Drawing stuff, the time-consumiest task

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 1:58 pm

Does anyone else feel that drawing pixel art is the most demanding, time consuming part of making a game? For Hollowkeep, I'm gonna need to draw around 30 backdrops, which are only 180x140. But I didn't even finish drawing one of those over the weekend, because of stuff like drafts, sketches, messing around with perspective, etc.

It just feels weird that I spend so much time on graphical stuff while making games that are graphically outdated.

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:27 pm

Yes, I totally agree. Doing a lot of artwork is often the hardest part of any game. If I look back on my own projects which have been completed successfully vs the ones that I have given up on, the dividing line almost always seems to be the artwork-burden.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that can add up to a heck of a lot of words over a big game.

My productivity always improves overall when I can find ways to make art more quickly. Even if the quality of the art suffers a little in favor of speed, it seems to be worth it in the long run.

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:26 pm

That's a really good point. I spent hours messing around with a background scene for a room on Saturday, and ended up too tired from chores and errands on Sunday to continue working on it. Since my plan is to do artwork stuff on weekends, that's not good and will prevent me from making any sort of deadline. I gotta figure out a method to have a background done from start to finish in 3-4 hours, 5 tops.

Nathan Karr · Post by **Nathan Karr** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 4:19 pm

This is part of why I never got into doing shaded graphics. Then after a long time of doing that I found I preferred the way un-shaded digital art looked anyway.

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 7:54 pm

The thing that really gets me while drawing backgrounds for Hollowkeep is dithering... ugh, dithering. So tedious. I wish SAI had a clone stamp tool.

Feenicks · Post by **Feenicks** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:02 pm

SAI does have textures you can put on brushes/layers, so you could look around for some you like and use those to help with dithering.

But yeah, graphics stuff tends to take awhille, and it always helps to know tricks to help move things along. I know fenrir has drawn some of his sprites out at a larger scale before shrinking then and cleaning them up in a pixel art-centric program, so that's an option for some stuff.

Honestly it's the smaller stuff - walkabouts and whatnot - that seem to give me more trouble, so who knows, really.

Nathan Karr · Post by **Nathan Karr** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:10 pm

Back when Paint.net functioned reasonably well for me I made fairly heavy use of its dithering function. For objects as small as the OHR's screen resolution I usually don't see much reason to bother with it.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 7:12 am

Just as I started working on Return I was gifted a Wacom art tablet and it was like God himself was handing it to me. I've never actually drawn my own backdrops before because it's just too difficult with a mouse unless you spend way too much time on it. And even then a lot of the time it lacks detail or looks too mechanical.

I certainly agree that artwork takes forever. When I get an idea for a game I often get incredibly sidetracked drawing character sprites and maptiles and whatnot and have to force myself to deal with placeholder graphics until I get a better grasp on the big picture.

These tablets can run crazy expensive if you aren't a designated "artist", which can make it difficult to justify the purchase. However, if you're going to stick to game design, as a hobby or otherwise, just getting a small one can make drawing larger things infinitely less frustrating and more natural. It does take a little getting used to, but if you prefer a pen and paper drawing style then you'll like it, especially because digital art has an undo button.

Also, if you want a number on the price, they run around 100 USD but you can get one cheaper or more expensive, depending on what you want.

tarl · Post by **tarl** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 9:21 pm

Well,
I try to set certain rules (light, shapes, perspective) and use them to speed up tile drawing (by following light dirction and fixed shadows I can work thing without having to think too much about them, streamlining the process).
Once the perspective is choosen, it is quite simple to construct the objcts, one must only know where light nd shadow needs to be applied (you could just draw lines to 'cast' the light if you have a lightsource like in the example, btw).

Here is a small tutorial, once you have a feeling for constructing the objects and small library of material boxes, you can mass produce tiles ;D

Hope it is useful.
It doesn't help with bigger pics and dithering, sorry

Regards,
tarl

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:52 pm

Needing to have a way to clonestamp/copy-paste in order to get scenes fleshed out efficiently led me to a realization: I'm gonna need to use something that isn't SAI. It's good for drawing linework and coloring, and while it's been a fun and novel way to do pixel art, its toolset just isn't robust enough to yield good results in less time and effort.

I'll be experimenting with other stuff this weekend.

Chronoboy · Post by **Chronoboy** » Sun Oct 25, 2015 9:47 pm

It might be less time consuming to draw graphics with less color depth, although it will give the game a more retro feel.

For example, I am sure making a graphics in CGA or EGA color depths would take less effort than making a game in SVGA 256 colors. However, this may differ depending on the artist, some artists may find it very difficult to draw with a crippled color palette, whereas they normally draw in true color.

I figure this may also hold true for canvas sizes, for example some artists may not be-able to draw easily in a 20x20 canvas, as they are normally used to a large 1024x768 canvas.

For me, I have tried different color depths, and canvas sizes. I find that choosing proper colors can be difficult, namely in shading efforts, or just to choose the right shirt, hair, or skin color for the sprite. I also find it more difficult to draw on a larger canvas. I mostly prefer to draw maptiles, as I'm not great at drawing people/faces/etc... I have heard that drawing characters with overly large heads(chiby) are usually easier, as you can better express that characters individuality and emotion. One fault I find myself in when drawing characters is to always try to make it "proportionately" correct. They end up having tiny heads, and awkward looking stick-like bodies.

CGA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_G ... hics_modes
List of palettes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... B_palettes

Some ideas that come to mind are how games like Maniac Mansion and the early King's Quest games looked color wise. I recalled those games made heavy use of Cyan, and generally dark colors.

Other stylizing effects is Sepia, or black, white, and red. The trick I guess would be to find what type of graphics you most like drawing. They say time flies when you enjoy what your doing. If graphics feels time comsuming, try a different unique style. Style and colors should also match your game's overall theme, take MadWorld or movies like Sin City as an example. Many successful Nintendo games in both the Mario and Zelda series do this as well, leading to some of the most charmingly looking games available.

I recall seeing some rather unique looking OHR games in the past. I believe someone made a "paper drawn" style, where everything looked like it was drawn in a sketch book and had pretty good reviews on the graphics style. This style wouldn't require a large palette, or shading. In fact, if you have a good quality scanner, you could draw all the graphics on real sketch paper, scan them in, and import them into your game.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Mon Oct 26, 2015 2:44 am

First of all, you have some fantastic points and suggestions there. Just last night I was playing some old Gameboy and Gameboy Color games and found some inspiration in the lack of resolution and color diversity.

This is kind of a boring example, but the Pokémon games have always managed to have a significant level of charm in them, especially in the first 2 installments, I would say.

I also tried using a more limited palette in order to make some good looking grass tiles. I liked the way it looked more than trying to use many different colors. Sure, some find it difficult to work with fewer colors and smaller sprites, but I think it's certainly something one can learn. Everyone should at least try making graphics for a game with a small palette, because you'll learn a lot about how colors can be used effectively.

EDIT: I'm just now reading the text box in that screenshot. What the hell is he talking about?

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Mon Oct 26, 2015 3:08 am

Is that the Vietnamese Pokemon translation?

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Mon Oct 26, 2015 4:12 am

Foxley wrote:Is that the Vietnamese Pokemon translation?

I think so, but it worries me that you are already familiar with it.