作者：Jesse Attard

我将继续陈述作为独立开发者的我如何制作《Immortal Empire》。

美术是我严重依赖外包的部分，尤其要感谢的是Mat Chambers（角色）、David Baumgart（魔法图标）、Zenobia Homan（贴图，场景道具）和Eric Vedder（角色插画），当然还有其他美工如Sergei Churbanov、Cecilia Santos、Jasmin McGahan和David Scott等人也帮了我很大忙。

当然，要和这么多人配合是很困难的，有些情况下我还得自己处理一些美术方面的工作。在我以前的文章中，我叙述了我如何制作《Immortal Empire》的音乐；因为我在音乐方面是有一些正规经验的，所以游戏音乐对我来说更加容易对付。但说到美术，我基本上没有任何经验。

好不容易，我自创了一套被我亲切地称为编码美术的做法，游戏最终版里有许多美术都是靠那个方法制作出来的。本文描述的就是我的制作过程，包括一些我认为可能帮得上其他像我一样美术有困难的独立开发者的小技巧。

《Immortal Empire》有许多让我自感骄傲的地方，但老实说，美术方面比较拖后腿。固定的800×600分辨率和几乎完全手绘的2D象素风格，使这款游戏的画面介于《幽浮》和《魔兽争霸2》之间，也就是说如果它是在1995年发布的，那么画面质量还算可以。但是，它发布的时间是2013年啊！

game_comparison(from gamasutra)

尽管图像不算高端甚至大量采用极简抽象主义风格，近年来许多游戏仍然非常成功。不幸地是，我觉得那种风格与《Immortal Empire》的游戏设计不搭。下面的上图是刺蔓的动画效果，下图是闲置状态的角色。

entangle

elder

对于象素美术，我最终确定的制作过程如下：

0、比较一对不同的中性色背景图，不要修改透明度，总是分图层作业。意外的是，使用通道或手动融合固定颜色背景图看起来很糟，而且容易出错。而使用分离图层，不仅出错时容易重制，而且做A/B比较也更容易。

bg_good(from gamasutra)

1、从轮廓开始

当绘制线条（没有通道透明度）时，我发现如下左半边的效果几乎总是比右半边的来得好。

line_comparison(from gamasutra)

当绘制曲线时，你应该始终如一地增加或减少直线象素的数量，而不是随便地增加或减少。我通常先自由绘制线条，然后删除对角，再修改曲线，从而使线条平滑。

curves(from gamasutra)

这听起来似乎很明显，但在完成以前你确实不想进行下一步。在这个阶段，剪影也是管用的，但我更偏好轮廓线，这样就不会丢失内部细节。

2、给轮廓描影

至于线条粗细，在渐变颜色时也可保持一致。我的意思是，逐渐增加或减少明度，不要有太大的落差。在这一步，我会避免添加细节，只是描阴影。当制作曲线型物品如下图所示的触手时，我发现把最亮的部分放在中央而不是边缘，效果总是最好。把你在分层中使用的调色板保存起来，因为之后还会用到。

shading_comparison(from gamasutra)

3、添加细节

在这个阶段，你可以给角色添加服饰，使他/她更加粗野或更加高雅。在这里，我会避免引入新的颜色，而是继续使用我在第2步时保存的调色板。

elder_shading(from gamasutra)

4、添加最后的触感

这里，我会添加了一些小装饰品，如角色腰带上的扣带或触手上的尖刺。我发现我通常必须返回去修改描影。例如，在扣带下面添加一点儿阴影，突出它的立体感。只有我百分之百满意这一帧的效果时，我才会继续做另一帧或绘制更多相同的元素（如缠卷魔法的多个触手）。

以上！我偏好的设制是使用两个窗口，一个拉近画面，使我可以编辑象素；另一个缩小画面，使我可以看到整体效果。我会经常查看实际缩放距离，因为我觉得有时候拉近画面看起来不错，而拉远画面后就很糟糕；或者相反。

与其他大部分技能一样，绘画当然也需要数年的练习实践才能提高。希望我在这里提供的小技巧，能帮助那些美术有困难的独立开发者制作出一些比较体面的图形。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

I’m not an artist, but I need art in my indie game

by Jesse Attard

This is part 3 in a series of articles describing how I approached each aspect of creating Immortal Empire as an independent developer. Read the whole backstory here.

Artwork is the area I relied most heavily on outsourcing to a number of individuals, most notably Mat Chambers (characters), David Baumgart (spell icons, fx), Zenobia Homan (tiles, environment objects), and Eric Vedder (illustrated characters). A few other artists (Sergei Churbanov, Cecilia Santos, Jasmin McGahan, David Scott) helped out as well to which I am eternally grateful.

Of course, trying to coordinate so many different people was difficult, and in some cases I needed to fill in some gaps with artwork myself.  In my previous article where I discussed the music to Immortal Empire, I pointed out that I have some formal experience with music, making that aspect of the game much easier to tackle.  When it comes to artwork however, I have literally no experience to draw upon. (moar puns!!1)

In the end, I deigned to create some affectionately termed coder art, much of which can be seen in the final product.  This article describes the process I went through and includes some tips I picked up which are hopefully useful to other artistically barren programmers like myself who need art in their indie games.

I’m very proud of many things in Immortal Empire, but let’s face it, the artwork is not exactly cutting edge. At a fixed 800×600 resolution and consisting almost entirely of hand-drawn 2D pixel art, Immortal Empire’s artwork lands somewhere between X-Com and Warcraft II, meaning it would feel right at home if it were released in 1995.  Alas, it was released in 2013.

Many games have managed to be very successful in recent years despite not having advanced graphics, often employing a minimalist style to great effect.  Unfortunately I feel as though minimalism just wouldn’t have worked for the game design of Immortal Empire, so instead I attempted to mimic a style that is very nostalgic for me: early 90s PC games.

Onto the artwork. I contributed in a number of areas, but I’m going to focus on a couple images I drew that will best describe the process.  Here is the animation for the entangle spell on the left, and the idle pose for the Elder character on the right.

For the pixel art, the process I eventually settled on went something like this.

0. Compare against a couple different neutral colour backgrounds, never change your opacity, and always work on a separate layer.  Accidentally using alpha or manually blending into a fixed colour background looks terrible in game, and it is a very easy mistake to make. Using separate layers for each step lets you restart when you make mistakes and do A/B comparisons easily.

1. Start with an outline.  When drawing lines (without alpha transparency), I found it almost always looked better to leave diagonals open rather than filled in like the image on the right.

When creating rounded lines, decrease or increase the number of straight-line pixels consistently, rather than doing something arbitrarily. I’ll often draw the line free-hand at first, delete the diagonals, then touch up the curve to keep line lengths consistent.

This might sound obvious but you really don’t want to move onto the next step until you have finished this one.  At this stage, a silhouette can work as well, but I prefer an outline so you don’t lose interior details.

2. Add shading to your outline.

As with the lines widths, be consistent in how you gradient the colour.  By that I mean gradually increase or decrease the luminosity rather than flipping back and forth or skipping a shade. I try to avoid adding detail in this step, instead I just shade uniformly. When creating rounded things like the tentacles below, I found it often looked best to put the brightest section near the center, not right on the edge. Keep a palette of distinct colours you have used on a separate layer for future use.

3. Add detail to the shading. This is where you can put creases in clothing, make things appear rough or shiny, or add dithering if that is your art style. I try to avoid introducing new colours here, and instead would refer to the palette that I created in step #2.

4. Add final touches.  Here I add little doodads like the buckle on the Elder’s sash or the thorns on the tentacles. When doing this step, I found I often had to go back and adjust the shading.  For example, creating a little shadow underneath the buckle made it feel less flat.  Only when I am 100% happy with the look of this one frame will I start another frame of animation or attempt to draw more of the same element (such as the multiple tentacles in the entangle spell).

That’s it!  My preferred setup is to use two windows, one zoomed in very close where I edit the pixels, and another zoomed out to 100% so I can actually look at the results. I check the actual zoom distance frequently, as I found that things sometimes look great zoomed in, but from afar look totally wrong. In fact, the opposite can also be true!

Like most things, art of course takes years of practice to improve. But here’s hoping these few tips can help other artistically challenged independent developers like myself create some medicore but passable artwork for their games.  If you have anything to add about your adventures in this regard, or tips you can suggest, please comment below!(source:gamasutra)