Fledgling game artist...or not?

Most of the negative feedback on our games has been related to the poor quality of graphics and/or animation. I have to admit that these comments are appropriate: Our gamedev "team" currently has no artist at all, and actually all graphics are so far been drawn by me. And I'm really bad at drawing.

Anyways, there has been a need for graphics and animation in our games. So I have tried learn to draw at least something using Gimp, Inkscape or Aseprite. Tools itself are not an issue here: there are plenty of tutorials and online manuals available. But even if you could use all tool features perfectly, it does not help a lot if you have no eye for art.

I thought at some point that pixel-art would be a solution for me, and I dug out this tutorial: Pixel Joint forum: Creating Pixel Art. Basically this tutorial was fine and everything was understandable, but I did not have enough perseverance to follow the guidelines. The theory of anti-aliasing and dithering was quite clear, but using them in real drawing was something I was not able to understand fully. :)

I am sure that it is possible to improve graphics skills by practicing and practicing. But at the moment I don’t have the time nor the energy to to learn one more completely new thing for me. My game design and implementation efforts takes enough time currently, and I also work full time elsewhere.

But what we can do to improve the visual quality of our games? Well, I have couple of options in my mind:
  1. We start using ready-made assets from internet or gamedev tools’ asset stores. There seem to be several sites offering large variety of assets, but the problem is that it might be difficult to find exactly the specific asset you are looking for. So you probably have to compromise.
  2. We will try to find a suitable, visually talented person to join our team. The challenge at the moment is that we are doing gamedev as a hobby, so everything is done on zero budget and no-one gets paid (of course, the possible ad revenue will be shared fairly).
I guess we will try to find a suitable combination of these two options during next couple of months. 

-Jussi


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unity3D mirror using camera and RenderTexture

Image
There are several ways to create mirror in Unity3D. Some of them require more scripting than others, but I will now present an easy way using just one extra camera and RenderTexture.  In this solution you will use RenderTexture on an object and place camera behind that object. This is easy option that does not require scripting. Alternatively you can use reflective shader, but it requires some more work. Seven small steps to create object with mirror RenderTexture: Create new Unity project. It is recommended to use latest LTS version (Long Term Support).I was using Unity 2020.1.3f1 version for this example.   Create plane object for ground and Cube for the mirror object. Scale both objects to match your needs.  Create new camera for attaching the RenderTexture. Position it inside recently created cube and adjust direction so that it is pointing out to the direction where mirror should be reflecting the image.  Create RenderTexture. Name it as you wish. No need t...
Read more

Construct 2: if-then-elseif-else statement

Image
Do you have an idea how to implement IF-THEN-ELSEIF-ELSE statement with Construct 2? At least I had to think for a while how to do it. It seems that this basic structure is not so straightforward to implement in C2. I was creating a very simple game where boxes were moving from left to right. See example below: The color of each box is chosen randomly, so it required the usage of random() function and if-then-else statement. There are probably several ways to do this, but I wanted to make this as simple as possible inside one single event and action box.  Normally I would create a if-then-elseif-else structure like this to select color for the box (pseudo-code just for an example): if randomNumber == 0       set colorOfBox = "red" else if randomNumber == 1       set colorOfBox = "yellow" else if randomNumber == 2       set colorOfBox = "green" else       set colorOfBox = "blue" end if But ...
Read more

Unity3D: Convert Seconds to hh:mm:ss Format

Image
Update 17.8.2021: Replaced obsolete Monodevelop with Visual Studio where applicable.  I have gradually started to use Unity3D for game development. So far I have been doing very small and simple test codes just to learn how certain things should be done with Unity. But now I have an example that might be of interest for other wannabe-Unity3D users, at least those who are struggling with converting seconds to HH:MM:SS format. :) So lets begin with this example. First of all, start Unity3D and create new project. This example uses the console only for outputting result, so project can be either 2D or 3D. Whichever you prefer. Create empty object to your scene ( ctrl+shift+N ), or use pulldown menu ( GameObject->Create Empty ). Select empty object and rename it e.g. to " Timer ". Add new C# script component to empty object and name it as " TimerActions " ( Add Component->New Script->write name and select Csharp as script type ): Open TimerAction...
Read more