OK, I'll be honest. I can't draw. Not event a bit. My artistic talent peaked at finger painting and has been on a slow downward spiral ever since. If you're creating games, however, graphics are kind of important. Well, probably VERY important. What to do?
My first approach, which has worked amazingly well, is to get someone else to do it! I placed a small ad on gumtree.com asking for a recent art school graduate to help me out with some graphics. I couldn't promise fame or fortune, but I did promise a share of the spoils from what would be a truly awesome game. I thought a 20% share was about right. My game wasn't going to be that graphically intense, so I would need a lot more code than I needed graphics.
This relationship worked (and works) well. My artist gets some exposure to the world of iPhone development and I get some superb graphics in return. The first game we did, Honey Pot managed to sell quite well and both myself and the artist got some money out of it! It was a great learning exercise for both of us.
What I learnt from this, is what level of detail I need to provide the artist in order for them to do their work. They need to know quite a few technical details - size and depth of image, colour palette size etc. I also needed to communicate clearly how my animations would work, how many frames I would need and what transitions I had in mind.
One headache we managed to avoid is a common one - file names and versioning. What should the files be called and what's the most recent version? It turned out it was much easier for me to rename all the files rather than the artist. I had a particular naming scheme in mind which the art package didn't really like. As a result, every time I got some new files, I had to run them through a quick rename process. This was a little overhead, but it allowed the artist to be more productive and left the grunt work to me, which I automated.
Versioining was overcome by a diligent application of versioned directories. If you're not careful, you could end up losing files by accidentally copying old files over new files. I had a policy of never deleting anything, so this part was easy.
For my next project, which was on a commercial footing, I was working with a new artist. This opened my eyes to a whole new way of working. I was used to receiving nice zipped archives of .png files clipped precisely to the correct size. The new artist didn't work that way. Instead, I received fully fledged .psd files. All the graphics I needed were in there, but I had to go in and chop them out myself. This lead to quite a steep learning curve, as I was no expert in Photoshop. I thought I knew how to use it, but as I struggled to get out the files I needed, I ended up reading quite a few online tutorials on how to do what I thought should be simple tasks.
That taught me an important lesson, even though I would never be creating any artwork, I needed to know my way around Photoshop. It was a case of Photoshop or die!
In retrospect, I think this was an inefficient way of working. It makes much more sense for the artist to use their tools to export all the required data. After all, they're the experts in the tool, so they can do the required work in a fraction of the time I could.
I also struggled with explaining to this artist the precise technical requirements of the work. They were amazing at coming up with the graphics, had brilliant ideas on design, but didn't really get that I needed a 32x32 pixel tile that would tessellate seamlessly over a plane and interlock nicely with 12 other tiles. Eventually we got there, but there was a lot of hair pulling on both sides!
For my latest game, I wanted a bunch of anime type characters drawn. I knew this would be a lot of up front work, so I did something radical - I paid someone! I am a big fame of oDesk. This allows anyone to advertise a job and have anyone around the world apply for it. I managed to find an amazingly gifted artist in the Philippines who created the amazing fairy/goblin art my new game uses. Sure, I had to pay him by the hour, but he was so fast and so talented I think the result was worth out. Due to his professionalism, working remotely and giving directions just by emails was fine.
I found the best way of communicating an idea was to google about until I found some images that evoked the style I was looking for. He then went crazy, came up with a bunch of ideas, which we then refined. It was a great working experience and one I would recommend.
So there you have it. It is possible to create graphically lovely games without creating the graphics yourself.
My first approach, which has worked amazingly well, is to get someone else to do it! I placed a small ad on gumtree.com asking for a recent art school graduate to help me out with some graphics. I couldn't promise fame or fortune, but I did promise a share of the spoils from what would be a truly awesome game. I thought a 20% share was about right. My game wasn't going to be that graphically intense, so I would need a lot more code than I needed graphics.
This relationship worked (and works) well. My artist gets some exposure to the world of iPhone development and I get some superb graphics in return. The first game we did, Honey Pot managed to sell quite well and both myself and the artist got some money out of it! It was a great learning exercise for both of us.
What I learnt from this, is what level of detail I need to provide the artist in order for them to do their work. They need to know quite a few technical details - size and depth of image, colour palette size etc. I also needed to communicate clearly how my animations would work, how many frames I would need and what transitions I had in mind.
One headache we managed to avoid is a common one - file names and versioning. What should the files be called and what's the most recent version? It turned out it was much easier for me to rename all the files rather than the artist. I had a particular naming scheme in mind which the art package didn't really like. As a result, every time I got some new files, I had to run them through a quick rename process. This was a little overhead, but it allowed the artist to be more productive and left the grunt work to me, which I automated.
Versioining was overcome by a diligent application of versioned directories. If you're not careful, you could end up losing files by accidentally copying old files over new files. I had a policy of never deleting anything, so this part was easy.
For my next project, which was on a commercial footing, I was working with a new artist. This opened my eyes to a whole new way of working. I was used to receiving nice zipped archives of .png files clipped precisely to the correct size. The new artist didn't work that way. Instead, I received fully fledged .psd files. All the graphics I needed were in there, but I had to go in and chop them out myself. This lead to quite a steep learning curve, as I was no expert in Photoshop. I thought I knew how to use it, but as I struggled to get out the files I needed, I ended up reading quite a few online tutorials on how to do what I thought should be simple tasks.
That taught me an important lesson, even though I would never be creating any artwork, I needed to know my way around Photoshop. It was a case of Photoshop or die!
In retrospect, I think this was an inefficient way of working. It makes much more sense for the artist to use their tools to export all the required data. After all, they're the experts in the tool, so they can do the required work in a fraction of the time I could.
I also struggled with explaining to this artist the precise technical requirements of the work. They were amazing at coming up with the graphics, had brilliant ideas on design, but didn't really get that I needed a 32x32 pixel tile that would tessellate seamlessly over a plane and interlock nicely with 12 other tiles. Eventually we got there, but there was a lot of hair pulling on both sides!
For my latest game, I wanted a bunch of anime type characters drawn. I knew this would be a lot of up front work, so I did something radical - I paid someone! I am a big fame of oDesk. This allows anyone to advertise a job and have anyone around the world apply for it. I managed to find an amazingly gifted artist in the Philippines who created the amazing fairy/goblin art my new game uses. Sure, I had to pay him by the hour, but he was so fast and so talented I think the result was worth out. Due to his professionalism, working remotely and giving directions just by emails was fine.
I found the best way of communicating an idea was to google about until I found some images that evoked the style I was looking for. He then went crazy, came up with a bunch of ideas, which we then refined. It was a great working experience and one I would recommend.
So there you have it. It is possible to create graphically lovely games without creating the graphics yourself.
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