Drawing 2D graphics

[TLE]

I'm trying to do artwork for a game.  I'm not the best artist and even worse on computer drawing programs.  Any tips on what the best program is to use or how to create detailed pictures?  I don't wanna use graphics that look like a 2 year old drew it with a Crayola!

[DarkMortar]

Use photoshop, or use 3ds studio max, you can render the 3d models and make it look nice.

[oNyx]

Depends on the style you're after. Each style has it's own workflow and tool chain.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[TLE]

I don't know what style I'm after :\

I just know I want 2d pictures...not 3d models.  What do you guys recommend for this, or, if applicable, what do you use for this?

[Kova]

I don't know what style I'm after :\

then we can't help you much... like you may wont to do cartoony drawings, comic book drawings, realistic photo images... To put it simply, for "photo" images you can use photoshop-like program, and for drawings you can use vector based program, corel-like (google inkscape, it's like freeware corel)

[oNyx]

>I don't know what style I'm after :\

Toy around then for a few weeks to get a feeling for the different approaches.

Pixel art: Any pixel pushing app will do the trick. There are even a lot of pros who use mspaint.
Photo based or photo realistic: Something like Photoshop.
Vector: Inkscape is a good starting point. (I wrote some of the extensions btw )
Pre-rendered: Lots of tools and skills are required for that.
Experimental: Clay stop motion, abstract, scanned pencil drawings... lots o weird possibilities.

So... try a few things and see what works best for you. Eg I really like pixel art, but it takes too long. Photobased or stop motion isn't an option, because I don't own a digital camera. Scanned stuff would be really meh, since my drawing isn't that good and my scanner is too damn slow (it's about 15 years old). Pre-rendered is quite nice, but my skills aren't up to the task yet. I also don't own a tablet. So, it's vector for me.

[broumbroum]

why don't you just turn around the Gimp ? It's free and fast on many platforms. 

[TLE]

Thanks for all the info guys, helps a lot.  I'll probably download inkscape and give that a try later when I have more time -- it can create pictures with transparent backgrounds right?

why don't you just turn around the Gimp ? It's free and fast on many platforms. 

Not sure what the Gimp is :\

[cylab]

Not sure what the Gimp is :\

It's something like a photoshop clone, but with an interface needs getting used to. It emerged out of the GPU/Linux community, is quite powerfull and has a scripting language for effects, so you will find tons of effects to download on the net.

Pixel art: Any pixel pushing app will do the trick. There are even a lot of pros who use mspaint.

I found Paint.NET being a good tool for my pixel pushing desires. It's somewhere between mspaint and paint shop pro.

[oNyx]

>[inkscape] can create pictures with transparent backgrounds right?

Sure. The empty stuff is transparent by default. If you need something opaque you can either put a rect in the background or use the document properties (the background there is also used for export).

Help->Tutorials should get you started.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[TLE]

Sweet, inkscape definitely sounds like my ticket.  Thanks for the info

[rdcarvallo]

Not sure what the Gimp is :\

It's something like a photoshop clone, but with an interface needs getting used to. It emerged out of the GPU/Linux community, is quite powerfull and has a scripting language for effects, so you will find tons of effects to download on the net.

If they wanted to steal some market share from Adobe Photoshop, the first thing they would have done was to keep the photoshop shortcuts.. All of them are changed.
Marque  -> R
Laso -> F
Magic Wand -> Z
etc.

I found Paint.NET being a good tool for my pixel pushing desires. It's somewhere between mspaint and paint shop pro.

I found Graphics Gale, it's a very robust package made for pixel artist/animators, it has a free version with all the functions excepting save to gif.

[DarkMortar]

No, but you can use the 3d environment in 3ds max and easily make rendered 2d pictures, that are for backgrounds etc.

[cylab]

If they wanted to steal some market share from Adobe Photoshop, the first thing they would have done was to keep the photoshop shortcuts.. All of them are changed.

Yeah maybe. How is the situation with GIMPShop?

[TLE]

Ok, I've been using inkspace and am really liking it, made some decent pictures that I never would have been able to make on paper.  I'm having troube with details though, I have good outlines mostly, but they aren't that detailed and I can't really figure out what tools to use for small details, and I've only been able to pain graphics a solid color, not able to break it up into pieces, coloring parts differently and such, what tools should I use to do this and for the details?  Didn't see anything about this type of stuff in the tutorials.

[oNyx]

I do pretty much everything with the bezier and node tool. The rest is fill/stroke (maaaaaybe a gradient), clones and clipping.

Here are two short screencasts about clipping:
http://kaioa.com/svg/clipping.mkv (xvid/ssa ~1.8mb)
http://kaioa.com/svg/clipping2.mkv (h264/ssa ~1mb)

Shading with clipping:
http://kaioa.com/svg/amgclip.png
(the shading of the skin was also done with clipping)

Simple shading with clipping:
http://kaioa.com/svg/carrot_steps.png [wireframe]

Overlap with clipping:
http://kaioa.com/svg/weave.svgz (FF/Opera required)
http://kaioa.com/svg/weaveclip.png
(as you can see I cross through the stroke edges and carefully chosen spots to keep the antialiasing intact)
http://kaioa.com/svg/weaveextra.png
(with an extra semi transparent green rect below the two extra pieces)

Well, you don't really need clipping. But it makes some things a lot easier.

Blur is also quite cool. Keep in mind that there are other things then shadows you can do with it like:
http://kaioa.com/svg/boofinal.svgz (FF3 beta or Opera required) [856x480 png]

Glowy stuff will be a tad neater in the future if there are blending modes (lighten, darken, screen, overlay etc).

[broumbroum]

I can't get it playing,. where do you make this movie file .mkv ? 

[Kova]

I can't get it playing,. where do you make this movie file .mkv ? 

It can be opened with windows media player. So you just have to find the codec I guess.

[broumbroum]

ok, but is this possible to get it coded with Java 2D??? That could be interesting... 

[oNyx]

MKV is a container (like avi or mp4). You need a matching splitter to get ahold of the streams. MPC (media player classic) and VLC have integrated splitters (stand alone splitters can be found at that mkv page). But VLC has some issues when it comes to SSA. I could have used hard subs, but back then I didn't know how to do that. Hard subs also have the disadvantage that you cannot simply add other languages. Btw those two screencasts don't contain any audio streams.

If you don't have any h264 codec installed try ffdshow tryouts.

[TLE]

Downloaded and installed the ffd thing but can't figure out how to play the mkv still 

Explain it to me like I'm an idiot? 

[cylab]

- double click the file
- select "choose program" to open (or something... my windows is german...)
- select "Windows Media Player" or browse for "C:\WINDOWS\system32\mplay32.exe"
- check "Always use this program" (or alike)
- click OK

[oNyx]

MPC is a lot neater then WMP tho.

edit: You also won't have to install a mkv splitter separately.

[TLE]

Yea, I put it into wmp but it just ran the bar like it was playing, but nothing was showing on the window.  I downloaded the ffd thing and just installed it where it wanted to be installed, apparently this isn't right....so, what do I do to install it?

[oNyx]

So, you did install some mkv splitter?

Well, no idea if you can make WMP show the subtitles at all (they won't make much sense w/o em, I'm afraid). MPC will display em fine for example (or MPlayer on Linux). Give MPC a try. It's really a lot better then WMP.

Also check the ffdshow decoder options (start->programs->ffdshow->video decoder configuration... codecs). The first one uses XViD and the second uses H264.

Other then that... help->tutorials is pretty good (as I already mentioned) and there are a bunch of other screencasts over at youtube (which may teach you some bad things tho).

Ehm. But usual videos (mpeg/avi etc) do work, yea? I ask because you could configure it in a way to display the overlay stuff *only* through tv-out in which case the overlay thingy on your screen will remain black. For changing that... check the overlay options of your graphics card.

(Note: FLVs as seen on youtube or google video etc aren't using the overlay stuff and therefore they wont be affected.)

[cylab]

So, you did install some mkv splitter?

Wasn't that part of the ffdshow installer? Had no ffd install lately...

Give MPC a try. It's really a lot better then WMP.

MPC==Media Player Classic (In case someone doesn't know)

[oNyx]

>Wasn't that part of the ffdshow installer? Had no ffd install lately...

ffdshow (and ffdshow tryouts) only contains video and audio en-/decode shizzle (it isn't a so called "codec pack" mind you).

MPC and VLC are shipped with integrated mkv splitters (which can be disabled). If you're using another player you might have to install a separate splitter such as haali's.

[TLE]

Eh :\

Is there an easy way to get the codec or whatever I need to play it on WMP?  It's not that I have a vendetta against MPC, but I hate downloading things I already basically have because a different one supports a particular file -- I don't wanna end up with 18 different media players ya know -- just a waste of space.

[Abuse]

Then forget about WMP (it went steadily downhill from version 6.4), and use only MPC

[oNyx]

MPC is a single exe, which is 5.4mb in size. There is no installer and it won't change the file associations on it's own etc. It's really really pain free to try.

It's true what Abuse said. WMP is pretty indeed pretty bad.

I've installed:
-MPC (primary)
-VLC (If MPC is unable to play it, I give VLC a try. VLC has it's own set of "private" codecs, which is the reason why it might work there if it doesn't work elsewhere.)
-Zoom Player (because it's easy to check which codecs are missing and downloading em with only 2 clicks)
-WMP (because... well, it's there)