Making art from scratch?

zweg25

Do many of you make your art from scratch? If not how do you make it?

Thanks
zweg25

sincitygames

My games are generally 95%+ my own art. Takes a little longer but its worth controlling the look of my games.

tahakitan

everything in my game is made from scratch. I used photoshop to draw everything.

jamie_c

Yes, I usually draw my own.

There are lots of stock image sites where you can purchase art and you can also contract with an artist if you are not able to create your own.

TheGabfather

Yup, everything from scratch most of the time.
I either sketch on real paper, or with my drawing tablet (newly acquired, still getting used to it).

Then I polish it with Illustrator + Photoshop.

+ Anime Studio Pro for short animations.

I'm not very good at creating certain effects like explosions -- in such cases, I use free stuff like Deep Blue Apps' Explosion Generator 3.

Only recently have I been commissioning artists to help with art, usually for illustrations/backgrounds.

zweg25

thanks everyone this really helps

Armelline

I have literally 0 artistic talent. For the games I've made so far, I've chosen art styles that work around this. The art in my games isn't amazing, but I think it does an okay job considering my limitations. There are some tips and tricks I've learned to employ though to make things easier for me.

Photoshop Brushes
There are a lot of entirely free Photoshop brushes, patterns, gradients etc. You'd be amazed how much mileage you can get out of some of them. For example, I'm currently working on a small winter themed game that needed a variety of different snowflakes. I found a Photoshop brush set of 20 snowflakes that gave me exactly what I needed.

I tend to either visit http://www.brusheezy.com/ or just go to Google and search for what I need - i.e. "star photoshop brush". I've yet to fail to find something.

Photoshop Tutorials
Photoshop is an amazingly complicated and versatile application that is far, far cleverer than you or I. That said, there are a ton of good tutorials that are on the whole easy to follow and don't require any special Photoshop skills.

There are too many websites out there to list the best ones, I again just use Google. Anything from "Photoshop logo tutorial" to "starry sky photoshop tutorial" will yield many, many results. I do recommend reading over a tutorial before getting started though - most I have no problem with but some have steps I just cannot figure out.

Fonts
Similarly to the Photoshop brushes, a good font can take you a long way. There are also many excellent dingbats fonts. It may well be that a simple font can cover what you need. I regularly browse http://www.dafont.com/ to find what I'm after. Do be careful of the licenses though - select a category, then above the list of fonts are some filter options. If you click on "More Options" and select the Public Domain and Free options you'll see fonts that won't cost you a penny and don't require any crediting in your game (though ofc if you have a credits section it's great to put the author in there).

Textures and Patterns
There are many, many great textures and patterns available out there. One of my personal favourite sites is http://subtlepatterns.com/ which has many understated but professional patterns which are entirely free for you to use on your web site or in your game. Again, Google is your friend.

My tactic is to keep my games themed in ways I can feasibly create graphics for, and kept simple enough that I don't get overwhelmed. I do hope that one day I can employ professional artists/illustrators to do my graphics, and have some great games planned for when that day comes, but for now I make do with the excellent work of others and a bit of stumbling through the dark!

Edit: And I'm DEFINITELY making use of Deep Blue Apps' Explosion Generator 3 in at least two of my games. Fantastic free resource! Thanks to the guys at Deep Blue Apps for making it and The Gabfather for bringing it to my attention!

GM_Pandagames

scratch just saying im not like a master i really am bad so i do pixel art. its easier

zweg25

scratch just saying im not like a master i really am bad so i do pixel art. its easier

Thanks, but I don't think pixel art looks good

@Armelline thanks a lot this could help a ton!

ironDan

@GM_Pandagames you don't think pixel art looks good??? Just an example Street Fighter was made in pixel art. And the majority of games in history were made in Pixel art. This is how graphics were made for years and still is. Sure you can use Blender, Maya or another pre rendered 3d program….but pixel art is a skill not many people possess…but wish they could do. Google pixel art and look at what it can be accomplished if you have the talent to draw in this style.

lycettebros

I love the Illustrator 3D tool. All graphics 100% mine and use whichever tool best suits the style.
Flash was good for scaling and layouts but at the moment using Illustrator.
My advice is to stick with vector software so when you have to scale something (as you invariably will) it will not be a pain.

UtopianGames

Have you seen the 2D art tutorials from my old m8 and DBA artist Chris Hildenbrand?

http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.co.uk

Darren.

Dues

Have you seen the 2D art tutorials from my old m8 and DBA artist Chris Hildenbrand?

http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.co.uk

Darren.

+1 On that one! Chris does amazing work