A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine
Duckwit
Member
I am interested in what you use to design the graphics (Backgrounds, characters, objects) for games you make. I find it easy to do graphics in Adobe Flash Professional, because of the way you can move all the shapes, adjust and bend everything.
I would be glad to have some advice and pointers about this. :)
-- Duckwit (13)
robodude666
Member
Most people use a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator. On the cheap you can use GIMP and Inkscape to get the same effect. There are of course many other applications you can use in OS X for drawing/artwork.
Flash is an okay place to do art in. It's basically a dumbed down version of Illustrator, which is a vector drawing application. Flash can do other things of course, but most of them don't interest "us" as iPhone developers.
I use photoshop and illustrator for all the art. And then import into Flash to make animations.
But I got a designer to do the draws (in paper) and I make the vectors/colors. I'm not a good designer :)
Tutorial for great game graphics:
1) Install illustrator
2) Miserably fail at creating great graphics with illustrator
3) Talk to Mike Heald (http://www.fullyillustrated.com/portfolio/illustration/)
4) Marry Mike Heald
5) Have kids with Mike Heald
6) Ask Mike to do your graphics
I'm currently stuck on step 4... ;)
for 2D, Gimp is pretty good for being free. I honestly believe it is comparable to photoshop but then again I'm not much of a graphic artist at all. Pretty much everything listed here is good if you know how to use it and can afford them which in my case are usually the limiting factors.
I also use illustator and photoshop
For animation, have a look to Adobe after effects which can output very nice png sequence...
About open source vs adobe product: I find inkscape very good and as good as illustrator, but gimp has not the same quality and you really need Photoshop IMHO
Duckwit
Member
Knave Photoshop elements 6.0. But I find that for making graphics it's harderthan other programs because , unlike flash and illustrator, you can't move or reshape anything you do. So if you wanted to animate with only Photoshop you'd have to basically redraw every frame.
Does inkscape work on windows?
mrTortex
Member
Hello.
While I'm new to the code, I'm not new to the visual aspects of all this stuff.
If you look at my blog I have some examples of how I do graphics for games, mostly 3D.
http://fingerpuk.tumblr.com/archive
I'd be happy to expand on anything.
Duckwit
Member
That is very impressive mrTortex!
What software do you use to make things like the ears and the hand? Would you be able to achieve something like that in Google Sketchup or do you need a more impressive software?
I was especially impressed with the time it took you to make those, I would expect it to take a lot longer. :/
mrTortex
Member
Hello.
Thanks. For the ears etc in this case I used Wings, although I tend to use Silo for organic stuff and Modo for everything else. You could use SketchUp, but Wings is more suited if you want to do anatomical studies etc. It's also free. They are a good way to get comfortable in 3D, and great to train your eye and learn volume and form.
I'll be posting a more detailed how-to with regards to graphics for iPhone games, as soon as I get the code done I'll start on that.
So, I'm off to try to get that bit done. It's proving bloody hard. :(
Flash Professional is freaking fantastic for making game art and graphics. It's got a better mix of raster+vector graphics than any other program out there. The way it handles symbols and objects with multiple frames is also way better than anything else.
For Trainyard, I actually wrote an AIR app that generates texture atlases from Flash assets for me to use with Cocos... I can do stuff like...
addButton("Start Game", 100, 50, 0x0000FF);
addButton("Stop Game", 80, 50, 0xFF0000);And it'll actually create two buttons(one green, one red) *with rollover states* and add them to the atlas. It also generates Obj-c .h and .m files with all the rectangle coordinates built in, so I literally have to do nothing to integrate the buttons into my game. Pretttty sweet.
Duckwit
Member
@Matt Rix
Hey thanks for that info, I didn't know you could really do that. :)
That sounds really cool, I am only 13 so I don't grasp everything you just said. Could you explain in a slightly less technical way because that sounds really useful. :)
Also, how well do you think Flash goes for graphics compared to Adobe Illustrator?
Thanks a lot for your time everyone!
--Duckwit
TouchGameDev
Member
Hey There we are posting a new series about 10 total on graphics for games in Cocos2D at http://touchcode.tumblr.com Justposted the first in the series in part two we are adding particles and in the third part we have game play with a joystick like Minigore moving an object with particles (or not depending if you want them) the joystick is skinnable - hope you will check it out.
mrTortex
Member
Hello.
I've decided to post my progress on my new little project on my blog (fingerpuk.tumblr.com). Although the code will be less than basic to all of you, maybe the visual elements and how I make them will be of use. They aren't up yet, but they will be soon enough. If anyone wants further details on how I do stuff, just ask :)
I use a mix of TileStudio (http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/), Inkscape and GIMP. TileStudio is windows only, I run it in Parallels when needed on the Mac.
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