Art needed for 2D Monster Hunter-like game
Hey!
I've been developing a 2D game that is essentially a Monster Hunter clone for the past 2 months. Most of the systems are partially or fully developed, but I've hit a roadblock because I need art, and I'm terrible at it. Most of the inspiration has come from these images that I've seen dotted around the internet over the past few years, and decided that I needed this in my life:
Any help would be fantastic. It'd be best to have the smaller entities, like the player and small monsters, as spritesheets. The larger enemies are dynamically animated; that is to say that body parts are individual sprites and move independently, since I have implemented things like limb removal (so you can cut of an arm and get some crafting materials, for instance) and targetting different body parts.
Thanks in advance for the help, guys.
I can try it i guess. :) i don't know if i can give you the style you want tho. If you want, I can maybe also make a few music tracks...
What sort of characters do you have in your game? Do you have any concept sketches for them? And what screen resolution are you planning on using?
As of now, a basic template for a human character wielding a sword would suffice. It doesn't have to be anything special, and the resolution is dynamic. For testing purposes, I'm working with 800x600, since it's small enough to be viable for many different devices, but the resolution ultimately doesn't matter. I've got a custom scaling system in place for all content on screen.
The frames for the sprite should all be the same size, and preferably 24x32 or higher, but aside from that it's not a problem. PNG with transparent layer is my preferred format.
To start with, a walk in 4 directions and a sword swing in 4 directions will do, but if you can do some kind of evasive roll without much effort that would be amazing to include. The primary purpose is so I can demonstrate the systems in place. Once that's done, I'll be showing the game in much more detail in the hopes of finding a team member. I'd hate to get someone to join the team without offering some kind of playable demo, but due to the way the game works, that's incredibly hard to do without art.
If you really need it, I can produce some kind of concept art, but right now the style doesn't matter. Pixel art is preffered, but vector graphics work just as well as long as they are rasterised into a spritesheet before I use them. As for the music, that sounds amazing. I noticed you've done some on your profile, so I'll take a look at that.
Thanks for the interest.
I would like to clarify further that I'm not pulling the art inspiration for the game from the images shown. Just the concept. The art can be in pretty much any style, since I understand that I don't have much of an eye for that kind of thing so I'd first consult the artist/s working on the project with me.
I also took a nosey at some of your art. In particular, your 4-direction walking female looks like it'd be a great fit, if it had some attacks in there too. The proportions and such are exactly what I'd envisioned.
Well, I should be able to make something like that. Do you have anywhere I can post it when finished, this thread, or?
Also, what do you think about my music tracks? Do you need some music for your game as well?
This thread is fine, or you could PM it or send it to my email. I'm not too worried about keeping it private; I plan on releasing the game for free when it's done unless my motives change. The music you have on your account is very good. I particularly like the chiptune stuff, and the "Stiffened village" track (if slowed down a touch) would fit my theme fantastically. Music, however, is of a lower priority than the graphics right now.
How are you at making sound effects? That'd be just as important as the music, when the time comes to implement them. I've developed a small listener system so sounds can play based on events, and would love to test it out with some appropriate sounds once the art stuff is under way.
I can try my hand at making sfx. I often sample my own percussion and such. :) However doing both that and graphichs will cause the progress to be a bit slow, naturally.
Here we have a basic character template walking and performing a basic, "sword swipe " attack, just to see if you care for the art style. (if you do, you'll need to tell me what other animations you need, I can imagine, jumping, dying, crawling and ducking maybe, and so on) You can reverse the frame order of the attack animations to change it from a "swiping motion" to a "stabbing motion".
Honestly, slow development is fine by me. I'd rather it take longer but turned out better, than rush the development and spend loads of time on updates instead.
I like the art style a lot, but I'd personally prefer it if the proportions were a little closer to real-life, although I understand that this can be incredibly complicated due to the size. As for animations, animations that I need include: jumping, death, rolling, opening chests, idle, talking, carving, using items, cooking, looting from the floor, and sleeping (could probably just use a few of the death frames). I'm impressed by the quality of your art so far, as well as the speed at which you're doing it.
Thanks so much for the help.
I can try some that are bigger if you wish. And you're welcome. The reason why I made the character so small is that then I wouldn't have to make seperate male and female templates for every animation.
Made an attempt at a larger character, walking + swiping animations.
I've made so many of these character templates (it's nearly always the first thing people looking for art for their games ask for) , that they're pretty much ingrained in muscle memory for me. That's the only reason I can make them so quickly, heh.
The individual frames may not look that good by themselves, but the animations look good, I promise.
These are fantastic, and exactly what I had in mind from my previous post. You clearly have a talent for making them! Would you mind chucking a sword in his hand for the animation? I'd like to see how it looks when wielding the weapon. But of course it's the first thing people ask for! :D People need to see walking dudes and such!
Oh. and one slightly awkward request. Could you do separate left/right side views for the walk/attack animations? I always find it confusing when the play seems to switch hands with their direction, since they're asymmetrical when wielding different things in each hand.
Please don't make me do seperate left and right. It's a pain to "make them look different, yet still make them look the same", if you know what I mean. But I can make a sword no problem. I'm sorta unsure if the charcter is a boy or girl, I guess you can use the same template for both and it'll be much easier. Stating the obvious, hairstyles, eyes, etc. have a lot to say in making a character appear manly or girly.
Sword
That looks seriously awesome with the sword in place. Thank you so much.
The side differences aren't too important right now, but they will be later in development since the player will be able to dual-wield or use a shield, so differentiating between the hands will be important. Until then, however, these will do fantastically. I'll compile a demo and shoot it over, if you'd like to try it. Alternatively, I'll do a YouTube-based devlog so you can keep an eye on how things are working. I'm not trying to get a channel to go big or anything. I just want a place to log the development for showing friends and other developers, such as those on TIGSource, and to put on my website/in my portfolio.
Well, good luck! I'm just happy to help. :3 When your game gets further in development, you can always hire another artist who bothers doing the seperate left/right sides thing (or pay me off XD)
Just feel free to send a demo to me, btw. My email adress is Aeitiatictacopiepod@gmail.com.