Graphics for indie games. What to do if the roundels and sticks do not suit you
Good afternoon again. Yesterday I published an article on the development of a game on Kotlin and, quite expectedly, the first pancake came out lumpy. Well, no big deal, any mistake is an experience. The main thing is to make the right conclusions and move on. What was wrong yesterday and what I expect to fix today. Do not interfere with a bunch of different materials, this is the first. And secondly, it makes sense to supplement the article with illustrations and links to external sources. So, drove.
Graphics, this is the first thing that catches the eye of the user who runs your application. And although there are several purely text games on Google Play, this is an exception to the rule. And in the development of such games, no doubt full of its pitfalls. What should an indie developer do in order not to fail the very first impression? First of all, it should be in the first stages of development to determine the main interface. There are several practices for doing this quickly and cheaply:
And an interesting observation, these simple and cheap options give better results than advanced programs. This is due to the fact that paper and markers give much more freedom than applications such as Adobe Experience Design. And with a simple pencil you can at a fairly high level of abstraction in a few strokes mark the idea and poke it with your fingers.
Ugly, of course, but quickly and quite work for yourself.
')
The resources were taken as a basis here : fragments , progress bars (absent on the screenshot). Agree, looks vyrviglazno. This is due to the fact that different styles are very difficult to combine to get a holistic picture.
In general, the site www.gamedevmarket.net turned out to be the best for me in terms of prices and variety of elements. For example, Vera, the author of the Stone Age theme, sells similar resources on graphicriver.net at a price of $ 8 and $ 45, depending on whether you are allowed to take money from users.
In the final version, I used one UI-Kit and in my opinion it was good. Author Dmitry, Studio Semilistnik. In addition to the UI-Kit, I used a set of Sergey's icons . Awesome assortment.
It's great when I found what I need, and when resources match each other in style. But the biggest problem is just to find. For example, you are looking for isometric buildings. And on one site they are small, on the other they are not suitable for the epoch, on the third everything is excellent, but there are only 5 of them that do not suit you for variety. And when working to order, I already brought - $ 25 per hour. Here for example one of the artists. That there was an idea how much time it takes to create one image . And believe me, in time it is more likely a lower estimate. At least Pachka’s labor-intensive estimates were the smallest.
So, in order to find resources, you need to look for resources (your KO). One of the best review sites here . You can search by name, you can click on transitions to similar pictures and user boards. The site indexes pictures regardless of license and provides links to original sources. In this variety it is very easy to drown for many hours. The site is quite spamming, every day it tries to send a letter with a selection of materials on topics of interest. And it is even great, because every day information accumulates a little. You better imagine what you can and can not want for a reasonable price.
Also, you can not go past the market for Unity and Unreal Engine . But I warn you right away that at least Unity is doing everything possible to make it difficult to use their resources outside of Unity. I had to put the development environment, open resources in it and pull png pictures from the cache. I almost decided that 20 bucks are nowhere. In addition, many authors publish their work on different sites and their prices may vary significantly. If you find a picture that suits you, it may be a good idea to do a second search by searching on the picture .
In conclusion, I will give a few more links to free resources: one and two .
Upd: links to resources from comments
opengameart.org
itch.io/game-assets - assets are also sold and distributed on itch.io
craftpix.net/freebies
freesound.org - many sounds with different licenses
tabletopaudio.com - music / background sounds for 10 minutes, SS BY-NC-ND
And of course, I recommend to collect your library of resources, links to your favorite work. Even if you are not going to buy now, it may be useful in the future. By the way, I have already spent about $ 100-120 on various purchases. I think that I got off very cheaply, because this is not even a full-time good artist :)
Graphics, this is the first thing that catches the eye of the user who runs your application. And although there are several purely text games on Google Play, this is an exception to the rule. And in the development of such games, no doubt full of its pitfalls. What should an indie developer do in order not to fail the very first impression? First of all, it should be in the first stages of development to determine the main interface. There are several practices for doing this quickly and cheaply:
- Draw in a notebook, or better on a whiteboard
- Cut paper elements from paper and paint them with pencils / markers.
And an interesting observation, these simple and cheap options give better results than advanced programs. This is due to the fact that paper and markers give much more freedom than applications such as Adobe Experience Design. And with a simple pencil you can at a fairly high level of abstraction in a few strokes mark the idea and poke it with your fingers.
Here is my interface prototype
Ugly, of course, but quickly and quite work for yourself.
')
The first approach to the projectile
The resources were taken as a basis here : fragments , progress bars (absent on the screenshot). Agree, looks vyrviglazno. This is due to the fact that different styles are very difficult to combine to get a holistic picture.
In general, the site www.gamedevmarket.net turned out to be the best for me in terms of prices and variety of elements. For example, Vera, the author of the Stone Age theme, sells similar resources on graphicriver.net at a price of $ 8 and $ 45, depending on whether you are allowed to take money from users.
Final version
In the final version, I used one UI-Kit and in my opinion it was good. Author Dmitry, Studio Semilistnik. In addition to the UI-Kit, I used a set of Sergey's icons . Awesome assortment.
It's great when I found what I need, and when resources match each other in style. But the biggest problem is just to find. For example, you are looking for isometric buildings. And on one site they are small, on the other they are not suitable for the epoch, on the third everything is excellent, but there are only 5 of them that do not suit you for variety. And when working to order, I already brought - $ 25 per hour. Here for example one of the artists. That there was an idea how much time it takes to create one image . And believe me, in time it is more likely a lower estimate. At least Pachka’s labor-intensive estimates were the smallest.
So, in order to find resources, you need to look for resources (your KO). One of the best review sites here . You can search by name, you can click on transitions to similar pictures and user boards. The site indexes pictures regardless of license and provides links to original sources. In this variety it is very easy to drown for many hours. The site is quite spamming, every day it tries to send a letter with a selection of materials on topics of interest. And it is even great, because every day information accumulates a little. You better imagine what you can and can not want for a reasonable price.
Also, you can not go past the market for Unity and Unreal Engine . But I warn you right away that at least Unity is doing everything possible to make it difficult to use their resources outside of Unity. I had to put the development environment, open resources in it and pull png pictures from the cache. I almost decided that 20 bucks are nowhere. In addition, many authors publish their work on different sites and their prices may vary significantly. If you find a picture that suits you, it may be a good idea to do a second search by searching on the picture .
In conclusion, I will give a few more links to free resources: one and two .
Upd: links to resources from comments
opengameart.org
itch.io/game-assets - assets are also sold and distributed on itch.io
craftpix.net/freebies
freesound.org - many sounds with different licenses
tabletopaudio.com - music / background sounds for 10 minutes, SS BY-NC-ND
And of course, I recommend to collect your library of resources, links to your favorite work. Even if you are not going to buy now, it may be useful in the future. By the way, I have already spent about $ 100-120 on various purchases. I think that I got off very cheaply, because this is not even a full-time good artist :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/331988/
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