Hey guys. I''m curious about 2D game art, and I want to know if there are any resources on the web that provide information on the fundamentals; i.e., common file types, sizes, software, and techniques employed by artists, and the like. I''m a producer/designer, and I want to educate myself as to the processes for some projects in the future. Any information you have will be appreciated!

well, the programming side can vary extremely. In the easiest case you have some .bmp derivative, in the worst (best?) case you have an image, as well as an alpha-map (I assume that you are not talking about textures).

Techniques... tough one. If you want to do artwork yourself you should learn to draw. It does not matter on what you draw, the basic skills are the same.

If you just want to look at the techniques, there´s a few (actually lots) of good books around.

One of the best drawing books is "Drawing on the right side of the brain", for oils/ink/charcoal/figures you should just look up your bookstore.

A few good sites that contain some tutorials or work descriptions are:

www.goodbrush.com (Photoshop god)
www.epilogue.net
www.elfwood.com (down at the moment)
www.gameart.com (mostly amateurs, but some good people)


forgot about the software:

Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro
Painter (great with a tablet, looks like oils/watercolors/charcoal...)
ImageReady (comes with Photoshop) for relatively easy 2d animating






Edited by - Hase on September 27, 2001 12:13:51 PM

Well, its good for the image sizes to be 64 x 64 or 32 x 32. The smaller the file size ( in bytes ) the better. You could get away with MS Paint to draw 2D, you just zoom in to the maximum percent and start placing pixels with the pencil tool, or you could use Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks.

Thats about all that I know when it comes to art for 2D game development.

Edited by - Drizzt DoUrden on September 27, 2001 12:07:30 PM

Have a look at this website.

http://24.70.255.173/tutorial/default.htm

Guys;

Thanks a lot for all the great info. This will certainly help out my cause, the web site especially.

Hase, an artist friend of mine left Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain here for me, after I laid on him a similar request. I guess your recommendation will serve as a motivation to dig it out (:

Someone I know recommended Deluxe Paint as good for busting out sprites. I know it has a good built-in animation tool, but what else about it makes it stand out?

Again, guys, thanks for the info. Good looking out!

--Miguel

if you want to be able to draw anything you see with complete accuracy, i suggest you read that book your freind left for you. it probably describes the difference of using left brain to see things ( seeing things to learn them for recognizing the object) and right side brain ( seeing how things really are) and how to draw lines that you see in objects and how to judge each size object relative to another object. its alot of complex stuff but if you can let go of how your left brain sees things, then you can really draw things how they really are, and not draw what you think you know is true. also practice practice practice.