Video Game Art ... By Programmers

General Discussions
#1

My place of employment caught on fire yesterday, so I should have some free time to work on my video game project (a freeware graphical Rogue-like).

I’ve found free tile art that I plan to use for most of the ground tiles. I found it at http://reinerstileset.4players.de/englisch.html. I’ll need to resize it and tweak it a bit, but I think I can use it. I think I can even use the transition tiles, though I haven’t figured out the details yet.

However, there’s no way that I could possibly find adequate character art. The game is going to be about angels and various unusual creatures. I’m not going to find the right kind of artwork at the right sizes on the Internet.

I can’t draw for the life of me, and I don’t want to pay for art for a free game. I just need some adequate 2d character art, and I won’t even force myself to do animations.

Can anyone recommend any books or other materials that would help me learn how to draw 2d characters that look passable (not necessarily good)?

#2

Unfortunately, it’s something that mostly takes practice. One thing that should help is a vector art program. It makes lined cartoon like art somewhat easier and smoother looking. Animation is a subject onto itself, but usually you want a program that has bone animation. Anime Studio would be one. Flash also has it, if you already have it, but it’s too expensive to buy for that purpose. Do a search for animation software because there’s quite a bit around and some of it is free. Practice a lot and you’ll get there.

#3

And bear in mind that once you’ve got a decent demo using your own art you can show it around on art fora and ask whether anyone wants to collaborate. (Until you have something to show off, not so much point).

#4

use primitive shapes as placeholders- if your more interested in the code side build that up for now, once you have that you’ll have a much better idea of the style and assets you’d like to see in your game.

#5

I found a program at http://www.brothersoft.com/games/basic-2d-character-sprite-kit.html that would allow me to make very basic character sprites. However, the sprites would be the wrong size, and it’s human-only sprites. I won’t find something like that but capable of doing a wider variety of sprites.

That isn’t a vector art program, but it has some predrawn body parts that you can assemble. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that well - some of the body parts don’t look quite right when you put them together.

I might try a vector art program. I was thinking about looking into Flash anyways, though I didn’t realize it could be used for vector art. If I do purchase the flash development kit (or whatever they call it), I might use that.

I’m not going to mess around with animations at all - the sprites will seriously just slide across the ground.

I guess since I’m planning to give the game away for free, I can afford to hope someone will like the game and just give me art for free. Still, I plan to at least try to draw some character art. It doesn’t have to be perfect - I just don’t want people to look at the monsters and not know what they are.

#6

Some suggestions:

a) Stylized art is the way to go if you can’t draw. E.g., stickmen, geometric shapes with eyes, South Park-style characters, characters like chess pieces, characters built entirely from cubes, etc. You can end up with something that’s visually interesting without attracting too much attention to your lack of artistic skills.

b) Don’t mix good (downloaded) art with bad (programmer) art. It just makes the bad art more obvious.

c) Avoid animation at all costs. It’s like drawing, only a million times harder.

d) Try mocking-up a screen shot in an art application (GIMP, Inkscape, Paint.NET, whatever). You’ll quickly get a feel for what you can and cannot draw.

Simon

#7

That’s the sort of advice that I was looking for, though I still wish there some way to become a semi-adequate artist in a short period of time.

a) and c) are things I’d already decided on.

I will definitely violate b), but I’m glad you brought this up. I hadn’t thought about it previously, but now that you’ve pointed it out I can try to minimize the damage. While there will be some downloaded art and some programmer art, I will at the very least try to separate it.

I guess I’ll try to draw the entire foreground (characters, objects, etc.) myself but download the entire background (ground tiles mostly). Maybe I can get some of the unusual ground tile art by modifying downloaded art that isn’t in quite the format I want it to be.

There simply isn’t the kind of character art that I need available for free. I was planning on using some generic downloaded characters for unimportant NPCs, but now I think it would be better to draw all the characters.

The smartest thing to do would be to pay an artist, but this is a game I plan to give away for free.

#8

One good free vector art program is called Inkscape. It’s not made for animation. You do need to go through tutorials to get a grip with it. The thing about vector art is you are making individual pieces of characters and then combining, or grouping them. An eye is an elongated circle with another elongated circle for the pupil, etc. Then you group them, so they can be manipulated together. You can move them around, copy paste, rotate, and edit. It’s actually more time consuming than doing a drawing, but the results will look better if you aren’t an artist. To overlap, you move an object forward or back. Also, always make a very large character and then shrink it when you are finished. If you can find something close to what you want on the internet, import it and trace over parts of it. That’s one way of dealing with animation also. Trace over the character frames and then make changes. Simple animations can be as few as 2 frames. A four frame walk animation will pass in a semi-professional game. I use inkscape and gimp all the time and I recommend both. Gimp is for painting, but can also be used for changing to different formats. I usually import my finished Inkscape drawing into Gimp and save it as a png. Inkscape is actually a more sophisticated art program than Flash, but doesn’t have bone animation.

#9

I don’t know if it helps but on the Indiegamer forum there are sometimes threads from people asking for feedback on their game’s artwork. It may be worth a look as the responses can be insightful, although it does highlight the difference between professional art and programmer art, which can be depressing. :wink:

(Incidentally, the question “How can I get someone good to do my art for free?” is quite a common one on that forum. You probably know the answer already.)

Simon

#10

I don’t know if I’m quite ready for vector graphics programs, though I may look into them later.

I have added the Indiegamer forum to my bookmarks. I’ll eventually register for it, though I don’t know quite when.

[quote=“dishmoth,post:9,topic:35955”]
Yes, I’m not expecting anyone to come along and do art for my game. Since it’s going to be open source and GPL’ed, there is always that small possibility that someone will come along and change all the artwork. However, I’m not going to hold my breath. It’s far likely that no one will even notice that my game exists… or even that it will never be in a playable state.

There seem to be alot of artists looking for work at the Indiegamer forum, but they appear to all want money. :frowning:

Edit: I did actually find a website that I found useful (though hard to see) for drawing human characters: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-draw-a-womans-body. There are other videos for men, faces, etc. Honestly, even with the video, I still can’t draw that well.

#11

Well this is how i learned to draw, Can’t help you with the computer graphics bit though. It’s been about 5 years since i’ve done anything with that.

Disclaimer: I’m not an artist but my teacher was :slight_smile: and this is how he taught us.

Take an hour out of your day(a whole hour! no slacking!) And trace objects(like a vase/fruit bowel/lamp). Do rough sketches of the object. I’d say 5 minutes apiece. Try using the same object until you have it down though… this is more difficult then it might seem. Once you feel you can do a good enough job of that try doing it without looking at the paper. I wouldn’t worry if you can’t get the blind drawing down, it’s just to help you keep a mental image of what your looking at. Helps you grasp the details and dimensions better.

Then if you want to take out the time to do this, not entirely necessary but it’ll help you draw quicker. Start drawing people with 10 seconds a person. It can just be the tv if you want, or put a movie on and pause at sections. Try to start out with the outline, It should be a movie with a lot of movement though, like sports. Not just a bunch of people sitting around.

Start drawing from your imagination.

What i usually do is come up with something then draw it out about 15 times, till i get it looking exactly how i imagine it. Oh and remember erasing is a part of drawing. There’s a reason you draw with a pencil instead of a pen don’t be afraid to use the eraser.

#12

Speaking from my own experience I would advise against trying to learng to draw. I am currently working with my brother (who’s a brilliant designer) and it makes such a big difference. Over a few days he knocks out designs that would take me anywhere from weeks to months. But the same is also true about programming; I knock out code in far less time then him.

Your a programmer, so concentrate your time on getting the game built. I’ve seen plenty of artists and graphic designers who want to be involved in making some games but don’t have the programming skill. If you have something to show then that makes you more attractive to get a designer working with you.

#13

[quote]Your a programmer, so concentrate your time on getting the game built. I’ve seen plenty of artists and graphic designers who want to be involved in making some games but don’t have the programming skill. If you have something to show then that makes you more attractive to get a designer working with you.
[/quote]
I think he’s mainly talking about doing some very basic graphics. I do disagree with the learn to draw method also, but a basic understanding of graphics will help your own presentation when showing your work, and many games can work with simple graphics, and there are a lot of tools out there to make simple graphics look better.

#14

As dishmoth said, stylization is one option, but it can be quite challenging also.
Like everything else of worth, art is a 10-year project to become adept at for most.
The results of beginner art are without exception ‘naive’ and though the maker may
feel that they are perfectly acceptable an objective viewer will often find them wanting.

I would say that abstraction and naive representation are the only realistic options available if one has no access to a graphic artist.

Abstraction: Look at games like Rogue, Dwarf Fortess, Minecraft, Darwinia. These are games where the the chosen aesthetics impose a restriction: a brutal minimum of hand drawn assets. This is one choice.

Naive Representation: Doodle Jump, Kloonigames ( Crayon Physics ). These games revel in the childlike quality of their graphics, take no shame in it and succeed.

I like to draw quite a bit but still find my work lacking the finish needed to be of production quality… http://stormis.deviantart.com/

#15

Just go for it. Draw whatever. You’ll get better and eventually get your own signature crappy art style. :slight_smile: I also enjoy the break from programming, although eventually it becomes too much. Still, it’s very very useful, even when I have an artist, to be able to say “I want this” “this color would be better” “can we get that looking like this” etc. And I can also make mockups that artists can improve upon.

#16

I’d agree with this if this was a business effort trying to get a polished product out the door. But this something he’s doing for fun. And drawing is fun. If you can’t draw well, do what the south park guys & the guy that draws Dilbert did; make it cheesy on purpose. Remember, if you can’t do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.

#17

I acknowledge that learning how to draw is less efficient than finding an actual artist and concentrating on programming. However, I’m pretty much doing this as a hobby in my spare time. While I have made games to actually sell before, I probably have less than 3 dozen lifetime sales for all of my games combined.

I’m basically doing a Rogue-like with angels. I briefly considered using text artwork, but I already have the beginnings of an engine that uses graphics. I figure that even though I can’t draw well, I can still draw a better avatar for the player than “@”.

I’ve developed a strategy of a sort. I’m going to practice drawing a man and a woman so that I can get all the proportions down. Then I’m going to make a file with a basic template for a man and one with a basic template for a woman. I will create the actual artwork by coloring the templates and adding features, possibly with a few small changes to the basic skeleton.

Thus, I will have a bunch of humanoid-ish artwork that all looks pretty much the same. For some reason, I don’t have as much difficulty drawing wings, horns, etc. as drawing actual people, so I should be able to add on that stuff pretty easily.

That just leaves the non-humanoid characters, which will be sort of a problem. I plan to stick with less complex creatures because I can’t spend all day drawing a pathetic excuse for Cthulhu.

While drawing crappy artwork may be a waste of time, some people would call making a game for free a waste of time too. If it ever gets finished, it will only be a niche game, not one that alot of people will play.

If there were appropriate 2d art packs available, I would buy them. I’m downloaded some freeware tiles (with a very unrestrictive license) that I plan to use as the terrain, etc. I also bought some character art from garagegames, but I don’t think I want to mix my crappy character art with real character art that doesn’t really fit in the game.

It seems like the only way to get enough good art for a game is to pay a professional artist to custom make it, which is more money than I would even consider budgeting for this project.

#18

None of it’s a waste of time… It’s all magic, or the closest thing to it… Most people consider the fact that somebody in their acquaintance can make ‘pong’ a sign of arcane knowledge and that you know everything there is to know about computers, though of course the next demand may be to either make something like WoW or fix their computer :stuck_out_tongue:
Also if you have a nearby IGDA chapter or similar potential hackspace / D&D / gaming groups, once you’ve cut your teeth you will meet people, and a strong game will attract another maker… theres always people who have artistic tendencies somewhere in the neighborhood… Meanwhile, hell yeah, bash out some pixels

#19

A technique I’ve used before is to use 3D models and then ‘2D’ them. It’s much easier to move a 3D model in blender or whatever & then screenshot it than it is to draw a 2D image from scratch. Example: 3D model versus 2D drawing.

#20

i’ve made a few games big and small- best way is to get the concept going, just shuv in anything u can get your hands on (google image is a good source)- get the base idea and game running. have fun with it. you could even us photoshop or inkscape to crop images and use alphas. key thing is you have fun doing the bit you like, dont get worried about the art until you feel your game itself really needs it to move forward.

i do a bit of design- but even i always start ruff, very ruff, cubes flying around ruff. once i get the idea i’d look into stylizing and then go into production test assets (not final), ruff it all up and try them out.

ey thing is, is not to think to much, just keep inching the idea you have for your game. once your happy post here and ask if anyone can give you a hand with content graphics, sound, video etc; u never know who’s reading :wink: