5 GREAT Game Art Styles for BAD Artists

many solo indie devs often feel like their art sucks it's suck and when there's no budget available you might feel obligated to leverage one of those highly overused free acid packs you know the types or you might start ripping sprites that you can't use or perhaps your flirt with the esoteric art of pixel pushing and I get it art is tricky and often we end up comparing our own creative and artistic ability to a professional artist that devoted their entire lives to specific disciplines like pixel art it's completely unrealistic and a surefire way to demoralize you and your game making journey but forget all that I'm here to tell you there is a path forward for those of you with questionable artistic ability several in fact here are five techniques that you can use to make unique interesting and commercially viable game art rotoscoping is the technique of drawing over pre-rendered footage it can be used to create captivating art that has a tactile feel and tells a story when combining it with the right color palette and contrast the result can be striking the technique though a little time-consuming takes nowhere near the time and effort required to learn and create meticulous high-quality pixel art a solo indeed ever could even say record themselves swinging a broomstick rotoscoping the footage then using it to create some action-adventure game using primitive shapes circles squares triangles and rectangles is an effective low-cost way to fully engage the player with your core game mechanics as humans our eyes are very well adjusted to recognizing contrast and shape and the clearer that distinction is the more efficient that game design communication will be remember game design is a language a dialogue between you and the player see if you can draw simple circles squares shapes and triangles in Photoshop as well as having a good game design philosophy then you can most certainly combine those two to make a fun and engaging game primitive shapes can also be anthropomorphised with faces to create character expression now if your heart of hearts is absolutely set on pixel art and you won't have it any other way then realize that not all pixel art has to be high fidelity 16-bit pallets with complex frame animations vvvvvv by Terry Cavanaugh is one such example using simple but clean lo-fi pixel art and a gameplay first approach he managed to create a highly addictive skill-based platformer notice the character doesn't even have much in terms of a walk cycle just a little Bob but that didn't stop the game from being an international success with a strong cult following Stone story RPG proved that you can make a complex and beautiful RPG game with simple ASCII art the game has been reviewed well at a $20 u.s. price point sharing the same market price point as many of the top-tier indie games not bad at all for ASCII art just imagine the time in art costs saved by rolling out this art style art is highly subjective what is trashed to one pair of eyes may be interesting into another and sure there are some Universal attributes which can make art more objectively beautiful but within the realm of games it's largely up in the air so be bold and be creative even simple crude sketches can really stand out in positive ways you see there is no point of reference it's completely original to you which is a hell of a lot better than being pixel art clone number one hundred twenty-five thousand seven hundred thirty-two and if you decide to try your hand at cobbling together pixel art its imperfections and crudeness maybe all that more apparent as pixel art has many established conventions like pixel scale consistency which beginners often overlook absolutely watermelon ship it pixel art is also deeply rooted in nostalgia so some of these minor transgressions are often less forgivable by players kids drawings silly doodles or what I like to call crazy drawing if married with good game design can really have a great visual impact as well as tying into game themes ship the catch with any of these styles is the gameplay must be great to frame the entire package as intentional if the gameplay sucks then the art will be brought down with it good gameplay will always shine through even when the art takes a backseat and remember sometimes it's worth taking a chance and being different you don't want to be another zero on the page you want to be the X that catches the eye and immediately stands out I really hope you enjoyed watching this video as much as I enjoyed making it make sure you drop a like and subscribe if you haven't already and to my patreon supporters who help make these videos possible your support means so much to me I really couldn't do without you so thank you alright guys see you in the next video and as always all the best on your game dev adventures you [Music]

Channel: Lost Relic Games

Views: 229,701

Keywords: gamedev, game design, game dev, game art, how to make game art, how to draw, riot games art, easy game art, unity, indie developer, simple game art, pixel art

Id: 7v4EcanyRws

Length: 5min 0sec (300 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020