I hope this is the right forum for this question. My son is 14 and wants to learn how to make game characters for Unity. He wants to start with 2D and move up to 3D later.
I am looking for some advise for him now, in regards of what software to use and especially tutorials and online courses covering this subject. Both free and paid are fine, if there is something in German that would be awesome since his English is not that good yet but English will also do.
I’m no artist, but Blender is a free modelling tool that may be a good place to start, at least for 3D. You should be able to search for tutorials to learn it and how to export models for importing into Unity.
Creating a 2D character comes down to the artwork, the animations (standing, running, jumping, etc), and using scripting to detect button presses in order to change animations, as well as move the actual character around.
Here are two great tutorials for an introduction to 2D animation and character creation. They are in English. This method is a very powerful and real-world example of how to make a full character. It is somewhat advanced to set up but requires far less time and artistic work.
This method uses individual body part images, and combines them together to create animations within Unity.
Another more traditional method would be to hand draw every frame of an animation, and play it back like a flip book.
For retro style pixel artwork, I recommend using Aseprite, which has a free version here: Aseprite - Older-versions
For high resolutions, GIMP is a free and powerful image editor like Photoshop. Learning to use it will take some time. GIMP - Downloads
For everything else about 2D game creation, there’s tons of videos on YouTube, and Unity has a large library of tutorials: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials
