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[cowgod]

My place of employment caught on fire yesterday, so I should have some free time to work on my video game project (a freeware graphical Rogue-like).

I've found free tile art that I plan to use for most of the ground tiles. I found it at http://reinerstileset.4players.de/englisch.html. I'll need to resize it and tweak it a bit, but I think I can use it. I think I can even use the transition tiles, though I haven't figured out the details yet.

However, there's no way that I could possibly find adequate character art. The game is going to be about angels and various unusual creatures. I'm not going to find the right kind of artwork at the right sizes on the Internet.

I can't draw for the life of me, and I don't want to pay for art for a free game. I just need some adequate 2d character art, and I won't even force myself to do animations.

Can anyone recommend any books or other materials that would help me learn how to draw 2d characters that look passable (not necessarily good)?

[skavenhorde]

I know this is probably going to be completely useless because it's very basic compared to the link you provided, but there are all kinds of fantasy themed art for free that was made for Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures:

Angels: http://frua.corhub.com/

There are a lot of resources here: http://frua.corhub.com/
Here: http://frua.rosedragon.org/
FRUA forums: http://ua.reonis.com/index.php
A few pictures of "Angel" from the comics: http://dhost.info/dungeoncraft/HeroCraft/hportraits.html#image

Fantasy art: http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/database/art/gallery.pl?genre=2 This has a ton of pictures, but again I'm unsure if it will help.

That's about the only place where you can get free art. You may want to check out the "big pictures" from frua.rosedragon.org those are better quality than the icons or sprites.

[cowgod]

The frua site appears just to be for homemade mods for Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures. Also, the zip file I clicked on was a dead link. In any case, it doesn't look like it's free to use for other purposes.

The dungeoncraft site is a homemade mode of a particular game, and using Marvel character artwork is not only inappropriate for the game but also might provoke a legal battle with Marvel.

The epilogue site appears to be people showing off their artwork, not giving it away for people to use in games.

In any case, I was looking for a book to read or something to learn how to do passable artwork, not premade artwork (which I don't expect to find).

Thanks for trying to help though.

[skavenhorde]

If you find a book or some great site about learning to create art let me know as well

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Frua and NWN 1 are really the only games I've attempted to make a module out of and they're always sharing resources over at the forums. Didn't take into consideration that a mod doesn't have to deal with copyright with established media like a real game would Especially a module as old as FRUA. Thought it would be ok to use in other games as well.

In any case I do have a few better links for you that is definitely free to use in any game.

250 Free Tilesets: http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/02/250-free-handdrawn-textures.html

More Tilesets: http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/07/more-free-game-graphics.html

Nethack Tilesets: http://search.abc-directory.com/nethack+tilesets


I just googled "free tilesets rogue" and found a bunch of listings. Anyways, good luck.

[cowgod]

[Hajo]

[cowgod]

I think you actually mean:

http://www.amazon.com/Foster-Book-191-Drawing-Figures/dp/B0027AEA66/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1292278661&sr=8-3

The link you posted is actually just an excerpt from another book. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the link I posted is also the excerpt or the whole book.

I was looking for something more video game oriented, but low tech (as opposed to being about 3d modeling or something). I couldn't find anything and have the feeling that I'm not going to.

When I previously did video game artwork, the results were somewhat... appalling. I think it'll turn out a little better this time - I've been learning a few tidbits of information from YouTube tutorials and such. So long as I don't draw any animations or do any weird positions, I think I can figure out how to draw characters that look vaguely human.

I just don't know how much time I want to spend on it.

[Coyote]

If you do find any good tutorials, please share. Granted, practice is probably the most important factor, but hints & tips certainly help.
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[cowgod]

The first video that I found useful was at http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-draw-a-womans-body. This video essentially shows you what proportions to use when drawing a naked woman. There appear to be other similar videos for naked men, faces, etc.

Unfortunately, I need to draw people wearing clothes. I'll probably have some kind of base image that just is shaped like a person, but I can't just fill a game with naked people.

I created a playlist of a multi-part video tutorial I found on Youtube. The url of my playlist is http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=1A19065CD5574206.

I created the playlist because there's no way to navigate between the various videos of the tutorial. You're stuck searching Youtube and hoping to find something. There were a few videos I couldn't even find.

The characters drawn in the video are cartoony, and their proportions are all wrong. Still, it gave me a basic idea of how to draw clothing, faces, and hair.

I also tried drawing some chick who posted her picture on the internet and said that she wanted to be a model at some kind art thing. The result looked extremely anorexic, but was at least humanoid.

I managed to draw angel wings reasonably well by using a "Justice League How to Draw" book that I bought at a library book sale for $0.25. The book is mostly useless because it doesn't explain anything, but I figured out how to draw wings using it.

I haven't done any digital art yet. It's not that high of a priority when my game basically doesn't do anything.

Keep in mind that I'm only doing art for characters (and maybe some walls, furniture, etc.). I'm using free terrain tiles that look really great and will make my character art look even more pathetic.

[Hajo]

I was wondering if a tool like Poser could help in character art. Some people use it to make quite nice characters.

A long time ago I was pointed at http://www.makehuman.org/ , a free and open source tool to create human figures, a bit like Poser. I haven't been following the development though, so I don't know how useful it is.

But I imagine if you use it to create 3D models in the poses that you need most frequently, then render them to the size and views that you need, and finally modify them it might be easier than creating the base figures by yourself.

I'm quite bad at drawing humans or animals, too, so I thought this might be a way to "cheat" for the basic shape generation.

Another idea was to model the figures in play dough - it seems I'm better at sculpting than at painting. I want to try that some time soon, to test if that works. I'd sculpt the shapes, take photos, and post process those to get the sprites for a 2D based game. I guess there are many ways, difficult is to find a process that suits ones talents and produces good results.

[cowgod]

[Coyote]

I've messed around with MakeHuman a little bit. It can be imported directly into Blender, which is a cool thing. But the mesh will require a LOT of work to make it usable for real-time rendering.

Still, that's not a big problem. You can either reduce the polygon count manually, or use it as template to "wrap" with a low-poly model. So it's still handy.
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[cowgod]

I just tried it out. It seems like it might be promising when it's done, but most of its feature seem to be incomplete at this point. The initial model was perfect, but the modifications I could make to it tended to make it worse.

When I changed the sliders, it didn't seem to do what I expected. And I couldn't make hair for some reason, even though there appear to be two different hair making tools.

I may be missing something here, but it doesn't seem like you can do much with the models. I need alot more than just a naked model with no hair.

For the time being, I'm probably better off trying to draw something that doesn't look too horrible. I suppose I could figure out some way to export the initial model as a bitmap and use that as some sort of base image to draw on top of, but I could do that with any model.

If I do use 3d models at some point, I should probably find a way to render them, rather than converting them to bitmaps. 3d models are much more widely available now than 2d art, so people could potentially just buy models for plugging into games. I'm not going to do that because I'm trying to go with a $0 budget.

[Hajo]

I think I saw a few free human meshes available somewhere on the web, but they were not rigged (is this the right term? They had no 'bones' to be animated), so I couldn't make much use of them.

How are you getting along with the artwork?

If all else fails, I might be able to offer a template for isometric people (very small scale, only the 4 major directions):

http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=87.msg216#msg216

It's available as creative common "attribution - share alike" (see first post in the thread for details). So you can take it, modify it and use it, just need to give credit and make your modifications available again. Maybe it helps ...

[Coyote]

Yeah, rigging is adding the bones. As opposed to "boning" - the more obvious term - which can get confusing when you say, "I just got done boning Princess Peach this afternoon."

I haven't done any additional artwork this week. I've got a goblin geometry done and half-textured. But I suck at texture. And yes, then I'll have to rig him up and animate him.

I actually like rigging & animation, though it's difficult.
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