2D game art for programmers
2dgameartguru.com
2dgameartguru.com
One reason for the asymmetry is that volunteering to work on an open source software project often produces systems or tools that make a programmer's job easier (i.e. they scale), for example algorithms or frame works or functions created while developing a game can potentially be reused by the programmer and their friends and associates many many times. On the other hand, the nature of art and design is that it is a one-off and creating art for the game doesn't make creating art for another game easier for the artist, their friends or their business associates.
The closest analog in programming is writing documentation and tutorials.
I have noticed this too. But why is it this way? Couldn't the process be made more modular?
The artist sometimes gets tool proficiency and workflow improvement out of it but the gain and reusability is not nearly as important as with programs.
An emphasis on reusability only hastens this trend. To get the kind of modularity your after, you'd have to develop a system that's premised on an alternate set of aesthetics. Japanese games of the 80s and 90s were so successful because they took as their basis the broader artistic culture of anime and manga. The tools for creating games followed suit.
His main site is down at moment or else I'd have linked that. Also I have no association with Kenney, only an appreciation for what he does.
Is there a write up on how the accomplish the modularity side of things?
> Linux users: Kenney Studio works using Wine on Ubuntu and other Debian distros. We unfortunately can't give any support for this.
Oh well, this is a rather unfortunate. There doesn't seem to be a video preview either.
Another way of looking at it: The benefits of experience that accrue to the artist from working on a game are the same as the benefits of working on their art in any other context including a paying context. Reusability of software is a proxy for time and time (in the form of less effort on future work) is what programmers tend to get from free software...a function that takes two days to develop can reduce that two days to twenty minutes five times a year for five years. And it comes in the form of an artifact rather than a process.
A lot of artists do provide free art (e.g. kenney or the huge community at opengameart or myself with the tutorials and the freeart (http://2dgameartforfree.blogspot.de/).
And here we go...
[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/221533/Game_Developer_Sal...
1. Walk in the center of the city.
2. Meet some street drawers.
3. Talk with them.While every fool (even me) can create/CAD-out a 3D model and then render it (and there are spectacularly bad specimens out there even I would be ashamed of publishing), 2D is an artistic interpretation of reality and takes real craftmanship. Far as I know, most animation is produced in Asia in huge studios and the workflow is such that you record the audio (voices), and draw some key frames after the voice timings by chief artists. The intermediate product is then called a "Leica". Then the artists of the big producers "ink out" the rest.
Personally I can't stand the animation of the 3D variety; it might have been fun/innovative back when Shrek came out, now its just stereotypical and cheap.