a good program for designing 2d textures to use in XNA?

I'm developing a ga开发者_如何学Cme with Microsoft XNA. I haven't used any modelling program(even 2d modelling) before and I want to learn one. Which program is best ? Is there any free tutorial for it?

---

A few other really good free alternatives:

1. Paint.NET: Good for bitmap editing
2. InkScape: Great for vector art

---

GIMP is pretty common for those with limited (or no) budget. Beware though, it has a steep learning curve. Otherwise if you have the money Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

If you want to do 3d stuff, Blender (free, open-source), 3ds Max(pricey), Maya(pricey).

There will be tutorials galore for just about any of these tools.

What you often won't find in many of the tutorials though is if you want to use them in a game, you'll probably want to use dxtex and DXT compression after the fact.

This may not be a programming question but for programmers getting into a bit of the technical artist role this is definitely important stuff to know.

---

http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/ I'm a beginner, and this free program really does the trick. It's really easy to animate, supports copy paste from files, per-pixel editing and all the stuff you need to have for a simple 2d game.