I've been (hell, am) exactly where you are, and honestly, the answer is:

-Draw more lines. 'Clean' lineart is the culmination of a lot of really difficult skills. Contour drawing, line weight, perspective, gesture drawing, analyzing form... You just need to draw a hell of a lot more, and let yourself struggle with trying to get it right for a while. Find more artists whose lines you admire, and try to find out what makes them tick. It's not that they hold a pen steadier than you, it's that they make better decisions.

-You have a very 'messy', tactile style, where I assume you like to feel around a lot with lines as you draw. Don't fight that and try to make super clean pen lines -- embrace it. Even with that style, clean lineart is simply a matter of skill.

-Lastly, don't be afraid to cheat just a bit. Fake it until you make it is a great motto -- if you need to use the photoshop pen tool every once in a while to get some intricate, clean forms in perspective, do it, it's going to be more productive to put out a lot of good drawings than it is to agonize over one beizer curve.

ps: dont forget to make your canvas big enough to effectively support whatever brushes you're using. In photoshop some artists like to go by 2x monitor res, and I honestly like to go even bigger, because shit starts to feel weird and fiddly when a brush gets small.

[trapped]

Smith, that DOES suck, but: you're a doofus. If you have the grades and the money to even BORROW for school, you're in that privileged class of people who makes you slave over the juicer for them. Grab the reigns and go to school. I know it's stressful and depressing and exhausting (believe me,) but poor people have it even worse -- they're trapped where you are, and don't have a way out. You'll only end up that way if you trap yourself.

And since you're on this forum: You probably have interests that line up with very high paying, very high skill careers. Go to school for computer science or something! Use your education to make games, and maybe also make a 60k a year desk job if you need one of those.

Is that the game on the silent storm engine based on some german tv show or vampire novel or something?

Honestly never played any of these games, but: Isn't Cities in Motion the same genre? CoM2 just came out.

the best suited for this project

Hard to say not knowing what the project is. The way you do it now is, like you say, animation dependent, but there's nothing clunky about that.

If you want something more "arcadey", you could on attack spawn a static collider covering the area you want affected. Or make it slightly smaller and with it sweep the area you want.

This is how most fighting games do it, isn't it? Spawning a hitbox for the attack that animates? All of my little game design experiments have used this method and it feels great.

Wonderful art!

These guys are only the regular sized frogmen!

this is in an early state

Why not retain the game design and just develop a new aesthetic?

siskavard he is adorable

Something wrong with MyPaint? Can't go back to The GIMP for drawing after using it.

Personally I have never used mypaint, I don't see the purpose with more complete tools like photoshop being freely availible, but it looks rad to me so if it works for you go for it.

Basically as long as an art program is functional and stable (gimp fails on both counts last time i tried it) whatever works fast for you is what you should use.

I just got one of those Monoprice graphics tablets, and I'm loving it.

Yesssssss! They are so good.

Heheh, yeah, it's awesome. I'm currently fiddling around with the various free programs to find one I can use until I can purchase a quality program. Any suggestions on either count?

In terms of 2d art, photoshop basically dominates for drawing and painting. But you should look into Paint Tool Sai and Sketchbook Pro too if you want a lighter feel. All have free trials.

I just got one of those Monoprice graphics tablets, and I'm loving it.

Yesssssss! They are so good.

J-Snake, I think TrapThem looks cool (I think you approached me for art on it at one point months ago, and it already looked like a really fun game back then), but I'm not sure your wisdom designing it makes you a universal authority on realtime games. Dark Souls is a VERY different kind of game.

There are a LOT of ephemeral, unrelated elements that form together to make a game fun, or engaging, or challenging, or interesting -- Dark Souls has a lot of them, and it resonates very strongly with a VERY big audience, many of whom are hardcore gamers and educated game designers.

If you don't see what all the fuss is about, maybe you should listen to why all of these other people (some of whom know less about game design than you, but many of whom know as much or more) like it so much, and try to use that to broaden your understanding, instead of rejecting it out of hand?

I love deterministic, sharp, controlled games, like Dustforce, but I also love sloppy, beautiful, exciting games like Dark Souls -- do you really think a 'tight' game is always better than one that has some more mechanical wiggle room?

Hmm, Derek, that ticks all the boxes, but I don't have any specific memory of playing it. It definitely could be the game I'm thinking of warped by my memory, though  

Also, it looks like an awesome game, I'm going to have to try it.

Hey man! I think your game looks rad, the in game art is SICK and way better than the stuff you linked from your portfolio -- you've grown as an artist and the game looks pretty baller.

I LOVE sexualized women in art, but also feminism, which can be tough. Let me give you my thoughts on your robo sexbot heroine:

I think the design is objectifying and bad, just like the rest of tigsource. But I don't think a half naked lady covered in roboparts is a bad idea! As is, the design looks pretty half-assed. She has white metal bits in completely arbitrary places (as long as they don't cover up the sexy bits), denim shorts, and an awkward stripper-strap going over her chest?

That's not how any sexy space lady I've ever met would dress, and so it smacks of objectification. If there's no real possible way to explain the function of her outfit except 'I was too lazy to come up with a cleverer way to show her tits', you're in trouble. So REDESIGN HER, but don't worry about showing skin -- worry about showing skin in a way that's also COOL, so she doesn't look like a piece of shit who's naked for our amusement.

Thanks! Affirmative... I may add that this hasn't grown entirely out of my mind ... Look up "Massive Black - Noxismad" that was the original inspiration. Aside from not getting to close to that design - I will work on making her cooler and I have some ideas (it was just a ruff blocking out at that point, no final artwork). Cheers!

For sure man! I really dont like the noxismad design either (I think it's half assed considering how good the designs in the rest of the illustration are) but it's still more functional than yours -- Which is understandable, i mean, the dude's a very experienced artist, but aim high! Note that at least the plating on the noxismad design follows some semblance of function -- running along muscular structure, and building from smaller to larger forms to distribute weight. I would dig around cghub for some broader sources of inspiration, though, if I were you. These aren't the same design theme as yours, but Wes Burt's female designs impress me a lot. They say a lot within the fiction -- even the skimpy ones say something about the way the woman in question chooses to dress herself, or the function or culture or SOMETHING.

Again though, I want to reiterate, I think the art in your game looks AWESOME -- which makes the poor design on that cover image all the more obvious.

Hey man! I think your game looks rad, the in game art is SICK and way better than the stuff you linked from your portfolio -- you've grown as an artist and the game looks pretty baller.

I LOVE sexualized women in art, but also feminism, which can be tough. Let me give you my thoughts on your robo sexbot heroine:

I think the design is objectifying and bad, just like the rest of tigsource. But I don't think a half naked lady covered in roboparts is a bad idea! As is, the design looks pretty half-assed. She has white metal bits in completely arbitrary places (as long as they don't cover up the sexy bits), denim shorts, and an awkward stripper-strap going over her chest?

That's not how any sexy space lady I've ever met would dress, and so it smacks of objectification. If there's no real possible way to explain the function of her outfit except 'I was too lazy to come up with a cleverer way to show her tits', you're in trouble. So REDESIGN HER, but don't worry about showing skin -- worry about showing skin in a way that's also COOL, so she doesn't look like a piece of shit who's naked for our amusement.

Nope but thanks.

Hey, okay, there is a SNES game that has been haunting me for years that I can't find any sign of. My memory of the game is pretty hazy, I believe i rented it multiple times somewhere between 1998-2005. I know this is NOT a lot to go on, which is probably why I've never been able to find it since.

What I remember about the game:

• It was isometric or top down, similar to the Soul Blazer series or Secret of Evermore.
• I think there were multiple playable characters, and one was a scarecrow or closely resembled a scarecrow
• I think the first level was outdoors and dark, maybe a field

probably the best magical realist anything since one hundred years of solitude (which the game derives inspiration from)

Yeah, shit, that's a great mini review: "Is your favorite book one hundred years of solitude? Buy kr0."