Hello all,
I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I’m have a tough time finding repeatable vertical landscapes to be used in a top down shoot-em-up style game like Gradius or Ikaruga.
I ask for repeatable because it’d be easier to demo with that than attempting to create a full level. Also, I am not an artist by any means. I program. Without asset creators I’d be nothing 
Thanks for any assistance.
Have you considered hiring an artist?
I have, but I’m an army of one at the moment. I don’t have the money to drop on an artist or anything expensive. I’d love to one day get to the point where I can, but for now, I’m trying to be as frugal as possible.
I know that makes this more complicated. But, I have to work with what I have I’ll go with a free asset even if it’s poor quality.
If you don’t care about the quality, just make it yourself then.
I’m guessing they figure they have enough to do already and are looking for available placeholder art. So they don’t need to switch mental state from programming to creating art and then spend the time making the art then spend the time switching back into programming mode again. And maybe even locate software so they can make art to begin with.
Check out OpenGameArt and the Unity Asset Store.
@Murgilod definitely has a point though. The simplest way of all is to just create rectangles or other very simple shapes of solid color. That will allow you to rough out areas quickly as well as play around with a color theme.
Your wording suggests you’ve been looking for repeatable vertical images, but neither of those games use large repeatable images. Gradius is using individual tiles laid out on a tilemap (Unity 2017.2 comes with tilemap support) and Ikaruga is using individual meshes laid out to form a level.
If you don’t mind the artwork being designed for a fairly low resolution game Tyrian’s artwork is available for free, but you’ll still have to lay out the tiles yourself (or use a procedural approach).
http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/04/free-game-graphics-tyrian-ships-and.html
I would recommend just making your own using UPA Toolkit, which is a free asset made by Brackeys to create 2d pixel art textures and images. Super easy to use and very effective.
Sorry for the late reply.
I guess the easiest solution is to make my own graphics. Thanks for all the replies and advice dudes.