Not good with sprites

I'm not good with original sprites.

I avoid making games which involve sprites that have detailed frames for movement or actions.

Do many people feel the same?

I would like to know how other people have gotten past this hurdle.

Wang.

Well, first off, there's always plenty of people out there who would love to see there artwork put into a game-- so you could always find a collaborator...

But if you mean you have trouble drawing sprites on like.. a computer.. you could always get a wacom tablet-- there are nice ones that cost 80 dollars-- and they are a good investment.

If you have trouble animating the sprites then there are lots of programs that are specifically designed for animation--TVP Paint is one that comes to mind-- there is also a light-table plugin for photoshop.

And of course, the easiest way to animate stuff without actually drawing a bunch of individual frames would be the bone movement behavior.

For now, I'm trying to avoid it by making only top view games, there is little to non animation

Practice and work hard at it. It's the only way to get better at something. If you are motivated enough you will become good with time. People who are skilled at art became good with tons of practice. Look at art that inspires you and study it. No one is good at something when they're just starting out.

I'm not good with original sprites.

I avoid making games which involve sprites that have detailed frames for movement or actions.

Do many people feel the same?

I would like to know how other people have gotten past this hurdle.

Wang.

With me I use Poser and Daz 3D. Spirit building is something I been working on for some time. My prob is Coding and learning the engines to build a game.

The other prob I been having is finding some one welling to finis off the project thy start,cant tell you how many time I started on a project only to have the other guy dump it because of real life.

What tip of game are you thinking of making and how fare are you in to knowing how to use this engine

Hey thanks everyone for the replies.

Lots of good ideas for me to think about. Bone movement, collaborating, top down, practice, hard work. That truth hurts Davioware.

Its hard to practice something when you only care about the finished product and not the process.

I do have trouble with the drawing. Even though i have ideas and enough knowledge of the applications i just cant draw. Especially trying to achieve stuff like a realistic 8bit look.

Tablet could help but my desk is so crowded already. I have always wanted one too. I know a few people who have them as paperweights, which is a bit off putting.

Night

I don't know much about construct as i haven't used it for a while and forget apps quite quickly.

Thinking about making a Super Smash TV clone, its much like the Ghost hunter tut style of game.

I understand what you mean by 'the other guy dumping it' Its hard because the more people involved less creative freedom. Less people is bigger chance of fail.

My games seem to have a healthy percentage of fail already.

Cheers everyone.

Wang.

Its hard to practice something when you only care about the finished product and not the process.

That's the truth for absolutely everything, especially game development. If you're in it for the money, you won't get far. You have to genuinely enjoy the process of developing.

It sounds like you aren't much of an artist yourself (not meaning to be offensive here at all). If that's the case, outsource that specific side of your project to an artistic friend or find someone over the interwebs interested in helping out. That way you can focus on working on the elements of design that interest you most, whether that's scripting/eventing to bring the art to life, quest design and writing, whatever excites you.

If you ARE an artist, and just find it difficult to produce quality work on the computer, then I also highly recommend a Wacom or similar tablet. I have an Intuos 3 and I've never looked back. Trying to draw with a mouse is like trying to draw on paper with three fingers and no thumb. It's possible, but damn does it make things more difficult.

I draw sprites in Photoshop, then load them up in Anime Studio for animating with bone movement, finally exporting them as .png files to Construct. Very powerful application, animations look very smooth, and it saves a lot of time. There's a 30 day free trial if you're curious.

Yeah, anime studio is a great program with a poorly chosen name.

Also, if you're not good at drawing, but you can identigy which parts od your drawings look bad, anime studio has a simple vector art system that feels like sculpting out your mistakes, more than drawing, inshort. I feel I don't draw well normally, but I can make pretty decent stuff in anime studio.

Also, a little shameless self promotion, silver: if you check out the my creations forum, you'll see a character animation program I'm working on that will export to construct. I mention it because a lot of the final design and workflow will be based partially off of my wishlist for anime studio, along with my list of everything I didn't like about it.

Yep I am not good with character sprites and movement.

I can draw a wall or a door etc but hopeless at characters.

Tablet i am definitely thinking about. I can see how incredibly handy it would be in my current situation.

Funnily enough i was looking at anime studio the other day for a different reason but i never realized it had such potential for this type of task.

Anyway atm im using coloured squares etc as the sprites while i create basic game play.

Seems to be more productive because im wasting no time on creation.

Thanks again for the feedback, looks like i might need to spend a bit of money in the future.

If only every thing was free like construct.

Wang.

instead of making pixel-perfect sprites, you can use PNG image format for your characters. PNG imagery supports transparency, so that you don't have to worry about artifacts (at least not as much). Make your animations in Flash, then export it into PNG files.