vector or hi res guidance needed

[Kren]

Well, this is more a thread asking for guidance than critique (yet it's also welcomed), I'm starting to make a game but instead of making it pixelart, the game will contain more high-res graphics-type, yet I'm not sure if keeping the high res art or move into vector, the art looks like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/Krensprite/dumpa.png

well, my questions are, should I stick with this or just move into vector art ? if I stick with this what programs do you recommend me for animation ( since photoshop is not a great animation program), if I go into vector what programs are there and what are they capable of?

I really want to continue the project but if I must move into vector I want to know it now before it's too late and I'm too lazy to remake all graphics in vector format, thanks for the help  !

[yaomon17]

I like the high-res 2D stuff. It looks nice

[Seiseki]

For the project I'm working on atm, I do all my vector art in photoshop.
Since in the end it will all be rasterized graphics in-game, but it helps being able to scale up and down, makes animation a bit easier too.

But hand drawn usually looks more lively and rough which I think is a plus.

I do all my animations in photoshop, but I'm thinking about learning how to animate and export in flash..
Since it's much easier with tweening and such..

[Kren]

Seiseki if it's a game in which the camara zoom-in and out, how do you manage to make the art not look distorted at let's say a cam of .5? or at x2? or do you make the image at x2 just for that? also any tutorial or tips you reccomend me?

[rikfuzz]

I'd do all assets in Illustrator, and animate in Flash.  Both pretty standard for vector based games. There's a lot of time investment learning the software though if you're new to these programs.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpLdeHuc554 - quick free app I did graphics for, was done this way, but actually saved out as raster data in the end for render speed optimisation).

I'd also like to experiment with Vanillaware's technique which uses high res raster graphics with puppet type animation.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKl0o3B4Sr4 - Muramasa).  Could do the animation in Flash or maybe some custom editor?

[Seiseki]

Seiseki if it's a game in which the camara zoom-in and out, how do you manage to make the art not look distorted at let's say a cam of .5? or at x2? or do you make the image at x2 just for that? also any tutorial or tips you reccomend me?

That's something I'm struggling with too..
Right now I have all textures at twice the resolution and scale them down.
But since resolutions can differ with just a few hundred pixels, some resolutions will have to have odd scaling.
We haven't started doing any resolution adjustment coding yet.

As for tips, make all textures twice the size, especially if you're drawing them by hand.
But make sure to zoom out a lot to check that it looks good at 50% zoom, so you don't start doing small details that don't show up.
I also use photoshop to animate because I know all the hotkeys and tools, so it feels easier. But learning to work in a proper animation program would be better in the long run.
The two things that I wish photoshop could do are size and rotation tweens, atm it can only do transparency and movement tweens.

[Indigo]

It's looking great Kren!  I too have been doing hand-painted HD assets for a project I've been working on (spunk and moxie).  St0ven, Atnas, and I actually have a forum over at www.2dHD.net/forum to discuss this specific medium of art for games.  There's not much there yet, but feel free to post there and get the conversation going if you're interested

[Kren]

Seiseki if it's a game in which the camara zoom-in and out, how do you manage to make the art not look distorted at let's say a cam of .5? or at x2? or do you make the image at x2 just for that? also any tutorial or tips you reccomend me?

That's something I'm struggling with too..
Right now I have all textures at twice the resolution and scale them down.
But since resolutions can differ with just a few hundred pixels, some resolutions will have to have odd scaling.
We haven't started doing any resolution adjustment coding yet.

As for tips, make all textures twice the size, especially if you're drawing them by hand.
But make sure to zoom out a lot to check that it looks good at 50% zoom, so you don't start doing small details that don't show up.
I also use photoshop to animate because I know all the hotkeys and tools, so it feels easier. But learning to work in a proper animation program would be better in the long run.
The two things that I wish photoshop could do are size and rotation tweens, atm it can only do transparency and movement tweens.

hmm well right now I'm doing the zoom stuff, and you are right many of the things I'm doing just look bad at .5 or .25 , hmm about doing the x2 image that seems like alot I mean really alot of size hah.. gotta think about it, also what proper animation programs do you mean?


and Indigo trust me I will just give me some time  to do a post ; )

[Seiseki]

For proper animation, I think flash is pretty good.

[Grundy]

I choose programs depending on how i want to animate. that is frame to frame or tweening animations.
For creating vector images i'd use Illustrator. I've been avoiding it for long but i got my head around it last year and it cooperates pretty well with flash.
It's easy to assemble stick figures with limbs and create walk cycles with motion tweens in Flash.
But flash does not handle the rotation of bitmaps very well and i find it to be less pleasant when making frame to frame animations.