Drawing/Creating software.

Glynnister

Anyone got any programs they would recommend to use to create characters, backgrounds, everything for a game.

preferably free, and on mac.
thanks.

mynameisace

I use Photoshop but unfortunately it's not free by anyone's stretch of imagination. I'm sure there are some great free open-source alternatives though. GIMP is supposed to be as close as you can get to Photoshop without paying through the teeth for it.

Here's the link to the mac version:

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

Ace

Glynnister

I have been using this for a while for various bits of school work, however i though it was more of a picture editor than drawing software?

ive always found it quite troublesome to work with when drawing.

mynameisace

If I'm not mistaken (and I haven't used GIMP a whole lot) then the drawing features are much like Photoshop's.

Photoshop has a fairly steep learning curve but I do all my drawings on it ( check out the thread just under this called Ants Thread and the pictures I did on that were all done in Photoshop and I'm pretty sure you can get close if not spot on to that in GIMP).

Check YouTube for some tutorials on GIMP, I just had a quick look and found a few. In Photoshop, the best tool is the Pen Tool and GIMP has it but I think it's called the Path Tool or maybe it is called the Pen tool, not too sure. Check tutorials on this and try and master it.

Ace

Glynnister

Fair enough then, i shall give it a go, thanks.

mynameisace

No problem, if you need more help I'm sure there's people more familiar with GIMP on this forum. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Ace

Glynnister

another quick question while you are here.
what size do you draw in, because as im trying to do the artwork for an iphone game your drawing look massive.
do you just make them smaller when you put them into GS?

might be a completely absurd question, sorry.

mynameisace

I'm making an iPad and iPhone application so need HD graphics although I still draw my original pictures a lot bigger than they will be needed in the game.

I make a Photoshop file with all the characters big so I can use them easier if I need to have a bigger picture of the character for websites and stuff and then I create another file for game files. This project I resize all the images for exporting in to GS.

Ace

Glynnister

so the fact that im drawing my backgrounds on a 320x480 tile isnt needed? or is that ok for backgrounds, but characters get re sized.

basically i have gotten pretty handy at the ipad app ArtStudio and i am wondering if i could do it on there, i want my game to have a slightly scribble-eqsue art style anyway.

mynameisace

It's just the way I do it but I've found it the best.

I do make my backgrounds on the actual iphone/ipad size though. If you want it to be compatible with the iPhone 4 Retina display then the picture size wants to be 960x640 and tick Resolution Independence in GS. iPad screens are 1024x768.

It is a lot better easier on the phone's processor if you make a small picture and loop it using the tile function in GS.

Does that make sense?

Ace

Glynnister

So draw the backdrops in those resolutions and then when you start the project use resolution indipendence and itll make the 960x640 for the iphone screen?
as with the ipad.

by tile function you mean make something thats not 960x460 but it tiles it to make the backdrop?

mynameisace

Yeah, you got it buddy.

Ace

Glynnister

ah good times, finally making progress understanding how to use this thing.

what sizes would you recommend working in then?

thanks for all this by the way, you should do a youtube channel or something explaining all these essentials that gamesalad doesn't tell you.

mynameisace

I work in iPad dimensions on Photoshop and then scale down to the iPod version. Most of the game's I've worked on so far did actually need full sized backgrounds but the one I'm working on at the moment (The Ants game) will have the floor tiled and the sky background tiled, not sure on exact dimensions yet because I'm still drawing them in Photoshop as we speak.

Gamesalad has a slight problem with images to note as well, you need to do them at 72 dpi in .PNG format or else it imports the pictures funny and they look all screwed up. Also for some reason if your images pixel size isn't divisible by 2 then it uses a whole load more of processing power. So just make sure your images are 12x12 for example instead of 12x13.

There are videos done by tshirtbooth on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/GameSaladCookbook) which I hear are really good although I've not got round to watching them yet.

Ace

Glynnister

ah right okay then, ive noted that all down, thanks again