• Art Tutorials

If you want, hit me up on skype: tobias.breitenbach
ill go grab food and be back in bout 1hrs.

today i actually have to create a couple charackters for our game, if you want, we can make a skype call and I show you a little.

ty so much for this message. I missed it 🙁 and totally didn't see it until today. I am not really an artist. I just thought the spine method broke down the pieces enough where perhaps I could get good at building that kind of art of my future games.

Thanks again for this pm I really appreciate it!

No Problem =D - if you feel like taking me up on the offer, drop me a note on skype or something, and I'll see if my time allows it ;D

Artwise you can get away with some really minimalistic stuff-

ofc I kknow my experience in the past- theres a reason my programmers called it "progger art" if they had to do something and no artist was available xD
So I guess I understand your problem here.
But If you look at the examples below, you can get away with some rly wonky shapes, and dont need to fury much about drawing, lighting and shading.

  • those artstyles leave most things to the viewers imagination, and can be incredibly beautifull to look at, when done consistently.

E.G:

  • Altos Adventure

or something like this:

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I don't know where you came from but you are really aw3esome to share this stuff. So someback ground I am a programmer by nature, and a good one 'clasically trained' but I have always liked art, doodling etc just never any classes and feel I am not very good. But you inspire especially with the talk of simple shapes. The spine software sems like it could allow a programmer to hobble his way through the art and then create some nice animations with it. My current game I am making I outsourced the art as its all pixel art:

http://www.viciousbytes.com/superjetpack.html

But when I am finally done making this game I want to do my own art using spine like animations in that high resolution 2d way. This is why I had the question in the forum. I even have a concept art character to work from:

This is the character I want to draw and animate.

Always Glad to be of Service =D
I orginally come from an Illustration and 3D Modeling Background.
Learned at a private school here in Berlin.
In our Projects I was In charge of a major part of the Artstyle and Concepting.

Looks good, im used to much worse "progger art" =D
I think you have a good base for brushing up your drawing skills etc.
From what I imagine in my head right now, it should actually be quite a brease.
this is obviously just a tracing of your concept, but it only took like 5mins.

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    Add in a better fitting Background Image thats actually of the same style- maybe something like" altos adventure" and it should be prty good.

I think you'll find Spine quite accessable and easy to use.
Ive only been working with Spine for about a month now and am quite happy with my purchase. (although this is an artist speaking with minor 3D animation Experience, so I wouldnt know how much of an entrance-burden there is for a programmer.

Feel free to hit me up if you need some help, if I can, i gladly do.
Also, incase the need ever arises - I also freelance from time to time ;D

I am in awe of that mockup 🙂. I have to admit I had an artist friend do the original print. I thought though with concept art in hand I could more readily build something for use in spine by as you said using shapes and the like. I think the finer points of animating would be difficult for a coder as well but I always had an appreciation for art and can draw well enough on paper that I could hopefully learn to translate it to PC. I have a wacom tablet (intuos), along with photoshop cs5, corel painter 13 I think, ArtRage and Mischief. So I always plan on "learning" but alas spend most my time coding. I am wondering what your freelance prices are.

I have to say hearing you are from Berlin made me think of and miss Germany a lot. All of the family on my mothers side is german. I miss visiting there. I bet the schools are amazing.

Thanks again for the reply, I am curious how long to make that character just now in the mockup it took you. Now THAT is a session I would like to see. I saw one tutorial for spine making a character run/walk. They used like a shadow/outline to match up the feet correctly. Does spine come with this dummy 'model'?

Sounds like you should be set to go =D
That sure is a Hell of an Toolkit you have there - I know some Artists including myself that have less at theyre disposal xD
Than again, I never found myself in any need for more than the Adobe CC suit (atleast in a 2D area)

I usually go by 20€/h.
make a time estimation, and than agree on a flat price with the client which is based around that number.
Yeah, school was pretty cool, id say best years of my life so far ( dont tell my Girlfriend ;D)

No, sadly spine doesnt come with those animation-Ref sheets, or atleast not that I know off.
It does come with the Spine File of the Charackter (Spine Boy) and a bunch of other Example Files though.

However, its just an Image that he put in the background.
A little google search for "animation reference sheet" or something along the lines should deliver some usable results.
E.G.:


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In the end, youll always need that creative spark though to make the reference fit the specific needs of your project, and comondate for eventual flaws in the reference.