Game Art
Art is one of the areas of game development that helps bring games to life. It is all of the visual aspects of the game, ranging from menu buttons to in game intefaces to the characters and environments or anything else that appears of the screen.
There are many subjects within art and some of them are: animation, modeling and pixel art. Also, the art style and techniques change depending on the game being 2D or 3D.
If you’re creating 2D art, the creation process will be much different than creating 3D art. Although the process of each is different the fundamentals are still applicable to both.
Here’s a list of 2D art resources:
- A website contains a lot of free textures is cgtextures. They have textures of animals, buildings, fabric, food, signs, skies, tiles, windows, x-rays, and much more. They also have some tutorials.
- Mayang has a lot of free textures ranging from structures to objects to materials and more.
- 2D Game Art for Programmers is a blog that helps developers use open source art tools to create games. With tutorials on many different techniques the posts teach how to create art at a professional level with simple steps.
- 3D.SK is a reference library website. There you can find inumerous photos of people, skeletons, animals, clothes, weapons and more. You’ll also be able to find videos which are specially useful for animation reference.
Here’s a list of 3D art resources:
- 3D World is a magazine for 3D artists. Besides the content, you can also find many tutorials for 3D programs.
- 3D Artist is a magazine with many tips, tutorial and resources for 3D artists.
- Blender Swap is a website where you can find models, rigs and animations for Blender.
Art Hardware
Some of the art hardware used in the development of games are tablets, pen displays, digital cameras, video cameras and motion capture suits. Usually who uses these hardware are artists, though there are some exceptions.
Here’s a list of art hardware resources:
- Wacom is a company which sells tablets, ranging from begginer to professional and from simple pen tables to touch screen tablets with pen precision.
Here’s a list of art supply resources (All of them you can order online):
- Pearl Fine Art Supplies – Manhattan, NYC, NY.
- Art Supply Warehouse – Westminster, CA.
- Art Supply – Chicago, IL.
Motion capture suits are used in the development of many AAA games to create more realistic animations.
Here’s a list of motion capture companies:
Know a good game art resource which isn’t in any of our lists? Please send us a message!
