Hand-Drawn Games?

The method i'm using right now isn't the most graceful, but it seems to be working out so far. I'm drawing my characters on paper, outlining them in black ink and then taking a picture of it with my phone. From there i import the image into my computer, open Gimp and pull up the image. I use the color select tool to select the black ink and then delete the surrounding area that was the paper. Then i have a hand drawn image to color and shade as i need! It's an odd way of doing things probably, but when you lack good tech you gotta improvise! You don't even wanna know all the crazy crap i go through for my pre rendered games.

MelVin

I am quickly noticing how much more fluid Spriter's animations are than traditional frame animation. That deformation tool is really something too!

I made Super Ubie Island REMIX which is all hand drawn and inked traditionally but scanned in to be colored in photoshop

And I'm currently working on Team Notion which is also hand drawn and colored in photoshop

I was actually planning on making my next game in pixel art because the file size can be kept small and animations are a little easier to make. However I couldn't find any way to make it scale good in mobile.

So I went with hand-drawn and color in GIMP.

The method i'm using right now isn't the most graceful, but it seems to be working out so far. I'm drawing my characters on paper, outlining them in black ink and then taking a picture of it with my phone. From there i import the image into my computer, open Gimp and pull up the image. I use the color select tool to select the black ink and then delete the surrounding area that was the paper. Then i have a hand drawn image to color and shade as i need! It's an odd way of doing things probably, but when you lack good tech you gotta improvise! You don't even wanna know all the crazy crap i go through for my pre rendered games.

MelVin

I am quickly noticing how much more fluid Spriter's animations are than traditional frame animation. That deformation tool is really something too!

Whatever works! I agree. You can not let things stop you. I made most of Adventures Of DaKoo with a mousepen tablet from genius that my dog had chewed, held together with duck tape lol. Never went to art school or even an art class after the 7th grade, I learned to draw on packing & printer paper etc. I always thought If you have passion and are will to make it work you can get a lot done. The phone is an awesome idea. As long as the phone is parallel the pics should be just as good as a scanner if all your looking for is the line art! Great thinking I will probably use it too;)

BTW, I didn't even know the deformation tool had been added, I will have to check it out asap. My Anims are nearly all transfers from still frame Anims.

NotionGames

That right there! I would love to see more games with that visual style making it big in places like Steam! It's pretty, it's smooth, there's just nothing that isn't appealing about it. I hope it's something that catches on more.

MelVin

Yes, being determined enough can get you through most set backs. My previous desktop computer had a large jar of Ragu holding the CPU cooling fan down to the CPU because some things went terribly wrong when me and a friend thought we could fix my computer on our own... Won't be making that mistake again.

Also, that deformation tool is included in Spriter Pro, but it is still bugged to all hell and is not ready for proper use. The guys at Brash Monkey were saying they'll have it included out of the box when they release Spriter 2. Apparently it's gonna be a free upgrade for anyone who currently owns Spriter Pro. I really wish Spine's UI was as smooth as Spriter's because they already have all their parts working.

just uploaded a simple beat them up game.

the character and enemy is much hand drawn.

take a look: https://www.scirra.com/arcade/tutorial- ... itoes-6047 <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy">

nemezes

Whoa that was WEIRD! But I have to admit, like many of us, I have long dreamed of becoming a rooster-man and giving the smack down to giant mosquitoes.

I had fun with it!

I guess I need to make something and post it here sometime too.

Almost all my character animation is hand drawn so I'll share my stuff too:

https://www.scirra.com/arcade/action-games/candy-basket-a-halloween-game-3190

All the sprites in this game are drawn and inked on paper. Then I scan it and add the colours in photshop and what not so I can put it together in Spriter. (I haven't touched this game since halloween, it could use some polishing...)

And here is some early experimentation, it's by no means finished.

All the body parts you can see there to the left are hand inked with a brush. Sounds kind of fancy, but it's probably quicker this way for me than to ink it with my wacom. As you can see in the close-up, the lines aren't super smooth, but zoomed out they look fairly smooth. But then, if you want it super smooth, maybe vector graphics is the way to go.

I made some graphics improvements in the "beat the mosquitoes" (erased the white square), added one more level and you can choose levels by pressing 1, 2 or 3.

Plowman really cool game. the graphics are great. I see that you use spriter, I really have to learn how to use it. the last level "mess" is really hard. the character moves too slow, maybe it could be faster.

I made some graphics improvements in the "beat the mosquitoes" (erased the white square), added one more level and you can choose levels by pressing 1, 2 or 3.

Plowman really cool game. the graphics are great. I see that you use spriter, I really have to learn how to use it. the last level "mess" is really hard. the character moves too slow, maybe it could be faster.

nemezes Thanks. Yeah, if you want to use all that tween animation stuff then you'll need Spriter (or some similar program)! I think that bird man is a fun start .

And yes, some of the level design really is a mess, thrown together for Halloweeen. But you don't need to beat every single level to complete the game.

I made another character hand drawn.

I am trying to make a fighting game. Still in the beginning.

here is the preview:

I used to use the paper-and-scanner technique for years when I used to develop games with Clickteam's stuff. It looks great, but I personally didn't realise how inefficient it was until I worked out how to avoid it. If you have a little bit of cash handy, have a go at Sketchbook Pro with a Wacom tablet - it does a great job of emulating pencils and pens and you can work muuuuch faster

mikehive sketchbook pro is really a cool program. I use it on mobile devices. Very smooth

Hand drawn car: https://youtu.be/dJ8QRDgLgRI <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy">

sorry if I am posting too much.. but I like this topic. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

here is the same character with two walk animation:

the first walk animation has 4 frames and the movement is not smooth, then I have to put 2 more frames and the walk movement gets better.

the parrot man that I made before had 4 frames in the walk animation, as you can see in the game beat the mosquitoes. If we get an animation with crossing legs, the walk animation needs more frames to get smooth.