AuthorTopic: Artist(s) and game developer - Join forces?  (Read 2340 times)

Offline maxl

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Artist(s) and game developer - Join forces?

on: June 07, 2012, 10:34:43 pm
Hello there!

I am a lurker of this forum, pixel art admirer and game developer. Every once in a while, I see pixel art projects started which are destined to become a game in the end. Unfortunately, many of those projects get abandoned half-way through, even if the project "members" have already produced a big amount of graphical art. This kinda makes me sad..  :(

I am on the other side of the medal. I am constantly looking for freely available graphical resources to use in my games. I've already switched to making my choices on which game to develop next solely based on whether there is enough graphics art available. But good art it is still very hard to come by.

Isn't there a possibility to join forces in some form or another? Don't you pixel artists have many creations lying around on your hard disks which you would like to see come to life in form of a game? I would gladly use any existing art and turn it into a game, even if it's just a little short one. I am open to work on (and have experience with) many different genres: RTS, platformer, shooter, ..

I will neither offer nor request any money, I'd like to focus on the fun instead, as I'm doing this in my free time.

I'm mostly an Android developer, but I also develop for PC and Mac. As a demonstration of my abilities as a game developer, please refer to https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=IMakeGames which contains my two recent games, Planet Wars and Jungle Mayhem. (Note how both use freely available art).

Maybe we can create something fun together! :) Thank you for your time!

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Artist(s) and game developer - Join forces?

Reply #1 on: June 09, 2012, 02:28:50 am
:D It would be kind of neat if there was a part of this forum specifically for connecting artists to programmers. The only conflict I see is when each party really only wants their project to be done and could care less about the other ( which I know I'm guilty of)

currently there are a couple of threads going on that may or may not need some game developers. I know I personally have some projects that could use some help ;]

If you're browsing through the threads and see an artist making a game and needs a programmer you should contact the artist through a personal message or refer a buddy to them! :>

Offline JonasO

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Re: Artist(s) and game developer - Join forces?

Reply #2 on: June 10, 2012, 05:32:46 am
I know how you feel. I've been in a similar situation like you for years. I can only assume that it's the same for artists (I wake to find myself on the coding side quite often).

The problem is that people either want to do their own pet projects or work for money, but not be a partner in a project they don't deeply care about. The solution is of course to make people interested in your work and then give them the possibility to help you - but how to get someone interested in your work if you can't really start? You basically need to have some $$$ and pay someone for a couple of months, and no artist nor game designer nor programmer can really do that.

Of course you can always use some freely available material to create a demo. But without solid graphics, many people who could help you will not even try the demo. As an artist, you can do mockups, and I think those are great at attracting people. But at least we're no musicians. ("Look at this awesome piece of music I made, let's make it into a game" - ever heard that one? no? me neither. And that's although music pays for half the atmosphere...).

Maybe you need to have a peer group with artists and programmers, connected in real life, in order to start something. And then you can attract people.


Anyhow, back to topic. Did I understand you correctly: What you're asking for is not a full-time artist sitting by your side, rather than an extensive graphics library including free files from the artists at this site. Old stuff they drew and never used, things like that.
It would sure be great to have a "resources" forum, tagged by size, perspective, type (tileset, character, enemy, ...) and license. Something like what we had for warcraft 3: http://www.wc3c.net/resources.php .
I think that's a good idea. It's good for artists so they can look at stuff and learn, and it's good for programmers so they can build games with that stuff. It worked wonders for warcraft III (which also had a good amount of standard graphics, that was a huge bonus!)

Offline Redshrike

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Re: Artist(s) and game developer - Join forces?

Reply #3 on: June 11, 2012, 06:24:55 am
This isn't exactly it, but OpenGameArt.org does seem to tick some of the boxes.  It's a repository of game-relevant art (including a good dollop of pixel art) which is saved, filed and categorized and all available under various free licenses.  It's not exactly pixel art centric, but certainly pixel art friendly.  Of course, not everyone who is willing to collaborate on a game is also willing to release their art under an open license, but there's some overlap there anyway.