I just saw this kickstarter pop up on my facebook feed:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/finnmorgan/sprite-lamp-dynamic-lighting-for-2d-art

It looks pretty neat. It's basically a normal-map generator, but instead of doing it from heightmaps or 3d models, it works by having you (the artist) hand-paint how your sprite should be lit from 2 or more directions.

After that, it generates a textures with normals, depth, AO, etc so you can dynamically light the sprite.

A picture speaks 1000 words:

->

I'm not making a 2D game, so I'm not likely to use it... Personally, it looks like it lets people get a lot of mileage from some simple looking assets!

What do you guys think? Anyone here making a game with 2D art who thinks this is cool / useful?

That does look pretty cool, although unfortunately for me the input images would still probably be beyond my meagre art abilities without a significant amount of practice. It certainly does seem to produce some impressive results with simpler assets though, and I'm sure a lot of people could put this to great use!