I am using PM for more than 2 years now, and it is by far the most powerful pixel-oriented drawing program I have used (I have started doing pixel-art with Degas Elite and Deluxe Paint on Atari ST/Amiga in the good ol'days ;-))

Among my favorites features:
+ Powerful set of tools, with many helper functions (multiple grids, pattern drawing, ...)
+ Great color palette management with many functions for sorting, creating color ramps, ...
+ Stencil function to easily protect part of your drawing (protect all pixels that uses a selected set of colors, or protect specific areas of the image that can be selected with all available drawing tools)
+ Anim painting to easily create animation of moving objects
+ Highly customizable (keyboard shortcuts, mouse wheel functions, windows arrangement, full screen mode, ...)
+ Fully integrated support for animation and multi-layers tilemap definition

On the downside, my main complaint would be the small UI elements (but at least you keep most of your screen space for the drawing canvas)

Highly recommended!

Disclaimer: The Key for this Product was provided by the Publisher, but I own (and bought) the non Steam version since a ver y long time.

I have been using Pro Motion since a few years now as my go to tool for making pixelart. So what makes ProMotion different or even better than other tools on the marketplace? The first and foremost point of importance is the developer. I have not witnessed such a level of responsiveness and diligence in customer support as with this developer. The way Cosmigo listens to customer feedback and handles bug reports is unparalleled in my experience.

So for the software itself, what makes is good, what makes it bad. Lets focus on the shorter list first.

The CONS
It is a Pixelart software. If you are looking for a simple image editing Program that lets you paint with infinite colors, do yourself a favour and use Photoshop. This program allows you to use a maximum palette 256 colors per palette. So you can have different palettes on different layers and even on animation frames, and there is gradual layer transparency. But nonetheless, if you plan on doing digital painting, go look somewhere else. Pro Motion NG is for pixelart only.

Also there are still a few minor issues with how certain file paths are associated with your project and a few issues with tilemapping, but those are getting ironed out already.

Apart from that, you will face a certain learning curve in order to get into what pro motion has to offer, as it does some things very differently from other software packages. But if you want to learn pixel art or just want to get to know the software, this shouldn't be much of an issue.

Apart from that, that is pretty much it for the cons.

The PROS
The first CON is actually a PRO for pixel artists. I want limited palettes. Also I want good palette creation and management option. And in this regard the software is top notch. Not only does it bring along a number of accurate retro palettes along with tile size limits etc, it also has a ton of options to generate your own palettes. It makes it fun and easy.

Gradients are also a pretty big part of the software. They allow you not only to create dithered and non dithered gradients from arbitrary color selections, they also double as guidelines for some more exotic paint modes.

Pro Motion NG brings along a number of so called paint-modes. Some of those are familiar, but some of them are simply mind blowing and time saving like nothing else. The star of the paint modes is the Multi-Shade paint mode, which basically allows you to shade pixels in shades of a gradient without changing the active color. Hard to explain, but once you try this you will be blown away. Not only that, there is also the option to use auto dithering, which basically lets you set a dither pattern and only paint in this pattern. All pixels outside the pattern will not be touched as long as dithering is active. How awesome is that?

Pro Motion has multiple Layers. Static image layers, which do not change across frames, image layers, which change per frame, and tilemap layers for special tilemap projects. Layer-handling is straightforward and supports opacity, layer based, index based and by alpha channel, which can be painted separately or simultaneously.

The Pattern Drawing feature is really useful for tileable textures. Just set it to on and off you go. It's fast. It's precise and has a number of options (e.G.: setting the displayed grid size) to get you exactly where you want.

Animation is a blast in this software. All the staples are there along with a very nicely customizable onion skin feature. Really great to work with.

Tilemapping is actually really fun. It let's you set and define tiles and really build AND edit tilemapped layouts at the same time. Which saves so much time.

One of the most unusual thing that Pro Motion NG features are brushes. They are not strictly used in the sense like other software uses brushes. Essentially, it allows you to cut any part of the pixelart on screen and store it as brush for every paint mode (stamp, continuous, airbrush, lines, circles, boxes, ... ) So you can use simple brushes for creative painting, but you can store whole parts of graphics (arms, heads etc.) and store them conveniently for later frames or even in between project files in global brush containers. This feature is an immense time-saver. You don't have to scrob back and forth to find what you are looking for, you just look to your brush containers.

The Baseline
I could go on with the feature list, since there is so much more, like text, the use of bitmap fonts, wild symmetry options, frame scrolling, so many convenience options, the really nice UI, the animation preview window you can actually paint in. There is so much going on. If you really are into pixel art, there is no way around at least testing the software. Sure, there is other really good software out there (I also own Aseprite and Pyxel-Edit), but for me at least, this one is the best.

Honestly, I would not recommend this product. It isn't because this product is not good. It really is good. It's just that everything else is so much more intuitive. I've spent a good chunk of time with this one now, and to be honest, I just don't find any of the features this has over Aseprite or Pyxel Edit to be worthwhile. Rather than being tools that help to increase productivity, they just feel cumbersome to me. Also, because the lack of an intuitive GUI, everything just feels slower with this product. On top of that, it is really expensive. Overall, if you're reading reviews to get opinions on what software to get, then most likely you're like me and would do better with something other than this.

As a beginner game developer, I should say this; the program you are viewing right now saved me from quitting. I am using 10% of this software's potential, at most, yet it makes everything much easier. You have dozens of tools at your disposal to manipulate pixels and you can add even more using mathematical formulas. You can design backgrounds, tilesets, animations and even tile maps using built in tile map editor. The better I become at using this program, the better my game looks. If you are planning to create your own graphics for a 2D game, you need Pro Motion NG.

If you have any experience with software like Aseprite, Pyxel Edit, or any other mainstream drawing apps, you will be feel weird with Pro Motion because of no selection tool. Learning Curve is not quite good for me, but worth to learn anyway. Color organization is also not good, it's like indexed color mode in Aseprite. Well, this doesn't mean the software is bad, it just how can you adapt with it.

I'm finding this very cumbersome and comlicated. As it is now I can't recommend it.
You will spend more time on the internet looking at how to do things. Find nothing and have to go to the forum page. Than actually getting stuff done. There's no way this is industry standard like they claim.

Maybe the animation side of things is, but the creation part is to clunky. I'd say if you have been using it ages and are willing to spend the time. You might enjoy it, but there are so many free content creation programmes out there at the moment. When I use this I feel like I am fighting it rather than it helping me.

Tools need to be easier to find. Where the hell is the gradient tool? You can't use it without the selection tool active and using that requires you go online and look it up. Spent an hour trying to figure it out before I gave up. Never got the gradient tool to work the way I wanted it to. Never figured out loads of other tools also. It seems everything reqires you to do something else first or after or inbetween.

It seems to have good features, it's just that using them is so bloody hard.

UI needs a complete revamp top to bottom.

I don't think I have really mastered what Pro Motion can do, but even at a basic level I find it incredibly helpful. People do wonderful things with Aseprite, but I find the features/workflow of Pro Motion easier to use (although maybe if I sunk 1,000 hours into Aseprite I'd feel differently). As a bonus, the videos are helpful and the dev responsive.

Love this software, has functions that other pixelart software don't have in one package.

Great software which is specialized toward pixel art, particularly for video games. It can be a little tough to get started with. As with any software with a lot of functionality expect a bit of a learning curve. It's not going to be as quick and easy to learn as some other pixel pushing software out there but you'll get much more control over your projects once you've spent some time learning how everything works and most things really are organized in a way that makes sense. The program starts up quickly when launched, remembers what you had open last, and has been remarkably stable so far. In my thousands of hours using it I've only experienced one real crash. Really I'd recommend it very highly.

I'm not sure quite what comes with the demo specifically but from what I've heard it's very limiting and doesn't seem to give a great first impression. Particularly they seem to lock down even basic features like having multiple image layers behind the paid version, so the demo might not give the greatest first impressions compared to actually using the full version.

If you want the best of the best when it comes to pixel graphics and animation, look no further. The workflow is blazingly fast once you get up to speed with how the program works (I can't count the amount of minutes--nay--hours the anti-aliasing tool in particular has saved, it's friggin' MAGICAL)... and with the detailed, easy-to-follow tutorial videos made by the developer, it won't take long for you to get to that point. The rest is easy to figure out by reading the included help file, toying around with the tools given to you, and the Keyboard Shortcuts... option in the File menu (which allows you to look through the various shortcuts for different functionality as well as assign your own shortcuts).

The palette tools (colour cycling! quick generation of RGB/HSV colour ramps! stencils! etc. etc.) are unmistakably the most powerful I've seen in any pixel art program ever, period. The brush modes and operations are incredibly useful, as are the multiple grids, tilemapping tools... I could gush for ages about every single aspect of this program.

Thanks for making such a wonderful product at such a wonderful price point, it has helped to speed up my work in game development significantly, as well as make it more enjoyable overall.

If you're serious about pixel art, I would definitely recommend getting this software.

Also... I really think a lot of people are just impatient with the software. Give it some time, you will be rewarded.