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[mzn528]

Hello guys, like the title suggested, when you do a poster/promotion art or even a title page, what's general resolution and composition you would use? For me I am doing a pixel art style for my game, and I got pretty confused when I was trying to put together a cover art for my game.

1. What would be a good resolution (aspect ratio) to use for cover art/kickstarter page? For pixel art at least, do people just do one at a lower resolution and resize it for display?

2. Will it be weird to do an actual drawing for cover when the art style for your game is pixel art...?

Thank you so much!

[CaLooch]

Promo art is like any other form of art.  Its about the story you're trying to tell.  For game promo art, you want people to be able to look at it and instantly understand what the game is about.  If the game is heavy on the action, it could be dynamic and "busy".  If its a calmer game, something more static can work.  There are a lot of options, you just have to be creative with it.

I'll assume that its for the souls-type game in your devlog, right?  so if thats the case, I assume that theres action with a grim feel to it.  Generally, a grim feel has a darker color composition so you would want to be spot on with the lighting and highlighting so people's eyes are drawn to the point of interest (ie: the character pose, or maybe a character sword swinging and colliding with somethings face)

There are a whole bunch of write ups out there explained by better artists than me on the subject.  I suggest reading up on composition theory

[mzn528]

Promo art is like any other form of art.  Its about the story you're trying to tell.  For game promo art, you want people to be able to look at it and instantly understand what the game is about.  If the game is heavy on the action, it could be dynamic and "busy".  If its a calmer game, something more static can work.  There are a lot of options, you just have to be creative with it.

I'll assume that its for the souls-type game in your devlog, right?  so if thats the case, I assume that theres action with a grim feel to it.  Generally, a grim feel has a darker color composition so you would want to be spot on with the lighting and highlighting so people's eyes are drawn to the point of interest (ie: the character pose, or maybe a character sword swinging and colliding with somethings face)

There are a whole bunch of write ups out there explained by better artists than me on the subject.  I suggest reading up on composition theory

Thanks for the reply Calooch! The thing is it is pretty confusing for me to decide what resolution/ratio to use, but I guess that probably means I need to do different art for cover and promotional art..

[xier]

for our game, we had a really high res poster drawn up by our lead artist, that would function as an exclusive reward and promotional material. the post can be seen here: https://twitter.com/Thrive905/status/596514104975740928

in terms of dimensions, this one was 3300x5100px and 300 ppi

[ryansumo]

"Will it be weird to do an actual drawing for cover when the art style for your game is pixel art."

I think this is ok.  Like just imagine those posters of old NES games, some of which were hilarious, but some of which were pretty cool.  Think of it as an interpretation of the onscreen pixels. 

Otherwise just blowing up your characters 2x or 3x pixel size works (preserve hard edges in Photoshop)or maybe you can do a set piece large battle scene that uses up a lot of your characters.

This is always tricky when your game uses small sprites/characters.  I had the same issue with Prison Architect.  Luckily the Introversion guys hired a proper graphic designer who whipped up an awesome scene using both my game sprites ans other materials he put together (it helped that the art is in vector so it scales pretty easily).

Good luck!