I’ve wanted to make a game for a while now as a side project; but art styling matters immensely to me - more than the gameplay itself, honestly. I feel like I need to become a good artist first…
https://www.rosebud.ai/ai-game-assets
Coming soon https://unity.com/products/muse
Every time I’ve played with AI generated art it’s like rolling the dice for any given image or single peace.
Then I ask for another, and I get something completely different that would never fit with the first piece…
A game requires some level of consistency across the assets.
AI> Design me some game graphics that look similar to Mario Bros, except instead of the main character being a plumber, make him an electrician and instead of having a brother who is a plumber also, give him a sister who sells stuff on Etsy.
But prompting with things like, "Return all future images for this chat in the style of x" help.
You're not just going to be able to say, "Create all my artwork for my game" but prompting and honing in on something is easier, imo, than learning how to create that artwork yourself.
If you do something like pixel art, you can also get a rough draft from dalle then do some editing yourself. Again, it isnt doing everything for you but its significantly easier and faster than learning how to be an artist yourself.
OTOH, there are lots and lots of tools to improve controllability. Still, though, tricky for most game assets (though inprovements are being made by leaps and bounds) beyond static illustrations/icons.
[0] I'm halfway through and have made more progress in a week than in a lifetime of false starts (complete with Black Friday coupon): https://www.gamedev.tv/courses/1289989?coupon_code=YIPPEE
A concept artist and a 3D modeling artist altogether will cost like $3000 for 1 fully complete character that fits your vision. For 2D probably a lot cheaper.
For me, $3000 is worth the months/yrs of saved time.
Of course if you are having fun learning the art side and don't care about the destination as much then ignore this and have fun with it! If you practice every day for a year you'll probably start getting close to what you invision.
EDIT: I'll also add that it's possible most of the aesthetic you're looking for can be achieved via shaders (for both 3D and 2D games). A lot of art looks very different in-game because of shaders doing all kinds of manipulations.
Then there's the Kingdom of Loathing games that never moved on from shitty Paint drawings, lol.
1. pay them to make art for the game you want to make, or
2. work with them for free to make the game they want to make.
Good luck.