How To Create Game Art

How to make a game with no art or music skills

This goes out to all the programmers and software developers who can't draw to save their lives.

H ow many times have you shown off your game's newest mechanic or feature, only for it to take a backseat to your game's placeholder graphics, shoddy sketches from MS Paint, and stock photos with those over-the-top watermarks?

Most independent game designers give up on their projects when t he issue of art direction is raised. It is a craft that many new developers are not properly taught — in fact most solo studios are helmed by a veteran developer or user experience designer that is wearing all the hats. If art is not your thing, how do you hope to get your project out of the gate? I have a few suggestions that just might help you side-step your concerns.

The number one rule about art in games — Make sure you have a cohesive theme! If your character models are all low-poly PS1 models, they should not be inhabiting a high poly, shader-rich environment that you pulled from the Asset Store. Unless you are going for the, "so bad, it's actually good!" aesthetic. More on that later.

Design a game with as little art as possible

Believe it or not, there are plenty of game genres where the gameplay is not driven by rich, realistic graphics. If you have no grand visions for your project, simply alter the genre and you will likely be well-suited to handle the art requirements. Some examples of genres with low barrier to entry include:

Word Games
Educational / Kids Games
Text Adventures / MUDs / Visual Novels
Card and Board games
Puzzle Games* (some)

The good news is, these genres are under-served and need attention anyway! You will likely note that puzzle games are a dime-a-dozen, however, this does not mean they have heavy art requirements. If you are a fledgling developer, try your hand at making a Tetris clone or a Match-3. By starting traditionally in one genre, you can experiment with the limits and create something subversive — all without cracking open Photoshop.

Embrace Computer Generated Art

If you are a math whiz and matrices are your best friend, maybe it's time to stop fiddling in Gimp or Krita, and simply plot out your graphics, one vertex at a time!

Procedurally generated art is quite a popular style and will make your game stand out from the crowd. Computer generated art (without the use of pre-designed models or 2D graphics) is supported by most every major game engine out there, so it is a very appealing choice.

Focus on the Abstract

Have you ever played "Thomas Was Alone"? Or the Atari Game "Adventure"? These two games, separated by decades, have one thing in common — the protagonist is simply a square. Or a rectangle. Well, they are both parallelograms!

An excellent graphic that outline the balance between realistic, iconic and abstract representations. From Game Feel, by Steve Swink, 2009

If you are a well-learned game designer, you will know that in order to have a cohesive art design, you must determine how much of your art is "abstract" — that is, conveying the meaning of entities, environments, and other concepts in your game using representative shapes and colors. Everyone is familiar with abstractions in games. The ship in asteroid, the paddle in pong, they are about as far from realistic as you can go! But we all understand what they are meant to represent.

It's So Bad, It's Good! (as an aesthetic)

Really "bad" Simulation genre games have become popular over the past decade. Possibly brought to light by games that really deliver on the aesthetic like "Goat Simulator" — we have seen that a game that would traditionally be considered buggy, aimless, and slipshod can succeed. Due in part by their aesthetic.

The insanity of "Goat Simulator" is a great example of controlled chaos in games.

I dub this "It's so bad, it's good!" because there's really no quantifying this phenomenon. If your game's main focus is comedy, satire, or criticism, bad art that is bad in just the right ways can really drive your points home.

Auxiliary to this point, keeping your art simple is in itself a great means of maintaining a cohesive art direction. Think about the runaway hit "Untitled Goose Game" and this point is made clear. The soft, low detail cel-shaded style of this game brings home the small-scale hilarity and chaos that your player character is meant to cause. Like with all things, less is more.

Lean in on Nostalgic Art styles

The art of "Celese" is both beautiful and simple.

Video game news outlets would have you believe that the pixel art style is all but dead in the ground. However this couldn't be any further from the truth! There are plenty of successful, recent indie game titles that have a pixel art style. Take "Dead Cells", "Celeste", "Into the Breach", "Undertale" and many others for example. They prove that a strong, consistent art style can play well with pixel art.

Try your hand at pixel art, and you will learn that constraint breeds creativity. With a 8x8, 16x16, 64x64 resolution to cram with meaning and representation, you will quickly find yourself making decisions on how to use the space. Pixel art is a great first step for learning color combinations, composition, animation and more.

Or you can simply INVEST in art?

That being said — learning how to make your own art is a very important investment in your own skills. You don't necessarily need to become a classically trained master artist. Start by purchasing a subscription to Adobe, or a simple app like Krita or Paint Tool Sai. Download Blender for free, and play around with the UI. There are plenty (and I mean plenty!) of video tutorial on 3D modelling, pixel art, illustration, and animation on YouTube, for free! Buy a sketch book, and doodle in it whenever you have free time, just to relax. Remember that art is meant to be a creative outlet! Your time will be well spent.

If this is still too high of hurdle, investing in art from others is just as valuable. A commissioned artist can turn into a full-time team member if your needs are properly aligned.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published in our platform. This story contributed to Bay Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.