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2D Game Art for Programmers
- tudorizer 14y agoLovely tutorials.
- dsirijus 14y agoBeing a little disillusioned with Adobe tools, and assembling a game dev enviroment on Linux, I am trying to setup some of my game art workflow using Gimp/Inkscape/Blender/other. What I'm hoping to acchieve is have a bunch of scripts in Python (as all those listed apps are conveniently scripted with it) to speed up the asset generation, and possibly explore some of the design aspects achievable through procedural methods, as designers using Adobe tools do have a slight tendency to be uniform in their output. Many of the methods in these articles may well be in part scripted, for instance http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.in/2012_02_01_archive.html http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.in/2012_02_01_archiv...
- primitur 14y agoI use Inkscape as my primary means of collecting games resources and assembling them into a re-distributable package. I have my own build system that takes general Inkscape(SVG) objects, parses the namespace/hierarchy as described (Hint: CTRL-SHIFT-X .. drag the XML Editor to a second monitor..) and outputs a package tree that deposits directly into res/ &etc. Paired with MOAI, I'm having a wonderful time handling the game asset pipeline in a structured manner. The SVG DOM makes for a very vibrant playground when you want to automate things, and getting it all packed down to a .PNG tilemap can be done with very, very little script code ..
- xedarius 14y agoI've always found Photoshop difficult to draw in, and haven't really enjoyed drawing on a computer since Deluxe Paint. However, Inkscape (a program that I've not seen before) looks great, and I will be trying out the tutorial. Thanks. I'm also tempted to say we should all post our helicopter drawings!
- dsirijus 14y agoTo be fair, comparison between Inkscape and Photoshop is not really an appropriate one, as one is a raster and other vector based tool. It's usually Gimp vs Photoshop and Inkscape vs Illustrator.
- p0nce 14y agoMaybe try BlackInk http://www.bleank.com/BlackInk-a115.html http://www.bleank.com/BlackInk-a115.html
- vidarh 14y agoSame here with Deluxe Paint, though having used Inkscape they are of course nothing alike. Vector graphics is well and fine for some things, and Inkscape is a great app for that, but personally I like the pixels... Grafx2 is another alternative if you liked Deluxe Paint. I really miss the simple elegance in Deluxe Paint (of course I can run it in UAE, but I recently went through about 30+ packages in the Android market trying to find a tolerable paint app for Android, and they all failed spectacularly when I compared them to my minimum "equivalence with Deluxe Paint" metric (proper zoom being the biggest one, which is a bizarre thing to do badly on a platform where most users will have tiny screens), but it's the same on Linux. GrafX2 is reasonably close in terms of functionality but the UI is very cluttered.
- bitwize 14y agoPixelesque is the standard-bearer on Android. If you're looking for the zoom, try pinch-to-zoom gestures.
- bitwize 14y agoYou might like Grafx2, an open source Deluxe Paint-like program. Full disclosure: I am a sometimes contributor. :)
- Pent 14y agoI'm a big fan of sketching in Painttool SAI, it feels much easier to use than Photoshop http://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/ http://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/
- Wraecca 14y ago2D is the BEST!
- arocks 14y agoI have found Inkscape to be quite an under-appreciated tool. It is much easier to learn than Illustrator for a beginner, quite light on systems resources and has great keyboard shortcuts. Earlier when there was a logo to be designed I used to use GIMP. But I find Inkscape's text handling to be much superior (especially with manual kerning) and flexible. In fact, I do most of my website mockups with Inkscape these days.
- lallysingh 14y agoIt's also just damned useful. You can open up PDFs and grab diagrams out of research papers. You can re-save PDFs after converting all the text to paths, to avoid font embedding problems. You can manipulate the saved files with d3.js. It's very quickly become one of my favorite tools. Connectors still suck, though.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoMakes me wish I could draw worth a damn.
- Zolomon 14y agoIf you aren't good at something, then you can only improve.
- dsirijus 14y agoIs it worth it, though? Some people just don't have eye for it. I've tried to train a musician for almost a year. He had the best of intentions, as did I, all with ample practice. In the end we gave up, he just couldn't hear when he's wrong. It's easier with programming - something just doesn't work as expected. Art does not work like that.
- XBigTK13X 14y agoYou have a point that some people don't have the talent to decompose objects from their mind'e eye into basic shapes. I would argue that some forms of drawing are based more on practical skill sets, which can be learned, as opposed to the ability to detect the pitch released from a musical instrument. (I make that claim as a guitarist myself) Trying to improve your drawing ability is worth the time and effort spent. I have been working on improving my artistic lens for the past month. Am I yet at the skill level I want to be? No. Have I sacrificed a lot of time? No. I sit down once a day whenever I can find 10 minutes, set a timer, and sketch whatever comes to mind. On busy days I skip this practice, but always make it up in the following days. You can see the progress in this imgur album: http://imgur.com/a/GTF6w#0 http://imgur.com/a/GTF6w#0 . These are by no means exact representations of the image in my mind at the time. On the other hand, they are quickly getting closer to my imagination everyday. For a practical book on the topic of drawing, I recommend http://www.amazon.com/The-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0874774241 http://www.amazon.com/The-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/087477... .Reading that book helped me gain a lot more confidence and understand a lot of the science behind drawing ability. I also have a large amount of bookmarks on improving your pixel art skill set. If those would be of interest then I am happy to share those links.
- MetallicCloud 14y agoOne thing that I would really love in tutorials like this is why certain decisions are made. I am a terrible artist, but I would like to learn how to draw something that doesn't make people want to puke, if for no other reason than to give a real artists a starting point, but this tutorial doesn't help. Even at the first step, it says 'Lets start building the body with 3 rectangles'. But if I started with a blank page, and though 'How am I going to draw a helicopter', my first thought wouldn't be draw three random rectangles and start from there. Learning tools is important, but I want a tutorial that shows me how to break complex objects into manageable parts.
- dsirijus 14y agoYou cannot expect to have prescription on how to do art. It's about stepping back after you're done and saying "this sucks" and improving on that. Sure, there's methods and best practices, but they're not nearly as relevant as quality of your judgement on your work, developed through practice and exposition and, in part, inherited.
- lukam 14y agoThis. So much.
- cooperadymas 14y agohttp://www.drawright.com/ http://www.drawright.com/ I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my Amazon wishlist because it's supposed to teach you exactly this. The descriptions on the site and on Amazon don't give much insight, but you can find the introduction and first chapter on Google Books to get an idea of what it's all about. Pretty sure this was first introduced to me on HN, so others can probably expound further.
- rymith 14y agoOr just look for any 'How to draw' book ince the whole right brain/left brain is complete myth.
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- colkassad 14y agoHere is the direct download for the portable Windows version of Inkscape: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/inkscape/InkscapePortable_0.48.2-1.paf.exe http://downloads.sourceforge.net/inkscape/InkscapePortable_0...
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoWhy Portable version? Why not the regular download?
- jdludlow 14y agoFrom the same blog, this is the starting point where he breaks down a very simple process of drawing with circles and introduces some basic concepts. http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.in/2011/10/lets-get-started-with-circles.html http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.in/2011/10/lets-get-...
- SpriteAttack 14y agoThanks for posting the link to the beginnings.... This is where people interested in trying out inkscape and game art creation should start. The helicopter is the most complex and daunting project on my blog so far.
- VMG 14y agoC++ Game Programming for Artists * First we pick a nice API, let's see, yeah SDL with OpenGL is a good choice * Let's create a full screen surface and set the happy little flags to make it a double buffer * Let's just write some happy little class wrappers for our main game components. There we are. * We start with a happy little box twirling around. Just gently use the OpenGL API and map the textures so that they fit. A happy little light lives in the upper right corner. Now lets add some other boxes over there. * Ever so softly write some game logic. If you're feeling adventurous, try using multiple threads, but don't forget to use some locks. * To finish it all up, we just plug in the user input. How wonderful! See you next time when we write an operating system!
- WickyNilliams 14y agoI thought this was going to be a snarky response at first - "I'm a programmer so I can't do art; as an artist can you do programming?!" - but I was wrong. I'd love for there to be a Bob Ross style course on game programming, his soothing voice combined with his rose-tinted vision of everything would be awesome. Happy little clouds
- dkersten 14y agoI'd love for there to be a Bob Ross style course on game programming I'd certainly watch it and I already know how to program!
- krapp 14y agoJust remember when it comes to your code, there are no exceptions, only 'happy accidents.'
- adrianhoward 14y agoOne language I used in the past (Pop-11) made a very deliberate pedagogical decision to not have errors or exceptions - it had 'mishaps'. Names are important ;-)
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- bitwize 14y agoOr, How to Draw A Helicopter: 1) Draw some rectangles 2) Draw the rest of the fucking helicopter
- pestaa 14y agoThis image is always my first reaction to these types of posts: http://www.flipkik.com/uploads/pics/how-to-draw-an-owl.png http://www.flipkik.com/uploads/pics/how-to-draw-an-owl.png
- joeld42 14y agoThat's pretty funny. But that's really all there is to it. There's no secret formula, just practice.
- SpriteAttack 14y agoI guess you didn't bother reading but just looked at the colourful pictures. The tutorial is more advanced and earlier post make it easier to follow... but the feedback I get shows that people can follow the ideas and create their game assets in this manner.
- chinchang 14y agosuperb! What else does a linux artist want :)
- robomartin 14y agoAs an engineer I find CorelDRAW far more useful (and usable?) than Photoshop and Illustrator sometimes. I do use Photoshop for quite a bit of work. However, CorelDRAW makes some things that require jumping through hoops in Photoshop really easy. It's almost like a melding of a technical drafting and an artist's illustration tool. It can, for example, ingest AutoCAD geometry and use it for further illustration. Since I've been using AutoCAD for a long, long time this aspect of it comes with no effort. In the case of the OP's example, I'd probably find a 2D or 3D model of a helicopter for either ACAD or SolidWorks; load into the appropriate tool; edit, stylize, simplify; export as a flat 2D DXF and then import into CorelDRAW. From there you can manipulate further, stroke, fill, shade, etc. Do it all in layers and then output whatever it is you might need. Maybe this can be done in Photoshop, I don't know. It seems that I am always Googling for how to do the simplest things in PS. Yes, of course, I don't use it enough. That said, things like having to jump through hoops to draw a stroked circumference drives me up a wall sometimes. In a program like CorelDRAW it's just a matter of drawing a circle without fill, which makes far more sense to me than having to draw a path and then stroking it. I've done some pretty interesting graphics in CorelDRAW for such projects as photorealistic renderings of product models that are not only interesting graphically but also dimensionally accurate because of the link to the underlying CAD data. For a lot of the work I do on the web and iOS apps Photoshop can be simpler to wrestle with.
- loso 14y agoIf you want to learn how to draw, besides the basic drawing courses or books, another good idea is to learn about Photography when it comes lighting and composition. I know a lot of people on this site have DSLR cameras so learning how to use those properly would be a great step. Photography lessons are great in helping to learn how to see the world correctly. A lot of what you will learn will be transferable when it comes to learning how to draw.
- SpriteAttack 14y agoThanks for the mention of my blog on the Hacker News. I just which there would have been a link to the earlier posts. The post got harder and more complex (with the helicopter pushing the limits of what could be considered easy to follow art tutorials for beginners).