I Need A Soda Maker

I've been trying to figure out some sprite editing software to use for the graphics of the game. After looking at quite a few, I found some that look promising.

For my level maps, I want something which I can have a grid and place my sprites in it, to see how they work and look together. I want to be able to edit them, pixel by pixel, and see all of that type of tile change in real time to make sure things line up correctly and what not.  A program called the Dame Editor looks promising, and holds many features (many that I do not need) and I have not seen an easy pixel editor but I'll check it out. I do not need to make maps with it, as this will happen in the code itself, and be randomly generated.

I will use GraphicsGale for everything else un-map related.

For characters, items, GUI, and pretty much everything that isn't map related, I'll use GraphicsGale.  I am definitely no artist, and I will find out tonight at what extent I am truly bad. I've seen some useful tutorials online, and I don't want to copy someone else's sprites, but I have a plan in which I shouldn't fail too miserably, if I can figure out how the program works...

Edit: Screw it. I think I'm going to stick with Paint.NET.  It is amazing, and I can do great things with it quickly.  I found a site about resolution sizes and how large to make a character here.  I like the pixelated style, so I'll go for a charactor standing at ~128 screen pixels, but only 60 drawn pixels tall (by dropping the pixels per inch/resolution). We'll see how that goes.