At the suggestion of forum member da shiz whiz I am holding an icon design contest for Battle for Vesta, my 3D space combat game. Here are the rules: Submissions due by Jan 17, 2010. da shiz whiz 19 will judge, his say is final. We'll announce the winner here in this forum thread. Winner gets a $25 iTunes gift card and 5 Battle for Vesta Promo codes to show off their work to their friends. All entrants must submit an icon in png format in two sizes: 512 x 512 and 57 x 57. Winner assigns all rights to the icons to me for use with the game. All icons must be original work inspired by Battle of Vesta. While you might want to play the game to help you design the icon no purchase is necessary. The game is $1.99 in the App Store. You can get some screenshots for inspiration at www.battleforvesta.com but if you want to make an icon that is sufficiently epic to win approval from da shiz whiz 19 you'll want to play the game itself. And here's the YouTube trailer: Good luck!
The Gimp is a really nice program , I made a lot of forum signatures a while back and used it to do so. I think I'll be entering this contest
Free programs to use I would use Gimp or of you want to do vector based drawing you could try Inkscape which is also free.
I'm very biased. Bribes must be over $100 dollars in itunes giftcard. The giftcards must be blue though.
If you google what you want to do in GIMP, there are lots of answers. For realz. For straight lines use the path tool. Straight line tutorial: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Straight_Line/
Math was never my favorite subject but if my calculator is working correctly bribing you to win this contest doesn't seem cost-effective!