2D Game Art Resources For Your Games

I have done a lot of searching around the net for places that offer game art for free (PD) as well as selling it.

Just thought I might as well share my list so others who are not artists or just don’t want to waste time on this stuff can get to work bringing their first games to life. We can never have too much art available, right?

So below is a list in no particular order but first my disclaimer: I have not used all of these game asset marketplaces. I am just sharing the places that I have found. In time I will likely try them all assuming they have stuff I want. So…

If you choose to purchase something that is your choice & your responsibility.

Unity Asset Store - 2D Characters

Unity Asset Store - 2D & Isometric Tiles
(weird name I know but basically general 2D including tile sets)

Open Game Art

The Open Game Art Bundle

Game Art Partners

Eat Creatures

Game Dev Market

SCIRRA

Game Art 2D

Game Carver

Super Game Asset

There is a lot more out there including personal web pages where people have started the journey of game development and, for one reason or another (generally not being able to build an actual game) they have decided to release all of the artwork for their game(s) projects for free. So… the above is definitely not the full list.

If you know of other sites please feel free to comment below. I know over the years I have got tired of the amount of time it takes to do graphics and I am sure many other non-artists are the same way.

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Glitch assets: (free)
https://www.glitchthegame.com/public-domain-game-art/

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For my first game I remember i downloaded loads of art form the internet(From the sites mentioned above), For some of my textures I used google images, and many of the sites mentioned above, but as I progressed and learned new things, I find that sometimes it’s better to create your own art than just download, because when you create your own art you sometimes(not always, it’s not easy to create art in computer even if you are a good painter) get the best artwork you need for your game. I am not a artist myself when it comes to computer, but I learned some basics of pixel art, and although it consumes a lot of time creating my art assets, in the end I just get what I needed ! Infact, it feels so good seeing it’s the art i created… and then you can proudly say, yes this game is mine ! I did everything, and I am it’s DEVELOPER !

So my conclusion is, yes, if you can’t do that part( like I can’t do BGMs and some complex arts like textures) then go pick art from these all sites, you will eventually get what you need, but if you can, then don’t depend on any. Make you own.

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Great points and I nearly always end up just creating my own anyway. I’d prefer not to because although I enjoy working on graphics I find it way too time consuming. Time I’d rather be putting into design, AI and interaction programming.

I used to do a lot of stuff in Blender. I found that in many cases I could model things much better than I could draw them in a paint program. But the huge amount of graphics needed for a game is just way too time consuming. And I’d be content with black and white clipart as long as I can find enough to build the game.

The game in my signature has some graphics by me, Santa & rocket sled by a friend I met on these forums. The rest is all clip art.

Exactly, the same is with me… and i think for every non-artist out there.

Yup, i also do the things same way :slight_smile: I always try to make games which i can alone. Some small little games with simple graphics and most prefably only using things like cubes and spheres so that i can make it without any artist. It’s always a good thing to do, logic in the game matters more than the realistic graphics. In my games i created, you can see in my signature, i did this and after all the best example, Minecraft is better than all those high graphics, cutting-edge, realistic games. *sorry if this went out of this topic :stuck_out_tongue: *

The crazy thing is the real artists seem to spend even more time on graphics! For me graphics are something that need to be knocked out fast. Like maybe 30 minutes on an animated enemy or 4 to 5 minutes on a tree MAX. Because there is just so much stuff needed. Say you have a few different types of trees even at 5 mins each that is 15 minutes right there. Assume a batch of 30 other things each with a couple variations maybe about 100 images total even at 5 minutes each that is over 8 hours just for background scenery. But in reality it will end up taking me probably 16 to 24 hours to do that. But many artists I have worked with can spend all day on one tree. I have often thought a big part of why artists work looks so much better than our programmer art is simply due to us spending 5 to 10 minutes and them spending hours.

No problem with the discussion. Good to discuss such things. I will check out your games after work.

yea, i have also seen that, artists spend days on a single thing, but really it looks awesome… although it has nothing to do with us… everybody has it’s own way to do things, I do not work at my game’s graphics all at once, i work as per need, when i begin my game i first design my character so i just create a character sprite(it takes 1-2 hours) to do this, and i have no problem with that actually if it turns out good :roll_eyes: but as being a non-artist many times it just turns out completely unrealistic and that is what irritates me :rage:. But this is not with artists, they have quite good imagination powers when it comes to art ! They shape their art such that it never turns out bad. You will love it even if the artist had done a mistake, and the answer why they spend so much time on this is because they love it ! They are ARTISTS… we love developing they love PAINTING ! Like we dont care about spending time on textures,etc. they dont care about scripts and rest. and to be honest, I love art and programming equally, so i spend time on both :smile:

I also feel good to discuss such things… played your game…was great…:wink: