Hey fellas, I quit sometime last year. I’m a total hobbyist now that dabbles for 20 minutes a week. I used to bust my arse trying to become a commercial dev. Anyways, I ran into some problems as time went on. Programming and Drawing are two completely different mediums. To which from my understanding, requires different sides of your brain. I learned to draw on paint with a mouse and got away with shotty cartoons and then I applied cheap colors unto uv maps. So this was the extent of my art. N64 at best. Anyhow, I tried an art tablet and found looking at the screen (away from my pen) too exhausting. I also tried a tablet monitor on an arm - it also did not feel right. The angles were too limited and I couldn’t lay it flat. So I sold these devices and got a sketch book and some pencils. Best experience in my life. I feel the creative juices flowing, I’m free to create. To a creator who primarily scripted - this feels liberating. Let me cut to the chase;
I want an ipad pro. It looks like the most natural experience in drawing for the digital age. A pen and notebook I can flip around, draw diagonally, throw in my back pack and take on the go. I have an Iphone, so I’m used to IOS. I’m also aware of an IOS 11 with folders and a task bar. Very exciting stuff. Would I need a Macbook to cooperate with my Ipad? Does anyone use these items for their workflow? Let me know how it goes. FYI, I did try programs like Paint Tool Sai and Krita as well.
In my opinion in terms of posture it’s objectively more ergonomic than looking down the whole day. A great way to get used to it is playing something like Diablo or Path of Exile with a Wacom tablet. And put the thing centered in front of the screen, that makes the hand/eye coordination easier too.
If you don’t like this I have my doubts you’ll love the iPad.
There are many aspects to the experience of using traditional media that you can’t replicate digitally. You need to find out what exactly it is that inspires you when using paper and pecils. I think your experience with an iPad might be a lot closer to that with the arm mounted screen tablet than the paper sketch book.
A friend of mine loves working on his iPad pro. He did professional work on it and does not have a macbook. Iirc he uses the procreate app.
With a bit of touching things up in Photoshop or similar tools, pencil drawings are a viable art style for indie games in my opinion.
Yeah, if you like using a sketchbook (a cheap and widely accessible solution!), just get a scanner and see how much mileage you can get out of scanned artwork. Once you’ve got a bit of confidence with pencil and paper you can readily transfer those skills to more expensive tablet devices.
@voltage not sure if you’re thinking of returning to game dev and giving it another try but if so I agree with @rootsworks because I think it is a very refreshing visual style. And so far it isn’t flooded. Meaning a game based around your sketched and scanned art assets should stand out from the majority of Indie games.
One of the most popular recent games on Steams seems to be West of Loathing and it appears to be all sketched art. Stick characters. Nice animation but this kind of art is something I think anyone could do.
That just looks cool. Interesting. Stands out from the vast majority of Indie games. The nice thing about it is I think its inherit simplicity kind of makes it so however a person sketches would be fine. Because it would be their style.
Some other games that use the style (there are not very many of them)
Hidden Folks (this one is highly detailed just due to the amount of drawings)
If you are more into colors then something like Journal may inspire you.
Finally, last year’s State of Anarchy seems to be an excellent example of this kind of art style.
Just throwing these out here to show that you can probably do something along these ^^^^ lines and have an enjoyable time of it.
It just seems to me like this sort of sketch-based approach would allow a person to create a lot of content reasonably quickly and you end up with a very unique looking game that won’t get buried in the list of “me too” Indie games. Maybe. Probably worth a shot anyway.
All great suggestions. I think I’ll have to sketch more and enjoy it for what it is. Maybe a scanner is in my future. A lot of those games Benjamin seem to be updated in software afterwards. I could probably go for that. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll have to revisit the Ipad idea. My primary concern with scanning is jaggies. Seems like a lot of clean up.
Yeah, I wouldn’t like a drawing table either. The problem for me is with looking where I draw, no matter whether that’s flat on the table or straight in front of me like a traditional canvas, or somewhere inbetween. It just shifts around the problem. When I set it so that I can look straight, my shoulder starts to hurt quickly, when I have to look down for longer periods of time, even if its just a bit, my neck starts to hurt. I tried a cintiq at an event and I’m really happy I never bought one. For me the solution with a regular tablet and a regular screen works so much better, and I know other artists that feel similarly about this (not all though). I’ve even seen one who owns a cintiq, use a regular intuos tablet with it from time to time because it’s a more relaxed posture that way. Most artists that I know, who own cintiqs, put them on Ergotron screen mount arms, to get a maximum of mobility out of the cintiq. The heavies models need 2 arms and an adapter to hold up the weight, iirc. If you wanna try it, make sure you have a very sturdy table to clamp it to (none of that ikea cardboard stuff), or it might damage your table (or even worse the cintiq/screen).
I would argue that if you can learn to program you can learn to draw, and opposite is also true.
Unless you can afford a cintiq, a wacom bamboo tablet is good enough (I use that with Clip Studio Paint), but you’ll need to spend a bit of time to get used to the disconnect between screen and drawing tablet.
I bought the 10.5" iPad Pro and the Pencil. It was ridiculously expensive. I do love it though…. Look at the two apps PROCREATE and NOTABILITY, both designed to work with the pencil. I’m not very good at Procreate, but 14yo me is in love with journaling in a black notebook with silver ink.
I recently got the iPad Pro and pencil and just love it. For me the portability is awesome. I can use a tablet but always perfered drawing directly on the screen. So my previous workflow was usually drawing in a normal sketch book and the scanning. I now skip that step and do all my sketching/ drawing right on the iPad. It’s so light and comfortable to use.
The trick with the iPad is finding the right software. I think I tried almost all of them and finally settled on ProCreate. It is super flexible, very natural to use, and with iCloud you can very easily transfer files. (It’ll save out as psd with layers and layer adjustments).
I draw a lot, but have found myself drawing even more because it’s is convenient and fits right in my workflow instead of having extra steps.
I don’t know if others are like me, but I’m complete trash at using tablets, I don’t even know why. Can draw just fine on paper, but when I use my Wacom… Sheesh, no joke it’s only marginly better than if I use a mouse. I pretty much exclusively use my tablet for sculpting, weight painting etc now
Well, your drawing software needs stroke stabilization feature. Otherwise it’ll be very hard to ink anything or do work similar to inking.
Paper has superior precision than drawing tablet, of course, but the problem is paper is non-digital, lacks undo, takes space, and digitization is not straightforward.
Imo, drawing with a tablet is simply something you’d need to get used to - you need to spend some time getting using to the drawing with it, till the brain learns the new behavior.
It’s been a while since I’ve tried it, but I think GIMP had smooth stroke or something like that I used? I think it’s mostly cos when I draw in real life I’m very sketchy and slowly build up solid lines rather than doing large strokes which just didn’t translate well
I tried to use an iPad with a Bamboo fineline stylus/pen thingy and I couldn’t do anything with it, just me. Now I’ve never been very good at art in any case, but I found that I couldn’t touch the screen with my hand–it supposedly has some kind of touch control but it never worked right–and the pen was way too imprecise. I was using Sketchbook.
Hmm that’s probably it then, I may give it another shot. Anyone have a recommendation of a program that might let me draw in the same sketchy way at normal?
OP - I’ve always been a drawl-er. When I saw people using wacom for the first time - I had to have one, but my income wouldn’t allow it. Luckily my job had “need to spend year end money” and I suggested getting a wacom tablet to speed up texture creation. So I spent the next 1 year! getting used to using the wacom at work.
The following X-mas I got my own Intuos2 for home, and I still use it today.
I’ve since been able to procure and use a cintiq at work, however as @Martin_H said - I still prefer my Intuos at home.
I’ve slowly increased my use of the cintiq at work though, Sculpting tasks are pleasing though it has taken me some time to get used to it.
When I saw people using wacom for the first time - I had to have one, but my income wouldn’t allow it. Luckily my job had “need to spend year end money” and I suggested getting a wacom tablet to speed up texture creation. So I spent the next 1 year! getting used to using the wacom at work.