Creating a Paper-like Look in Photoshop

This is a follow up to my post creating great game artwork from paper. Today I thought I would shed some more light on the subject of Petunk’s artwork focusing on how I achieved the results using Photoshop. As a quick recap, for Petunk I created the artwork by hand using construction paper and scissors. Once ready I scanned the artwork into my computer and loaded things into Photoshop. With the artwork on my computer it’s time to explore how to prepare it for use in a game.

In my mind there are several objectives I’d like to achieve through Photoshop:

1. Design and layout assets scanned in earlier
2. Create text which is easy to update and maintain
3. And, re-use scanned in assets as much as possible

Since creating artwork is relatively time consuming I want Photoshop to help me avoid doing so whenever possible. If we can address each point above I think we will have reduced our workload quite a bit.

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Petunk Week 3: Putting it all together

Time for another weekly update. Since last week I’ve been hard at work integrating the artwork I created with my game engine. The results I’m ready to show you include the basic game — title screen, level select, etc — along with an improved level editor. I’ve now started to use the editor to generate as many levels as I can and identify any new ideas I might like to add. Check out more details and an updated prototype below.

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Create Great Looking Game Artwork Using Paper

Today I’d like to share a little bit of the process behind the artwork for Petunk. I believe the style is attractive and distinct, and the best part is I was able to do it without strong technical artistic ability, investing lots of time, or spending much money. If like me  you’re not as strong an artist as you are a programmer read on to learn how to use construction paper to achieve a cool look for your game.

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Staying Motivated in Game Development

I talked about this a little bit in an earlier post, I think that it’s easy to lose motivation especially for longer projects. I recently had a chance to think a little bit more about motivation and I thought I’d share the results. For me the start of a project is always the most fun — you’re exploring a new idea, you’re coding new code, things are taking shape really quickly. But at some point you hit a phase where progress slows down — the features are implemented and now you have to fix bugs, there’s only hard things left that you put off doing, etc — and at this point it’s easy to get distracted by a shiny new idea. Personally, I feel taking a game from the rough “prototype” phase to being a full, polished game is a ton of work, but in my opinion it’s also something that separates “serious” developers from less serious ones.

So with all that said here’s how I try to tackle the problem:

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Petunk Week 2: Creating a distinctive look

Let me share a secret with you. I’m not a great artist. I lack the technical skill needed to create compelling characters or impressive vistas. It’s something that I’d like to improve, but I figure it would require an investment in time and energy similar to what I already put into engineering. Unfortunately, if that’s the case I don’t think I have the time. So, when I sat down to think about the art style for Petunk I had to limit my options. Nevertheless, I think I’ve come up with something really cool and I’d like to share it with you.

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