Hi, I'm Alva Majo, Indie game
developer. So you've been doing a video game, but when it comes
to doing the graphics, you're not an upscale artist like Chardin
Tronic, but a beggar like Guinxu. The graphics are probably the most important when it comes to succeeding
with a video game, but unfortunately not we can all afford to hire an artist. Luckily, it's possible to do a job decent and even good, without
knowing how to draw too much. You just have to look at me. I've never drawn and yet I've
done Majotori's graphics which, despite their simplicity, are
quite successful and have a style striking.
Pureya's, which are pixel art. Nothing fancy, but nice to look at. And Shipped's, that was
pretty professional. Even in the field of 3D, which I
will also mention in passing and to that applies a lot of the
advice I'm about to give. I've also done the
graphics for Majorariato Museum and the dog game
scene still in development. The secret to making some graphics good and pleasant to look at is not that
they are realistic, complicated to make or even if they are well drawn, but
in that they have a good style. A style can be very complicated and
super detailed and yet the result is far worse than a very simple,
easy-to-do style. Usually the problem with games that are made without an artist is
not that the developer can't draw, but the game has no style. The important thing about a style is that it looks like it's made on
purpose because it's the style you wanted, not because you
can't hope for anything better. If the characters are stubborn, that it's because you've chosen to make
them stubborn because it looks better. Not that you've grown big heads because you don't know how to
draw proportions well. In fact, bad drawing can be a style. If you do it on purpose
and with some sense aesthetic, you can make drawings
that look like they're imitating how a young child draws instead to look like a little kid who can't draw. For example, we have the game Baba is you, a game that looks like it was made
with paint by someone who can't draw, but you can tell it's made
on purpose and with taste. The result is nice. It looks good and gives it a unique look. The dog game has a similar style too, with poorly drawn lines, as
if drawn by a small child. But it's not like I tried to draw lines I wanted them not to go straight. And I've chosen how
defective they have to be. And at what points to make
the result beautiful. An example in 3D could be Minecraft, where everything is made of cubes and
the textures have a very low resolution. The result is not that beautiful, but it's good enough and gives you
a unique style that allows you differentiate it instantly
from any other game. Careful, because it's not worth drawing badly and saying you did it
on purpose and that's it. This is something that happened to me with the cinematics of Pureya,
that cause I couldn't draw Well enough, I drew everything
a little worse to try that looked like it was pretty
much the style I was looking for. But the reality is that I
wasn't doing any better because it didn't come out and the result
was a mess, so I'll have to do it again. What defines a style is the coherence
that is achieved with certain rules aesthetics that make all
the elements visually harmonious rather than a pastiche
of things that don't fit. Everything should have a similar drawing
quality, a similar amount of detail, similar proportions and be
drawn with the same technique. But the important thing
is that the base is good, because if you choose an ugly style,
even if it has coherence and everything the game is just as ugly,
because it's still ugly. In the end, this is the problem of the games without an artist or with
a novice artist who either does not a style or the style chosen is a little bad
and you can tell it's very amateur. And that often happens because
they don't realize it. They have poor judgment and they feel which is pretty good, but it's not really. In that case, you can't really to do a lot because judgment
comes with experience. The most you can do is try not to to convince yourself that
style is better than it is. But often the problem is not
just a lack of judgment, but to try to pursue a style
that's out of your league. And that's something you can fix. In the end, the question
is to choose a good base style if you're not
good at drawing people. Maybe you should make a game without
people or stylize the way you that you draw them in some way
that makes them look nice. That's why if you can't draw well,
you should start by choosing a style simple, because the simpler it
is, the easier it is to draw. Above all, stay away from realistic styles, because that way you'll
be able to do a good job. The key to a simple style is to
avoid all unnecessary details. If you want to draw a tree, maybe instead of doing
the leaves and the roots, you just need a couple of circles and
a stick and the result is better. This is what I did with Majotori. I don't know how to draw much and I
had to draw hundreds of illustrations, so I had to be able to do each one in
five minutes instead of two hours, because otherwise, the
game would never be over. All Majotori's drawings are
made with straight lines. On the one hand because
it gives you a style characteristic and on the other hand
because it is much easier to draw. A character's arm, instead of being a series of
well-placed, proportionate curves, are four lines that don't need
too much precision to look good. Also, in most scenes the bodies of the characters
don't have any details. They're just a block with no arms or legs because they don't need
it, in the scenes in which you need them, I did draw them. But also in a very simple
way to maintain consistency. Actually, the greatest merit of Majotori's charts
is that the proportions and perspective are well enough made and that's something
that separates him from a fanart done without much thought. If you have to choose
to practice something of drawing, let it be the proportions
of a human body. It's long what makes the most difference
to a drawing that's done so on the advice of one who
is trying to be better than he is. You don't even need to practice for
many hours to get a good enough idea close to how the proportions work. Also, if you have a choice,
choose a chibi or cartoon style. Why? First, because it's
much easier to draw a small, compact character
rather than a tall one. Because you need less detail. And secondly, because it's easier to do that unrealistic proportions
look good as part of the style. A small, stubborn character looks a
lot better than a tall, stubborn one. Another important point that gives
away the rookies is the colors, because just as drawing is an
art, coloring is another art. In general, it flees from the degraded or of the fuzzy ones because the
result is going to be horrible. Limit yourself to very simple
colors, planes or textures. This is something newcomers usually do to try to give it more detail or realism. A drawing puts a gradient in her hair and
clothes, tries to put little wrinkles and faded shadows and
the result is a garbage. If instead they had limited to use flat colors, it wouldn't
have taken them much less work, but the result would be much nicer. This is not limited to the
characters, but also to the stage. Make the grass flat green,
perhaps with some simple detail, is easier and looks better than trying
to make a realistic grass texture which will then fit less well with
the textures of the other surfaces why you're doing things without knowing. It's the same with the pixel art. If you want to make a wooden box using
flat colors and maybe some detail solid is going to look a lot better
than trying to make a realistic texture of wood that in the end
is left filthy and dirty. Another thing you can do to get
a signature style is to limit the color palette to a few,
like games like Downwell, Super Hot or even do it in black
and white like a Roboto cat. Let's talk about drawing techniques now. The ones that suit you best
will be pixel, art or vectors. Pixel art consists of drawing with pixels,
which are basically little squares. This is a style widely
used by Indie developers because you don't have to have a good
line and by having a very low resolution it's easier to draw anything. This is the style I use in purity because I need to draw a lot of
things that I can't draw well if I do with normal strokes but
drawing it with little squares it's much easier and it looks better. You can make Pixel Art with practically any drawing program, but there
are also several options, some free and some paid
specifically for drawing. Aseprite is one of the most
popular and costs only $15. On the other hand, we have the vector drawing, which
is more like the normal drawing, only instead of drawing the lines in
a pulse, you do them with vectors. The great advantage of
drawing like this is that the vectors can
change them at any time. So instead of having to do good sketches,
you can go around fixing every line until it looks good and then you
export it as a normal drawing. That's how I did the Shipped characters. If you give me a paper and pencil and ask me to draw you one, the
result will be pitiful. But if I can modify each line until it looks good, I can get
something pretty professional. Another trick I used to draw well the proportions of the characters is to
make a template with a character made and use it as a base to do the
poses as if it were a doll. Then he would draw the arms and legs complete with hair and clothes. It's so much easier that way and everyone the characters had exactly
the same proportions. Basically, I only had to draw one
character well and all the others I could to do easily from that
one. To do vector drawing I use Inkscape, which is a free program. Finally, in the field of 3D we
also have several techniques. One of them is the Low Poly, which consists of making models with
very few polygons and usually textures flat or simple, which is infinitely easier and fast than making a detailed
and professional model. Another technique is to save directly modeling and using 2D elements in 3D
environments, as we were doing with the game of dogs, where
there is no proper modeling said and all are flat
drawings placed in 3D. But you can also combine both and
have 2D characters in a 3D scenario. Finally, there is the
option of using "voxeles" or voxels that are like pixels but in 3D and in the same way you build
the objects from coloured cubes. I've never used them yet, but Hey nau is actually making his
Project slide game with voxels. So if you go to his
channel you can watch it in more detail and maybe someday he'll
upload a video explaining how he does it. Wink wink. To make models with voxels you can
use the free program Magica Voxel. In short, don't try to
make realistic graphics. Look for a simple style that looks good and that you're able to
make and use flat colors. When in doubt, here's one last trick
that can save you in any situation. Two black dots and a curve in the middle.
That's it. Put that on everything and you've
got a style that everyone will like. And if you want to be even more stylish, subscribe to the channel
and we'll see you this week coming up. And now to have the best
style in all of YouTube. I freeze the last frame
and lengthen the video 20 seconds more to reach 10 minutes
for maximum monetization. Mhm, I can't even get there,
but we'll do something else. Kony, I'm 10 seconds away from 10 minutes. Can you teach us something
exclusive to the dog game? Please.
