Hello,

I'm making a Flash game, and I'm more a programmer than a graphics artist, which is quite unfortunate. I wish I was able to create as immersive and beautiful pixel art and other game art as some people can The looks are very important for the success of a game I think.

For my game, I'd like to improve the art of the main menu background image, the GUI buttons, the in-game GUI and the message windows. However, I do NOT want to do a lot of changes to the tile graphics, I'm quite attached to those

Attached is a screenshot of the current state of the game GUI.

Does anyone have any tips how I can improve those, and which graphics programs (that run on Linux) or techniques could help me, for example, to make the background image of the main menu a lot better, with a much better shaded tower, better colors, etc...? And also, in the game, I don't like the blue gradient in the background and the way the parchment looks, but I still want it to remain (better looking) parchment. I'd also love to find a good way to get good looking menu buttons and windows.

Any other input you've got on the screenshots is appreciated too!

Thanks!

A programmer trying to do things that look pretty, I feel your pain . The purple around the buttons int he game menu looks terrible (or is that chroma key not completed yet?). I would suggest Gimp for a graphics program. The bottom left of the buttons in main menu look quite sharp (compared to buttons in other windows). I would also put a subtle texture on the scrolls you have. The textured buttons/grey text boxes look better than I'd imagine them plain. I'm not exactly skilled graphically so thats as much as I'm brave enough to suggest .

I'm an amateur artist. I wouldn't mind helping out with some art, if you want. I'm not looking for money- just think it would be neat to maybe build-up a list of projects that I contributed to.