How to...Explosion sprite sheet

I would like to have an explosion animation when a tank is destroyed. Nothing fancy, 3 or 4 frames. How can i make a sprite sheet? I don't have photoshop (could barely afford C2) and every tutorial i have seen talks about using that program. Is it possible to make a sprite sheet without buying expensive software. Or at the least, have an animation without inserting a sprite sheet?

Thanks for any help.

You could always use particles instead and avoid doing any animation yourself

There are however plenty of free alternatives to Photoshop

If you have no experience with imaging software Paint.net is a good option

It's free and fairly easy to use

Here is a list of 10 open source and thus free alternatives to Photoshop

tripwiremagazine.com/2011/04/10-best-free-or-open-source-photoshop-alternative-software.html

Thanks for the reply, jn2002dk

Since I'm not going for 3D realism here, I just took 3 frames from the sprite sheet and added them separately in the action.

It looks fairly decent.

Now on to creating a health meter and event.

Thanks again.

Use Paint.Net , Gimp , and Graphics Gale !

Those are awesome photoshop-like programs !

So how would i export a sprite sheet with these programs? Are there certain guidllines? Size placement and things like that?