first such as swapping greens into blues until you get the hang of it works pretty well while your making the mod, and lets you work out exactly what you want in the image.
If it's a viable solution, modify already existing art. If you have to create things from scratch, remember to work on more than one layer. And if you want to start creating art seriously, it's recommended that you consider buying the tablet (I'm a hypocrite there, since I lost the one I had some time ago and still didn't get a new one, but deal with it).
Just a warning : the tablet won't make you a draw master. That's why I follow some lessons before buying a tablet
No, it won't. You need to be able to actually draw for it to give you any benefits. Being able to sketch well is a good indication that one will find a tablet helpful.
Only items and sprites should be 8-bit pngs; all the skill icons are 24-bit. It doesn't actually matter to the game though (unless you're hue-shifting a monster sprite- then all the frames do need to be indexed colour).
This is what I do to make the ones in my mods. I suck at creating but I'm pretty decent at editing and reverse-engineering stuff. :3
