Messages

Learning to draw is certainly important and useful.

However, if your main purpose in learning is to draw for game backgrounds and sprites, I feel you can take a larger number of shortcuts. The important thing is to come up with a streamlined process that you can repeat consistently with consistent (not necessarily super-quality) results.
With that in mind, perhaps a nice middle-way is to take/find photographs of stuff you can incorporate into your game, and then draw over them on your computer.

Painting over photographs for sprites
Sustainable Background design
Instagame Backgrounds

Yeah, I'm just trying to draw for games and get some semi decent work out, thanks for reply

[Reference!]

Yes, I do trace but stopped since I spoke at an artist who told me that I wouldn't learn that way. But I think I'll try tracing some anatomy again. Thanks

No no no no no no no no, do not trace. Never ever EVER trace. Never ever!
Reference!
Always reference!
Look at the picture and copy via reference!
That's how you learn.
You don't learn from tracing. (Unless you want to become good at rotoscoping, which can be helpful for animation.)

Okay I won't trace, its funny because I've spoken to other artist who encourage tracing long as it's done "right" Guess everyone has a different opinion. idk, I have roto before but I don't really care for it much I rather have more stylized characters roto is a bit too realistic for me. Thanks for reply

I find the best way to first learn how to draw, is copy others.
Find a comic which you like the art of, get a pencil and some paper, and copy one of the panels every single day. Within a year you'll become a somewhat competent artist, and those skills translate well into forms of art (including pixel art I've found).

From there you can try to focus your skills. Mess about in art programs, read and/or watch tutorials, try colouring in all of the original GB Pokemon sprites using the colours from the GBA Pokemon games. Whatever you do, after about another year, you should be good enough to make art for your games that you'll be proud of.

It worked for me. And I hate making art.
And you should see your skills come a long way within just a few months of simply copying via reference.

Yes, I do trace but stopped since I spoke at an artist who told me that I wouldn't learn that way. But I think I'll try tracing some anatomy again. Thanks

[mesh transform]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, to me this seemed like the most appropriate forum to post in.

I'm not very good at drawing, I'm trying to learn but it'll be years before I'm anywhere good enough to show off. I'm a broke teenager so I can't afford an artist. Do you make art for your game even though you aren't exactly talented?

What is your shortcoming when it comes to drawing? Anatomy? Perspective? color and composition?
There are lot's of techniques you can use as shortcuts when drawing, for example, I drew a background in just a few minutes using the mesh transform tool in firealpaca.
(you can download it for free here: http://firealpaca.com/ )
I started with drawing the simple shape of the room:

and then I pasted in the texture of this wallpaper three times, one for each wall that had a wallpaper pattern on it:

I then used the mesh transform tool to change the size of the wallpaper images so that they lined up with the room:

(I used the same technique with the floor texture)
Then you can just draw doors and furniture on top of the room background.
For outdoor environments, I drew this with my mouse in less than a minute:

I used the cloud filter on the blue background, then I just drew some solid green on a layer on top of the sky and used a leaf-shaped pencil in a darker green from the default pencil selection on top of the green. I used the same pencil to draw some bushes behind the layer of green grass.

It might not be high art, but you can draw a passable background with no effort or much talent if you know how to use a good paint program. I prefer Photoshop, but you can download firealpaca or gimp (https://www.gimp.org/) for free. If you want free textures to use, check out this forum thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=54356.0

And remember, you don't have to be Leonardo Da Vinci, most people here make games because it's fun, your first game doesn't need to be perfect.

T

Thanks for the reply, I struggle drawing anatomy and perpesptive, and those are both essential to drawing.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, to me this seemed like the most appropriate forum to post in.

I'm not very good at drawing, I'm trying to learn but it'll be years before I'm anywhere good enough to show off. I'm a broke teenager so I can't afford an artist. Do you make art for your game even though you aren't exactly talented?