I'm not an artist so I have to depend on other means for generating images. I use a program called POV-Ray (
http://www.povray.org) to create my images. If you have any skill with math and understand geometry it's a good tool. It allows you to create objects and entire scenes using primitives. You specify position, scaling in all three dimensions, textures and a whole host of other capabilities. You control the lighting position so shadows and shading are produced. It's capable of producing .PNG files with transparency not only for the image or parts of the image but also for the background.
I've attached a small image I created for a blockade type game. I wrote a program in C# that created the appropriate input for POV-Ray to create a range of body types and accessories with varying colors and finishes. POV-Ray can batch process these 128 at a time and now I've got over 8,000 I can choose from. And the great thing is that I don't have to re-draw them in a paint type program.
Lilith, Night Butterfly
I'm not a programmer but I play one in the office
