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Companies invest a lot of money into experimenting and finding an art style -- sometimes more than you'll see in your whole life. A lot of games end up as bland photorealism, with samey character designs, but almost all of those games went through very expensive pre-production phases with a lot of concept art and tools being created.

If you invest a lot into concept art and then end up looking generic the investment is kinda wasted, aint it?

I certainly wouldn't say "wasted", if they're trying to make the best generic they can it makes sense. It's not what i'd do if I had their money and resources, though, of course.

raaaad! Last one was super awesome, shout out to rabbit and jmickle especially for chilling with me late into the evening while I caught up on boring art stuff!

Just a suggestion, you might want to change the obvious Thwomps and Kirby tree boss to something more original ..

this, * a million.

Cool work otherwise.

That's sick dude, massively better than the ones on the last page. Lineart master race over here!

ps isnt there something you should be noticing about the pauldrons?

Cool art dude, looking forward to gameplay progress.

i suspect that if you hired e.g. a 3D artist in china their salary would be significantly lower than hiring a 3D artist in the US. where did you hear that they would be paid the same?

in any case, the entire thing about different pay in different countries is just an example. there are plenty of other examples where people who are better get paid less than people who are worse. i just find it laughable that someone would claim that people who are paid more are better at what they do when everything i've seen is to the contrary

Largely anecdotal, since freelancers rarely discuss their personal rates, so I can't just grab an artist in china to use as an example. However, it's ludicrous to think that the average freelance art salary would be as high as it is (comfortable even in the most expensive cities in the world, if you're established) if all of the extremely talented chinese art teams (there are a lot) charged considerably less than US artists. There is minimal if any bias to hire a US artist for freelance work, freelance work does not discriminate by geography.

There isn't a 1:1 correlation between skill and salary, no, but there is also an average rate. If you have enough ability to command the average rate for your field, why would you quote a client any less? If a super elite american artist gets paid $100+ an hour to do good work over the internet, why wouldn't an equally skilled and reliable ethiopian artist charge the same?

Economic pressures keep the doctor in indonesia from taking on western patients, leaving him tragically making 5k -- freelancers aren't bound as strictly by those unfortunate circumstances. Artists in asia and the third world tend to charge comparative rates to westerners, I should expect/hope that writers do the same.

Since when does a 3D character for a game take 3 weeks to finish? I occasionally model characters for TV shows and I get 2... maybe 3 days tops to model and UV them.

I used 120 hrs as a ballpark number to demonstrate what an AAA artist might spend on a major character. The amount of hours doesn't really change the point that much, though: art is time consuming and expensive. According to the yearly Game Developer Magazine survey, average game artist entry level salary last year was $55,682 a year in the united states, and that's without the hefty tax burden that a freelancer faces.

If you are expecting professional quality work, trying to hire an artist for $125 per character is ridiculous.

 If you're expecting amatuerl work, I'm not sure why you'd part with money for it.

Cool idea dude!

Crits:

That mouse cursor is awful and visually confusing. KISS.

May not be the game you want to make, but: I wish there were more realistic physics on the ball, instead of a fixed bouncing speed and fixed angles. A similar game featuring this approximate design as a heavily physics based game (with enemies able to be knocked around and spun too, even) would be extremely cool to me.

I think the art is too noisy in general. Styles fine but I'd prefer much simpler sprites, less lines and colors.

woah what font is that?

I like it! I don't like how the color on both the gun and herself is split up basically 50-50 -- check out this http://autodestructdigital.blogspot.com/2011/10/find-design.html?zx=679132cf0e9886b6 for advice on design -- split 'em up!

rare but not unheard of to do while firing, seems to me like it'd lead to some potentially awkward mistakes if your hand slips, but ive never held a gun so idk. Perfectly viable place to hold a gun by while not in combat though, and it's compositionally nice so sue me.

edit: i googled it and shooters seem to agree that the magwell is the most likely point of failure in the case of some catastrophic malfunction of your gun, so you run a hefty risk of blowing off your own hand if there's some kinda over-pressure problem. Luckily in the future all space battlescouts have government mandated hand insurance.

if you're cool with it I'm gonna pm you me gun nerding over your shotgun design and how to 'fix' it later when I get the time.

edit edit: or maybe we should have a concept design/mechanical design thread in this forum. there are a lot of good conceptartists here but we tend to look at mood and style before we look at function.

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Big studios are risk averse. They have to make money with each project to keep afloat. On the other hand they have the resources to compete on the market by just making slightly generic but high quality games with established means and processes. This is relatively safe so why should they engage in risky projects?

They are very risk averse, which gives them even more incentive to spend great deal of resources on the pre-production process and be sure they have a rock solid art style. Investing in pre production concept art is a form of risk management.

Companies invest a lot of money into experimenting and finding an art style -- sometimes more than you'll see in your whole life. A lot of games end up as bland photorealism, with samey character designs, but almost all of those games went through very expensive pre-production phases with a lot of concept art and tools being created.

It just looks opaque from the outside when we only see the studios' end products.

s_l_m, you aren't retarded. Being defeatist is going to make that shit even harder, and it's already really hard.


here's another angle:

art is a 99% mental task. This is a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is an expert artist, unlike an expert pole vaulter or something, has no physical advantages over you that you have to overcome -- the only difference between you is your knowledge and ability to solve problems. You can hack this process by reading other artists' discussions, watching videos, learning secrets and unlocking new ways to think about and analyze problems. All those gimmicky art techniques, color theory, measurement tricks, ways to remember proportions and rules of construction and even formal perspective -- are just alternate ways of analyzing problems, and the more you soak up the better you'll be at guiding your own work to success.

The curse is that no matter how good you get, if you just frustratedly scribble and scrawl onto a page it is not going to look good. There is no art muscle you can rely on to just power through a problem, art always requires a certain amount of curiosity, focus, and attention. So your mental game is a really big deal -- if you find yourself frustrated, fatigued, confused, lost, stifled, that is your Everest -- developing the right mental and emotional approach to art is oftentimes the hardest part for a struggling artist.

mission accomplished

A metroidvania that takes place on a train.



...that's really all I've got.

So... just a platformer then?

dont be boring

imagine the trains

I would say indies have much much tighter time/budget constraints than the average studio.

It's a lot easier to settle on good tools and art if you have millions of dollars and a 60 man staff.

Maybe interesting trivia: Vagrant Story is the same designer/artist team (and same setting, ivalice) as final fantasy 12 and tactics/tactics advance.

vagrant story is as of right now my fave ps1 gam

y? i kind of want to play it.

everyone should play vagrant story. even if you don't finish it, just experience that shit.

if you want to be a coder instead, just code more man

any skill is just hours spent, there is no 'sucking' at something. invest the time and see the rewards