As you might have noticed I haven't uploaded in a while. I'll hopefully be back to posting about once every week. This video sadly doesn't cover much drawing, and for some the topic might feel obvious, but If you haven't done any project management before, this is at least something I think can be important to do before you start a project that is too ambitious for you to handle. I'll be back with more drawing videos soon enough, thanks for watching :)
Hey! great work, love your channel! I've been looking to make some tiles for a 2D game, and was wondering if you have any plans to do a tutorial on those (if you use tiles at all). Thank you :D
Thank you for this video! You don't often find info on actual project managing for a game dev. So kudos on making this video, it's very important! Don't worry about it being not about the art drawing process, cause this video perhaps is the most important one on your channel. For me, it is, surely. Thank you again for your work!
Another option to work towards the finished project without spending hours on each asset is to start with very low-quality prototypes and then incrementally update the art over the course of the project, as needed.
I dont care if it takes me 10 or 15 years to finish my game, i am focus on quality, originality, creativity and making a game that its not repetitive, i want both quantity and quality
Thank you for giving some realism, when you think about a new project, you obviously start with very great expectations and don't really think about the amount of work, everybody does it somehow right ? you video really helps to prevent overconfidence and increases the odds your community's projects might actually be finished, thanks again, hope you're doing well
I love your style for the videos 🤣. It is really important to estimate the production time. Your advice here is great and everybody should take this into account. Most of the people don't even think about this. Really cool video, thanks for sharing 😊
That's one of the most interesting videos I saw in your channel yet! Love all your videos, but taking a step back to think about processes and planning seems really important for shipping a game! Even when working with a team, that allows to understand other fields timing and needs (communication essentials). I'm looking forward for the videos in the 3 other parts that you mentioned. And maybe even a final one, that regroups all the areas and dispose them in a game producing pipeline (pre-production - production - testing - launch post) and includes other activities as planning. I'm a process engineer converted to the gaming industry by the way, would love to collaborate if you have any interest in that. And would humbly recommend the use of flow-charts if you try to explain pipelines in the future. They are simple to understand and allow to have an easy summary to remember what we've learned. Thanks again for the video, hope you'll be able to have a nice pace again!
Thanks for the feedback :) In terms of breakdown of the other aspects of game dev (programming, game design, random stuff) I'm not sure If I will make such a breakdown any time soon. I do think it's important to make those breakdowns as well, but sadly I always have 5-10 videos running in parallell and I can't really tell in advance which idea feels 'ready for release' if that makes sense :) As for collaboration or anything similar, I think my schedule is just too irregular to be able to manage it on my end at the moment. I'm still doing this very much part time ^^
Absolutly. That's also the biggest reason why solo indie games devs should take a step back from this "I want to do it all by myself" mindset. Thats a dream and compleltey unrealistic if you plan to make a game of considerable size. (5 - 10 hours). If you want a good game, with a good amount of polish you have to look for help. Does not matter if that help consists of other people, forums, or pre bought assets (for 2D games better just by game systems like inventory systems, dialogue system etc.).
Ye, I had a section of the video (that i cut) where i discussed solutions such buying from others, but it's always tricky knowing what the best solution will be for your circumstances, I'll personally probably end up buying music and sfx because I don't know anything about it (not sure yet though).
Great topic! A people struggle with this a lot. I find that time blocking can help. Which leads me to my request, what I have been running into is diving too deep into the weeds on my game art. (I am just a wee little baby on the topic, and honestly making games is the first time I have tried drawing in 13 years, so I don't expect to be good overnight) but what indicators do you use to help you "move on" to the next asset, and know that you have done enough for your game? I have seen others adding in details at 2x the resolution that I know would not show up in the finished project, and then there is "baba is you". would love to see a video on this topic if you can find the time. You have been helping more than any of the other content creators when it comes to the art aspect of the game, and I appreciate you!
as and game artist this is kind of overwhelming, because everytime we are actully facing new animatiosn or challenges, there are many clietns that wants the best result with less money i just did and runiong cicle animation (probnably my best one so far) but took me 40h to do it
Man, must be like coming back to completely new expeerience after a month. I already start to forget where was what if I take a break for a week. I do agree that should just strive to draw things without overthinking them, with time you get better and faster. So far tho, with my personal project majority of the time went to testing and fixing bugs/stuff I've missed. (I'm not a programmer, I bought a template base from unity store, which is limited, and very spaghetti but it gets my vision forward, but it makes mistakes even easier xd )
Ye, It kind of sucks having to take a break, but it is what it is xD I agree, there is so much time that goes to stuff that seemingly isn't progressing the game forward, but that still needs to be done. Interesting with buying a template, has it worked out well?
Completely agree. The hardest part for me is keeping momentum. If I keep doing something daily it's easy to just do it as a habit and keep interested. Once you get side-tracked with other obligations like working late and lose a few days it's really hard to get back into your project. I've had a few late nights of work get me off course for months at a time. The longer away I also find the higher chance of thinking of a new direction and discarding the current project.
@@Nonsensical2D well, it works surprisignly well for me, I kinda just wanted this short story driven game, with dialogue, item picking, basic crafting and enemies. It's a learning experience, in my day time job I'm a senior UI artist, but I still suck at majority of other fields, so I wanted dwelve into them more. Basically I got this "2D Action-RPG Kit" from unity store, it doesn't need any programming to get started, although some knowledge of it would've gotten me further for sure. My hubby is a tool programmer, so I thought I could ask him to make some tweaks for me. He looked at the code and said it's the most inefficient, horrible spaghetti code he have ever seen and refused to work with it, albeit helping me to understand some functions. I'd say it still works, because I'm almost done, but some of the stuff I did there is some incredible ant logic workaround. I'm still looking forward to getting some other templates tho, and molding them into games I want to make :D I think it's awesome, I can focus more on art and concept and story, instead of trying to bash my head against the wall. Definitely a viable solution for non programmers, you still need to put quite a lot of work in tho, but you just kinda have the working package :D
even as someone who like to draw a lot, game asset is different than drawing that I usually did, i think i will be very slow to finish just one asset. There are much things to do and calculate. And with people always changing plan, i don't think i can keep up if i work with people.. i maybe just slow them down.
I think it often starts out like this. I used to spend hours on a single asset. but with time you kind of learn what to prioritise and you slowly but surely start to draw faster.
Don't think that pixel art doesn't take much time either... it's not as easier an alternative as you'd think, especially when animating. Anyway, thank you, I like your channel very much so far. Like your deadpan delivery too lol
Ohh ye, I totally agree with pixel art taking time. I just meant that if you want to even manage to make a game alone, it feels like you need to either do "pixel art" or "simple 2d art". You can for sure not go for pixel art looking anything like blasphemous, that will take way too much time for one person. But on a general basis i would say that if you go for pixel art with a canvas size of 270x480, the time to produce that art will generally be "about" equally fast to the time it takes for me to make art in my style (but most other styles will probably take too long). Thanks, and sorry for the confusion :)
I use Godot as my game engine and that is how the tilemap editor looks, and then I just personally tend to use either grey or red tiles. So it's basically me placing tiles for the level :)
Yeah this year I've been coming face to face with the realization that my game will probably look as ugly as all the indie games out there that I hate, simply because I can't afford to spend so much time on it... In my heart of hearts I KNOW I could make a beautiful work of art, but not without funding that would allow me to dedicate my 24/7 to it.
I doubt it will make that big of a difference. it might help though. But personally I would probably shoot for doing a smaller game at first, and then if you can go full time eventually then you increase your budget a lot, potentially even threefold (20 hours to maybe even 60). Asset flipping might help, but I doubt you can easily find assets that you can make sure are consistent with each other for a game of 6 hours length (at that point you will probably have to spend a lot of time just getting it to work).
Ye, i talked a bit about it in the original edit, but decided to cut it. Hiring or working with someone else can definitely help, but if you for instance are 2 people doing art, then you need to ensure that you both agree on style and can draw 'equally well', which can be difficult to find. If you go for a team where one does programming, one does art etc, then you are essentially doubling your time budget, which makes it much more achievable (assuming you both are equally engaged in the project, which isn't always the case). But I think if you just hire someone to do something like 40 assets, it might actually be more of a time sink than it is a benefit, because you will need to teach them how to draw the way you want, and that takes time, quite often a lot of time, even if you have someone decent to work with, and if you find someone that can't learn how to draw the way you want, then you have essentially wasted both time and money. Its all kind of a tricky balance, all paths can come with significant downsides.
Sorry to be nitpicky but the footage shown was will of the wisps not blind forest 😅 in any case i'm suprised you finished it in 6 hours, took me about 15 but i didn't rush and i 100%ed the game. Is your goal to make a mv with a main story of about 6 hours, or 100% in 6 hours? I've found the average metroidvania to be anywhere between 7-12 hours with bigger ones taking about 15
Ye, I'm aware it is will of the wisps ^^ its just that I finished blind forest before I started this channel, so I have no footage of the gameplay xD My plan was main story in about 6 hours, but frankly I am not entirely sure at this point, I might actually make a smaller game in between. This channel already eats a lot of the game dev time and I'd like to keep up with the channel and hopefully even make videos more often so I think a simpler game first is probably smarter.
@@Nonsensical2D i appreciate the content you give but hearing that the game suffers because of it makes me feel guilty sort of. But it's your choice and as long as you enjoy the variety then it's cool. Do whatever feels right for you, be that less or more videos, i'll watch them all anyways XD
This is somewhat tricky to answer. I would personally look at how long I want my game to be. Do I want it to take roughly 2 hours (which is steams limit for the return policy if I recall), then look at another game I've played and see roughly how much content they have in order to stretch more than 2 hours of gameplay. Then do a rough extrapolation for your own circumstance. It won't be perfect, but it can help give you a ballpark estimate. (you also have to take into account the time on first time play through (since a first play through of ori and the blind forest might be 6 hours, whereas future runs might only take 2.5 hours).
Thank you for this video. I love game development but art and design fucking suck. I can write a whole movement and complex combat system in a couple of hours but can't for the life of me draw a decent spritesheet in the same time. At this point I've just accepted that I won't draw my own art.
Haha, I was actually considering for quite some time how I ought to categorise it. I didn't want to make the video too granular since I wanted to maintain a focus on the game art aspect, but I also didn't want to not mention it. xD
@@Nonsensical2D lmao l understand. The way l see it ART includes music, assets and story. And the other half is DESIGN, which includes code, levels, and mechanics.
As someone who's spent most time on my game's art more than anything else, I can totally relate to that. At this point, I've learned one lesson so far from my experience: Never finish one aspect of the game before hopping into another aspect. I made the mistake of handling all the programming for my game's demo, and now I'm stuck having to animate tons of cutscenes, npcs and assets, even when I don't want to.🥲
As you might have noticed I haven't uploaded in a while. I'll hopefully be back to posting about once every week. This video sadly doesn't cover much drawing, and for some the topic might feel obvious, but If you haven't done any project management before, this is at least something I think can be important to do before you start a project that is too ambitious for you to handle. I'll be back with more drawing videos soon enough, thanks for watching :)
Hey! great work, love your channel!
I've been looking to make some tiles for a 2D game, and was wondering if you have any plans to do a tutorial on those (if you use tiles at all).
Thank you :D
Thank you for this video! You don't often find info on actual project managing for a game dev. So kudos on making this video, it's very important! Don't worry about it being not about the art drawing process, cause this video perhaps is the most important one on your channel. For me, it is, surely.
Thank you again for your work!
why i feel like 20 hours a week are still not enough xD maybe if it was 40, i mean whenever i sit down 3 hours fly by like hearing a song.
Another option to work towards the finished project without spending hours on each asset is to start with very low-quality prototypes and then incrementally update the art over the course of the project, as needed.
I dont care if it takes me 10 or 15 years to finish my game, i am focus on quality, originality, creativity and making a game that its not repetitive, i want both quantity and quality
Thank you for giving some realism, when you think about a new project, you obviously start with very great expectations and don't really think about the amount of work, everybody does it somehow right ? you video really helps to prevent overconfidence and increases the odds your community's projects might actually be finished, thanks again, hope you're doing well
I love your style for the videos 🤣. It is really important to estimate the production time. Your advice here is great and everybody should take this into account. Most of the people don't even think about this. Really cool video, thanks for sharing 😊
Thanks, I appreciate it! :)
very deep analysis about optimizing time doing art, surely can be applied to other subjects
That's one of the most interesting videos I saw in your channel yet! Love all your videos, but taking a step back to think about processes and planning seems really important for shipping a game! Even when working with a team, that allows to understand other fields timing and needs (communication essentials). I'm looking forward for the videos in the 3 other parts that you mentioned. And maybe even a final one, that regroups all the areas and dispose them in a game producing pipeline (pre-production - production - testing - launch post) and includes other activities as planning.
I'm a process engineer converted to the gaming industry by the way, would love to collaborate if you have any interest in that. And would humbly recommend the use of flow-charts if you try to explain pipelines in the future. They are simple to understand and allow to have an easy summary to remember what we've learned.
Thanks again for the video, hope you'll be able to have a nice pace again!
Thanks for the feedback :) In terms of breakdown of the other aspects of game dev (programming, game design, random stuff) I'm not sure If I will make such a breakdown any time soon. I do think it's important to make those breakdowns as well, but sadly I always have 5-10 videos running in parallell and I can't really tell in advance which idea feels 'ready for release' if that makes sense :)
As for collaboration or anything similar, I think my schedule is just too irregular to be able to manage it on my end at the moment. I'm still doing this very much part time ^^
Really great video! It's got me thinking about how long my own games are going to take. Perhaps it'll be slower than I hoped.
Absolutly. That's also the biggest reason why solo indie games devs should take a step back from this "I want to do it all by myself" mindset. Thats a dream and compleltey unrealistic if you plan to make a game of considerable size. (5 - 10 hours).
If you want a good game, with a good amount of polish you have to look for help. Does not matter if that help consists of other people, forums, or pre bought assets (for 2D games better just by game systems like inventory systems, dialogue system etc.).
I missed your videos, thanks for coming back!!
I very good video showing that indie dev must calculate the Time very precisecly and delegate some of there work to freelancer
Ye, I had a section of the video (that i cut) where i discussed solutions such buying from others, but it's always tricky knowing what the best solution will be for your circumstances, I'll personally probably end up buying music and sfx because I don't know anything about it (not sure yet though).
Great insight as always.
Great topic! A people struggle with this a lot. I find that time blocking can help. Which leads me to my request, what I have been running into is diving too deep into the weeds on my game art. (I am just a wee little baby on the topic, and honestly making games is the first time I have tried drawing in 13 years, so I don't expect to be good overnight) but what indicators do you use to help you "move on" to the next asset, and know that you have done enough for your game? I have seen others adding in details at 2x the resolution that I know would not show up in the finished project, and then there is "baba is you". would love to see a video on this topic if you can find the time. You have been helping more than any of the other content creators when it comes to the art aspect of the game, and I appreciate you!
We missed you. Everyday I came and check whether you posted any videos.
I appreciate it! and sorry for not having uploaded. Got busy with work sadly.
as and game artist this is kind of overwhelming, because everytime we are actully facing new animatiosn or challenges, there are many clietns that wants the best result with less money i just did and runiong cicle animation (probnably my best one so far) but took me 40h to do it
Ye, I think it can be difficult for non-artists to gauge how long time things can actually take xD
Love your videos man...👍👍👍👍
Man, must be like coming back to completely new expeerience after a month. I already start to forget where was what if I take a break for a week.
I do agree that should just strive to draw things without overthinking them, with time you get better and faster.
So far tho, with my personal project majority of the time went to testing and fixing bugs/stuff I've missed. (I'm not a programmer, I bought a template base from unity store, which is limited, and very spaghetti but it gets my vision forward, but it makes mistakes even easier xd )
Ye, It kind of sucks having to take a break, but it is what it is xD I agree, there is so much time that goes to stuff that seemingly isn't progressing the game forward, but that still needs to be done. Interesting with buying a template, has it worked out well?
Completely agree. The hardest part for me is keeping momentum. If I keep doing something daily it's easy to just do it as a habit and keep interested. Once you get side-tracked with other obligations like working late and lose a few days it's really hard to get back into your project. I've had a few late nights of work get me off course for months at a time. The longer away I also find the higher chance of thinking of a new direction and discarding the current project.
@@Nonsensical2D well, it works surprisignly well for me, I kinda just wanted this short story driven game, with dialogue, item picking, basic crafting and enemies. It's a learning experience, in my day time job I'm a senior UI artist, but I still suck at majority of other fields, so I wanted dwelve into them more. Basically I got this "2D Action-RPG Kit" from unity store, it doesn't need any programming to get started, although some knowledge of it would've gotten me further for sure. My hubby is a tool programmer, so I thought I could ask him to make some tweaks for me. He looked at the code and said it's the most inefficient, horrible spaghetti code he have ever seen and refused to work with it, albeit helping me to understand some functions. I'd say it still works, because I'm almost done, but some of the stuff I did there is some incredible ant logic workaround.
I'm still looking forward to getting some other templates tho, and molding them into games I want to make :D
I think it's awesome, I can focus more on art and concept and story, instead of trying to bash my head against the wall. Definitely a viable solution for non programmers, you still need to put quite a lot of work in tho, but you just kinda have the working package :D
Good video as always!
Thanks, hopefully I can manage to get back into it :)
Finally new video 😊
even as someone who like to draw a lot, game asset is different than drawing that I usually did, i think i will be very slow to finish just one asset. There are much things to do and calculate. And with people always changing plan, i don't think i can keep up if i work with people.. i maybe just slow them down.
I think it often starts out like this. I used to spend hours on a single asset. but with time you kind of learn what to prioritise and you slowly but surely start to draw faster.
Don't think that pixel art doesn't take much time either... it's not as easier an alternative as you'd think, especially when animating.
Anyway, thank you, I like your channel very much so far. Like your deadpan delivery too lol
Ohh ye, I totally agree with pixel art taking time. I just meant that if you want to even manage to make a game alone, it feels like you need to either do "pixel art" or "simple 2d art". You can for sure not go for pixel art looking anything like blasphemous, that will take way too much time for one person. But on a general basis i would say that if you go for pixel art with a canvas size of 270x480, the time to produce that art will generally be "about" equally fast to the time it takes for me to make art in my style (but most other styles will probably take too long). Thanks, and sorry for the confusion :)
0:40 can you please tell us what prototype design tool you using it here in monitor? Are you using any level editor
I use Godot as my game engine and that is how the tilemap editor looks, and then I just personally tend to use either grey or red tiles. So it's basically me placing tiles for the level :)
@@Nonsensical2D can you create one video about how you creating grey scale art for prototype
what brush you use most to create all the outlines?
Almost exclusively the syrup brush in procreate, completely unedited, just the standard settings.
very informative, you forgot to smile :)
3:44 You shouldn't have square branches because they start to look like unintentional writings
haha, you are right, it looks a bit off xD
Yeah this year I've been coming face to face with the realization that my game will probably look as ugly as all the indie games out there that I hate, simply because I can't afford to spend so much time on it...
In my heart of hearts I KNOW I could make a beautiful work of art, but not without funding that would allow me to dedicate my 24/7 to it.
what proprietary do you use
So if you don't have time, will asset flipping be the better option then?
I doubt it will make that big of a difference. it might help though. But personally I would probably shoot for doing a smaller game at first, and then if you can go full time eventually then you increase your budget a lot, potentially even threefold (20 hours to maybe even 60). Asset flipping might help, but I doubt you can easily find assets that you can make sure are consistent with each other for a game of 6 hours length (at that point you will probably have to spend a lot of time just getting it to work).
what if you hire an artist to help you with the workload?
Ye, i talked a bit about it in the original edit, but decided to cut it. Hiring or working with someone else can definitely help, but if you for instance are 2 people doing art, then you need to ensure that you both agree on style and can draw 'equally well', which can be difficult to find. If you go for a team where one does programming, one does art etc, then you are essentially doubling your time budget, which makes it much more achievable (assuming you both are equally engaged in the project, which isn't always the case).
But I think if you just hire someone to do something like 40 assets, it might actually be more of a time sink than it is a benefit, because you will need to teach them how to draw the way you want, and that takes time, quite often a lot of time, even if you have someone decent to work with, and if you find someone that can't learn how to draw the way you want, then you have essentially wasted both time and money. Its all kind of a tricky balance, all paths can come with significant downsides.
Sorry to be nitpicky but the footage shown was will of the wisps not blind forest 😅 in any case i'm suprised you finished it in 6 hours, took me about 15 but i didn't rush and i 100%ed the game. Is your goal to make a mv with a main story of about 6 hours, or 100% in 6 hours? I've found the average metroidvania to be anywhere between 7-12 hours with bigger ones taking about 15
Ye, I'm aware it is will of the wisps ^^ its just that I finished blind forest before I started this channel, so I have no footage of the gameplay xD My plan was main story in about 6 hours, but frankly I am not entirely sure at this point, I might actually make a smaller game in between. This channel already eats a lot of the game dev time and I'd like to keep up with the channel and hopefully even make videos more often so I think a simpler game first is probably smarter.
@@Nonsensical2D i appreciate the content you give but hearing that the game suffers because of it makes me feel guilty sort of. But it's your choice and as long as you enjoy the variety then it's cool. Do whatever feels right for you, be that less or more videos, i'll watch them all anyways XD
Buddy, how many levels should be designed for a 2D game?
This is somewhat tricky to answer. I would personally look at how long I want my game to be. Do I want it to take roughly 2 hours (which is steams limit for the return policy if I recall), then look at another game I've played and see roughly how much content they have in order to stretch more than 2 hours of gameplay. Then do a rough extrapolation for your own circumstance. It won't be perfect, but it can help give you a ballpark estimate. (you also have to take into account the time on first time play through (since a first play through of ori and the blind forest might be 6 hours, whereas future runs might only take 2.5 hours).
Thanks buddy @@Nonsensical2D
Thank you for this video. I love game development but art and design fucking suck. I can write a whole movement and complex combat system in a couple of hours but can't for the life of me draw a decent spritesheet in the same time. At this point I've just accepted that I won't draw my own art.
Did you just put music under "random stuff"??!?! 😵💫
Haha, I was actually considering for quite some time how I ought to categorise it. I didn't want to make the video too granular since I wanted to maintain a focus on the game art aspect, but I also didn't want to not mention it. xD
@@Nonsensical2D lmao l understand. The way l see it ART includes music, assets and story. And the other half is DESIGN, which includes code, levels, and mechanics.
Hey buddy take some references from Unto the end game .
That is why people invented AI generation. Art is just too expensive, especially good art.
As someone who's spent most time on my game's art more than anything else, I can totally relate to that.
At this point, I've learned one lesson so far from my experience:
Never finish one aspect of the game before hopping into another aspect.
I made the mistake of handling all the programming for my game's demo, and now I'm stuck having to animate tons of cutscenes, npcs and assets, even when I don't want to.🥲
Good point, it's definitely a tricky balancing act..