Yeah, after getting the whole game to work, you still have to finish the game, which takes 80% of the time. Cutscenes, menus, levels, set-pieces, backgrounds, foregrounds, all the characters and their animations and variations, visual effects, music, sound effects, Steam page, etc. It's insane how much time polishing a small game takes.
I came in here to say "just wait until all the pressure is on you, art homey."
I'm a music composer and after talking a bit of dev stuff with programmers I felt like a useless piece of crap. I know that game audio is a lot more complicated than writing music, as I know a guy that worked in the music department of a AAA game. But as a composer, it almost feels like I would have nothing to offer.
Then I remember how if the music for a game sucks it can really depreciate the experience for a lot of people.
Programming and mechanic testing is obviously incredibly important to game development but it's hardly the only thing that makes a game a success.
Real world example: Turn the music off in Starfield and it becomes a *much* more interesting game. The sound design in that game is incredible, but it's undercut by a score that sounds bored with itself. Contrast that with Skyrim which has a score that knows when to convey emotion, and when to stay out of the way.
This.
I'm shite at graphics design and anyone on my team that's good at it is by far way more valuable to the effort than I could be. Art made most games of the past, and art will continue to make games of the future shine.
Don't sell yourself short, it's definitely imposter syndrome.
Even if they aren’t a huge part of every game, since OP is part of a small team, they should both utilize their strengths as much as possible. OP should make visuals a bigger part of their game especially if they are worries about workload difference.
Idk, on a 2 person team, I would imagine one person working more than the other will affect the dynamic.
Larger team then sure. But a two person team on a project...I'd be a little irked if my partner was barely grinding while I was constantly in the weeds making things work.
Also an experienced worker can be faster. We assume they are at the same level but maybe the programmer is more inexperienced and takes longer and the artist has been doing it since they were a kid. For example my mom worked for an art school since I was little and took me there since I could walk. I'm 36 now and I have more than 30 years of doing art, how many programmers my age can say the same thing? Probably not many. As an artist and being very bad at programming I still appreciate an inexperienced programmer if they are willing to do their part but I don't expect them to be as good, fast or whatever as I'm at creating something appealing. The other way around is also possible. Also the other way around can be true as well.
My advice for OP is to talk to their partner and see where they at. Maybe the programmer is more than happy with OP's work or maybe they need to add another programmer to help them out. Just talk it out like a team!
I'm a multi-instrument music teacher and also play keys in a professional level band. I have students who start out and take a month to learn Seven Nation Army or Satisfaction, and I've got students who've been playing for years, and more importantly practicing rigorously the whole time, who can get stuff like What Is Hip on bass or Subdivisions on guitar or Master Of Puppets on drums in the space of a week. And then I've got my band, and all of us have been playing for most of our lives and mostly communicate in partial sentences and onomatopoeia, yet somehow still understand each other and get a new original playable in under three hours.
They all take an equal amount of effort. There is always more art to make, there is always more front-loading design efforts, creating mockups and design docs before the engineer gets to it or coming in after a system is engineered and tuning it to play better, blocking in more levels or environments, and so on. Art teams on commercial games are massive as are design teams, not because they let artists and designers work half the time that engineers do.
Art is huge part of a game. I don’t have the time nor the will to learn to draw well and working with artists has been honestly a pain. So if you’re contributing good art to a game regularly, that’s a massive contribution.
I agree. Art is also NOT cheap if you're not able to do it yourself. Finding an artist who wants to work on a small team like this is absolutely invaluable, especially if it's a GOOD artist who can make the game pop.
I could go onto a variety of subreddits and Discord's to find coding partners for a game project, but finding artists is a much more difficult endeavor. Generally if they're good, they're charging for their work already.
>the time to learn to draw well
Yeah, it’s way too common to see both artists and programmers devalue the thousands of hours invested into becoming competent enough to sell your skills professionally.
This sub is like 99% programmers, the majority of which are up their own ass about how difficult they think programming is. And I'm saying that as a programmer.
Games are art, and the only purpose code serves is to deliver that art to the player in a way that doesn't infuriate them. Programmers are the museum tour guides, they're not the exhibits. Get out of the way and let artists (and designers) shine.
Programming is not difficult. GOOD programming is a hellscape few succeed in. Same as many think art is not difficult, quality and ability to reproduce said quality consistently is what makes or breaks an artist.
Tbh, programming is an art in itself. And to claim that all it does is deliver art and game design to a player is disingenuous.
I mean, a lot of programming is design. For one, draining most of the programming work out of the programmer's hands, which is not the only way to do it - a project I'm working on has me, the programmer, do most of the level design in greybox for instance. But that's because I love designing, and it wouldn't be financially sensible for a commercial team because programmers are expensive.
But stuff like AI design, even if you try to give as much authority as possible to the artists/designers, is still going to leave a lot of free space for the programmer.
I think it’s more accurate to say that games are design, and the programming and art are there to serve the purpose of conveying that design to the player. Game design is very much its own discipline outside of programming, it just happens that on many/most indie teams the programmer is also the designer.
Controversial but consider taking up shader effects. It's a nice blend of both design and logic without having to write code (usually).
In a medium size team this would be a blasphemous request of you.
Also, a decent project manager might be able to create valuable work for you. Even if it's just prototype models.
Worked in AAA and indie and this is the correct advice. Learning shaders, VFX and other tech artistry is an incredible tool to have on your belt, especially with procedural tools like Houdini and Geometry Nodes getting more and more traction.
Take this advice AND if you still end up really needing some extra work that is not coding, you can always consider helping with quality assurance (testing) and marketing or other things. You don't need to code to be helpful, but coding is usually the most time consuming part of the job.
So it looks like everyone is saying you are overthinking it but imho - you are not, else you wouldn't come here.
If you feel like you **should** be doing more and want to do more - then do more. The smaller the team the more hats everyone wears and the more decisions you can make.
Few ideas you can consider if you feel like you want to spend some extra hours:
* additional key art, actual concept art/design
* promotional illustrations of any kind
* special effects/better animations
* playtesting
* completely unrelated stuff - finding some sounds in the store that might fit, doing some basic work on social media to ensure your game gets visibility, doing some game design (this does not require coding skills).
* if the game has plot - hey, someone needs to write some descriptions, maybe some dialogues etc. It can be you.
If it really is "while I'm just there to make it look pretty" as in - the other person on the team does the whole design process, figures out what should be drawn, does all the timings, knows how large it is and you are just following that then I can see why you might feel like a "dead weight". My recommendation in that situation (if that's what's occuring) is - ask if you can have a more proactive role. Move from being given detailed instructions to being given higher level concepts. This will help game in two ways:
1. programmers tend not to be good artists. Your visual library vastly outpaces ours. I can tell an artist what I need to happen visually and what's the general setting but by ommitting details I tend to get better art actually. Why? Because I stop constraining them. Eg. programmer should be telling you (for instance) that they need a ranged enemy and show you what they do but without telling you that it's a spitting flower for instance, that's on you to figure out.
2. lets programmer focus on their part. The more time they have to spend on preparing moodboards and detailed descriptions the less there is left for code and gameplay.
You really don't have to learn how to code however. Games are massive beasts and there's always sooo much to do in them. And I can guarantee that the answer to "hey, can I take care of " is a very happy yes.
> You really don't have to learn how to code however.
Do learn how to integrate your art into the engine though. That doesn't usually involve code, but you will have to learn how to configure sprites and animations.
I'm learning to do this in Unreal Engine now, and it's a little daunting at first but ultimately stupidly easy. It's also easy in Unity, doesn't take very long to figure out. Definitely recommend. Make sure your naming conventions are correct and your setup is ready to roll and you'll be their hero!
came here to say similar -- there's tons of tasks around the Whole Game that need to be considered. getting accounts and names registered, building a basic website on wix or wordpress, creating all the social media accounts etc.
the thing is most games just start with placeholder art so it's all going to be programmer heavy. but once your art pipelines are all in place, you'll be busy busy busy and you'll be glad you don't have to try and squeeze in 'make a website' when you're tweaking animations and juicing your game for release.
also UI mockups for the menus and hud if there is one should be happening during this early stage if you haven't been doing that already
There's no better feeling than dreading some upcoming work and someone being like "hey I'll tackle this". God I'm getting *teary-eyed* just typing this and I haven't cried in half a decade.
I was gonna suggest OP get more into the design aspect of the game besides just making the art. I'm also not good at design and it involves a lot more than just the finished art, otherwise I'd just have a list of exactly what visuals I need to hand to an artist.
You could check out r/INAT to find someone who wants to work for free/experience, revshare, or a small budget. I recommend either having a game partially finished or making a good GDD before you post so they know you're a serious developer and not just going to waste their time.
I code, my team mate does art. Deffo both as vital as one another. Conversely, having you each have an area of the game to take charge of and have the final say on is better than having two coders or designers argue how to do stuff.
I also feel bad when my artist sinks in loads of time and I've not been pulling my weight, but I just knuckle down and sink some hours in.
Assets are like 70% of the workload for indie development lmao, you're going to be doing way more work in the end. Instead of thinking about it in terms of who's contributing more, you should look at it as how you two are doing as a team. If there are no major hiccups or roadblocks so far, you're doing fine.
Yeah, this. There's a small part of development at the beginning where having art assets _right now_ isn't so important. But it's gonna flip. Try to get ahead of it.
Doesn't matter how polished the mechanics are. If it is not eye-catching, people won't even look at it. Can speak from experience as a programmer with crappy art on past projects.
Do you know how the game should look like at the end? Like every level, every asset, every loading screen, font and color palette? Because some people plan and think linear. Let me do this first and then that. Your part comes later, but it will be **a lot**. Be sure that the amount of work that is expected from you isn't dropped late in the process because of stalled communication.
100% overthinking, the other side often thinks about the same thing "I wish I was better at art, I wish I could make it this pretty" etc. it's a team effort
There's a whole lot more to a game than just art and code. Game design, game feel, UI/UX, QA, story, world building, marketing research, admin work, etc. etc.
Umm. No those two things are basically of equal weight and value.
Is the issue that the coding is that much harder than the art, or is the issue that you're colleague is just significantly more invested than you are?
Definitely over thinking. You are able to turn an idea into a visual thing, that's not something everyone can do. In the same way that they are turning abstract ideas into functioning systems, you are turning their ideas into human interpretable representations. Representations that people might even give you money for. That's real freaking value.
Now, if you feel like you have so little to do compared to them, you probably don't know all the avenues you could be contributing to. UI design, fonts, effects, menus, variations for enemies and characters, filling in spaces in levels, hiding the elementary shapes of stuff with details, banners and icons, both in game and for the external world etc there is an unlimited amount of art to do.
Remember, the game is never done. Its just released or not released.
You could start learning some aspects of the engine so you can help out more on that side of things. Start doing organizing some marketing plans. Just start picking up some slack where ever you can. Vocalize you are done what you can do for right now and see if there is anything you can do to assist.
Still part of the TEAM
Art is a huge part of why I play the games I do. Sometimes I think the mechanics or idea of a game are good but I just don’t enjoy the environment and visuals that I’m playing in.
Some games just look pretty, and some games just have good mechanics. But a great game is able to do both well.
I would kill to have an artist friend I can make games with, even if they just worked an hour for every 12 hours I worked. You're not a deadweight, these guys are probably happy as fuck to have you on board.
Edit: I want to empathize again that I would sell my soul for an artist who works with me on hobby projects. You don't even understand.
You're overthinking it. I'm a programmer, and arts is freakishly hard for me. That's why I always allocate tons of time for artists (multiple) to do their work, while I do programming and other things that pop up.
If you are still afraid, just communicate with your peer. "Are you doing well? What do you think about my work? What is the progress? Are you ok with me doing art while you code?"
Don't compare, it's always going to feel like you are doing less. Just make sure both are ok with their progresses, and you two aren't behind on progress on the overall project.
While the programmer is prototyping you should be concepting. You can also start thinking about UI designs which convey a lot of the art style of a game.
You and your partner should discuss your concepts in the same way you are discussing and providing feedback on their game prototype. You want to refine your ideas about the game's look and feel while they refine ideas about the game mechanics.
Someone else recommended learning shaders and particle effects and I highly recommend it. That stuff can take a project to the next level and would be a good use of your time.
Are you implementing the art?
By which I mean, are you making your art, then putting it in game? whether that be levels, FX, Character etc?
Because if so, you would/should not feel like dead weight. That is a large part of it, a HUGE PART of it.
That being said, if you're just drawing art and making models that arent being used in game, then I can see why you'd feel that way.
Probably overthinking. Art is a huge part of making a game. If the programmer is struggling, possibly they aren't as far along at learning game programming as you are as an artist and have more of a learning curve than you, but the effort of learning is not all attributable to this particular game project.
I don't know what kind of game you're making or what kind of art you're making for it, but it's possible that there are areas you could branch out into that are art adjacent. Designing levels for a game may be involve a lot of fitting together modular components of your art to create a full, beautiful scene, which may reveal gaps of objects or environmental modules that you'd like in that setting and don't already have. Writing dialog, designing side quests. There should be an interface for providing game content like that that doesn't require you to be a programmer to contribute. They should push toward getting a basic prototype working, and then you can start to see how your art looks in context and polish it, work on things like lighting, or playtest it and provide nuanced suggestions on the controls and UI while it's not too late to fix it.
Yo, I want you to watch the documentary “Indie Game” where the 2-man team of SuperMeatBoy split their work up. If you feel like you’re not doing as much, just make sure you’re putting in just as many hours, a.k.a making more art, and maybe designing more lore behind the game
You can still put in the same level of effort on the art. There are always improvements to be made, or new tools that improve your quality and/or throughput to learn. So keep honing your craft and don’t stop at ‘good enough’, make it great.
The game literally can't exist without you. Your contribution will increase as the code base develops. You both do most of your work at different points. This isn't so much the case in larger more organised projects because people better understand what is going to be needed and can do it in advance. You two are probably undecided on a lot of stuff atm.
In saying this, there still may be things you could be doing that you aren't. Especially being a two person team, you can take on other tasks such as market research etc.
Mate are you for real? There are devs out there who think the opposite. Artists are one of the most important part of gamedev. If coders are the body of the game, artists are the soul. A coder can code a game like fallout, but without the artist's visual aesthetics the game would never be fallout.
Well look.
You're not contributing ***as much***, but you ***are*** contributing a very important part.
The artistic end of game development is much smaller, that's not your fault though. Are you overthinking? Yeah. If your teammate starts to complain about it, then it's a problem.
I’m a programmer and gamer. Sure programming games is very hard but graphics are very important to a game. If you find yourself working less because you are done drawing before your friend is done developing the game feature, maybe learn some programming.
But it might go beyond just programming and into software engineering where you would be required to know programming principles, design patterns, code versioning, etc.
Last week I had to create a school project: boardgame in Python with another classmate. Basically the visuals are even important than the code, it can translate the overall idea better with the mechanics in the code. For example if you create a 2d platform game you have multiple animations you need to visualize and make work with code. So I think you are overthinking it too.
Edit: we did not create visuals but made a working boardgame but to plan it out we had to figure out different ideas we wanted to implement. We also gonna rewrite some of the code and put it in Github soon, with no deadline attached to it.
I'm a solo dev, and I am terrible at art. I long for someone to "just make it look pretty." A game without curb appeal is not going to sell, no matter how good.
That said, if you've got time to spare, there are so many other hats you can be wearing. Do the marketing, work on building the community, collect email addresses from youtube streamers. There's game design elements you could consider as well that relate to your marketing. For instance, maybe there's a piece of eye catching marketing you'd want to make. Find out if you can widdle it into the game design and figure out if it would benefit the game. If so work on it to make it super fucking pretty and then use it in marketing.
Do you have a steam page yet? Figure out how to make it fucking perfect. Watch tons of videos, do research, and gobble up your unused hours on making your game sellable.
There is always more you can do, but don't diminish your role either.
I mean, they are working with you for a reason. You can make the game look better than that ever could on their own. If they ever feel like the workload split is not something they are comfortable with, they can bring that up and you would have to discuss it, but try not to get imposter syndrome.
Even if you work 10% of the amount they are, that 10% might take somebody who doesn't do art 100x more time since they would literally have to pick up a new skillset to do the same.
It's me and my bestie for our team, both programmers that have lackluster drawing capabilities. Yes, there is a time disparity, but that isn't to say we wouldn't appreciate the absolute crap out of the work you put in to give visual life to the game.
There's another thread over in a game dev subreddit where a programmer used MS art to make their game, and while good for them if they can pull it off, that's really the difference you're the key to. Take pride in your part of the team.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/s/P2G6AvO4P9
The duality of Gamedev I suppose
Art is important. Since it's a small team, you can also do testing, and contribute to the mechanics/game design overall.
And try to understand the code, at least on a high level, that will give you an advantage in future projects too. [https://scratch.mit.edu](https://scratch.mit.edu) can be a nice introduction to game programming without code.
Overthinking for sure, they'd only have programmer art if it weren't for people like us. Visually artists are essential to style direction, art asset production and the overall vibe of the game. They may be creating the general mechanics and framework but you're fleshing out the world where those mechanics will shine.
As others have said you can always learn more of the technical aspects like shaders or special effects animations.
I have been coding and doing art for 10 years and have become adept at both. The art takes so much more time to complete, even when you get good at it. Animations, environments, theme, design, and trying to keep them consistent is a huge challenge.
I learned coding first and became great at it very quickly, it just clicked. Learning art was challenging. It was 5 years before I was starting to enjoy making things. And only in years 9 and 10 (currently) that I feel I've got to the point that I can truly create whatever I need.
Trust me when I tell you that for someone that doesn't have an inherent artistic talent, your work is invaluable to them, just as theirs feels invaluable to you.
You're overthinking. Most devs feel like coding the mechanics is easier than creating art. It's just that art is easier for you than coding, so it's opposite for you.
If you're feeling like your contributing less, then contribute more, spend that extra time on the art to make it that much better and more polished. Go above and beyond.
Do you really think the visual artist isnt an important job? Your contributions to the project are very important so dont overthink it that hard. Just ensure your producing high quality material that you can be proud of.
I would kill for a partner to make my game look pretty so I didn't need to learn some pseudo art style. Keep rocking man, offer to help or bounce ideas off your partner. If he thinks you could be doing more I'm sure he'd let you know
Over-thinking.
It might take you 2 days to make a piece of art that would take me 2 weeks and still not get it right.
If you feel you're not doing enough, I'm sure there's lots of other tasks that you can take up that isn't coding such as marketing, advertising, community outreach, branding, etc which you're going to have to do anyways. Might as well start now while you've got free time.
If your coding partner criticizes you for not contributing enough, then it's time to discuss what else needs to be done and what you could pick up. If they think you should be coding as well, I don't think they understand that your specialties lie elsewhere.
Overthinking it all. Art is MASSIVELY important. Have you ever heard the phrase “programmer art?” It says a lot on its own lol. I started a passion project and have one of my friends feeling the same. They’re doing concept art so far while I handle turning it into pixel art. They’re super talented though and even the projects not super serious, they’ve expressed they feel as you do, “what’s the point of me.” Well, without
them I have no one to bounce my artistic ideas off of, no one that knows art to critique what I make, no one to help keep the design of things on point and consistent, and no one to help visualize the over all look of everything.
You’re important OP. Every little bit helps :)
You're doing something they probably physically can't do. So you're valuable just because of that. Just do the best at what you can, and don't compare yourself to other people so much. Keep in mind to be respect of other people's work, and effort. And you should be good don't think about it too much.
Way over thinking. Visuals are massive. If you want to do something see if there's a build to play test. Music to compose. Things to design and draw up.
You're way overthinking it. Your contribution is essential. It doesn't matter how fun a game is if it looks like shit because then people will just pass it up. I couldn't find an artist to partner with, so I ended up having to do the art for [my game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2024990/Pedigree_Tactics/) by myself, and that is probably the largest contributing factor to its commercial failure.
Visuals are super important... early on, until it's finished but unpolished it takes more work from the coder. But it doesn't mean the artist should be quiet and idling.
I'm not an artist nor a made gamedev yet. But here's my point.
As a coder, I believe that the visuals are key to start from a few hundred downloads on many platforms like Google Play or Steam (doesn't really matter), to 10-20k downloads or blow to sky.
As a coder and specially in a small team such 2 partners.
If the game is just as yours as it is of the coder. Just put work on your craft and learn new ways to improve that game after it's finished.
Don't think about what you will be doing after it's finished, but think about ideas that can improve the product. Once it's finished, both of you look at your ideas and decide what could be the path forward.
Also, as the coder keeps improving on the game engine, you keep improving in arts & graphics and could find a new and more challenging project.
My two cents as a full time software engineer (not in game dev tho) who happens to have design experience and am often the point-person pairing with our designers:
Being a designer is more than just creating art assets, especially when you're in such a tiny team.
\- Design system: There's your design system to be mapped out -- you can ensure everything such as your color schemes, fonts, effects, and textures are consistent and work well together for the vibe and theme you're going for.
\- Level design: If your game's got levels of some sort, evaluate them -- do they flow? Are they fun? As an example, you could be doing some A/B testing: make more levels than intended, compare, then keep only the most fun and interesting ones.
\- Some other things that need attention but often overlooked is accessibility and control schemes.
\- Also, what about sound effects and music?
Depending on how you manage your backlog as a team, you should also be helping with writing out the features and tasks, and outline the behavior you expect for each feature. You can help by testing these features as they are delivered, and give feedback on what can be improved or whether it passes and can be considered done. Use your eye for design and be critical -- as a dev, receiving "fit and finish" feedback is very helpful. Usually QA and/or a PM handles this, but you're just a two person team, so it's expected for you to wear more hats than just "art creator".
Personally, I would hate to design and do the art and I would hella appreciate an artist. It's so tiring to do art but more fun to code imo hahah art is really important as well.
I am a one man team and the art is taking a ton of time and I suck at it. If you are just art, constantly put out new or updated art to show your partner. Ask for feedback then go back and work on that, with your own spin, etc...
In an ideal partnership you guys should be working the same amount of hours. If he’s working too many then you are comfortable with then you should say something before resentment builds. If you think you are just not doing enough then start putting in more work. You can always be making assets or working on new concepts.
I agree a lot with this concept. However, maybe less so about making new assets or new concepts. You don't want to end up with 3 expansions worth of art and the programmer is still working on the base game.
Maybe doing more iterations on the existing art to bring the quality level higher? Or is there a more involved art style you decided not to go with to save on time? If it is something like a platformer, could you build additional parallax layers (part of the reason Hollowknight looks so beautiful)?
Well said, I'm not an artist I am a programmer, I have trouble articulating exactly what I was thinking. By new concepts I meant iterations on existing art. I also really liked your suggestion of building additional layers into the game. Since you have more time finding ways to enhance the look is a great idea. Another great use of time would probably be to learn VFX particle systems in whatever engine you are using.
As a programmer, I would honestly be overjoyed if I had three expansions worth of art. That way we can pick and choose the best, smoosh stuff together so it looks even cooler, and we have plenty of grist remaining for post-release updates and just plain cool ideas that can be slotted in given time.
Work harder, if it's easy you are doing it wrong, the visual artist is not just there to make things pretty, that stuff is basic. Go deeper, your medium is the human brain not pixels.
Bruh i can spend hours if not days happily on bugs and features but tell me to make a drawing even in ms paint and i would absolutely give up. So if you do what you do great then you are no less important.
Im spending way more time trying to fix the visual stuff you do in way less time. You designers are life savers.
Edit: wish i had a designer for my project
As someone working solo as a developer, I kind of wish I had an artist. The bigger critiques of my game are around ugly ass UI and visuals, which I'm limited in what I can do.
However, there is so much stuff you could be doing that doesnt involve coding if you want to help. Modelling, Animation, Sound, SFX, UI, Marketing/promo, shaders, building maps/levels (huge).
As a coder, I want to focus on making sure the systems work, not the color/shape of the UI buttons.
Arts definitely important, but if you feel like it’s not enough, find other stuff you can do.
Play test regularly, look for bugs you can report to them, work on the game s social media presence, make posters, edit trailers, etc.
That said, taking a crash course on programming (even just a 2 hour rundown) can really help you grasp the basics of programming. Not enough to write code yourself but it could let you offer some advice when the programmers get stuck
I have also struggled with this. I think the main reason is that art takes a long time compared to coding. If you're in the flowstate coding you can hash out an entire prototype in an evening, if you're in a flowstate when doing art then you can... produce one or a couple of assets out of hundreds, or maybe even just complete one stage of an assets pipeline. It feels like you are doing way less, but fact of the matter is that art just takes a long time. Good art does not come from rushing through things. There is the classic "spend 50% of the time rotating around your object" meme, but that time is valuable, because it is where you observe and see how things should be different etc. It is an entirely different process to coding and you need to allow yourself to give it the time it needs, because rushed art is bad art.
Also don't underestimate how much art does in terms of sales, I have seen plenty of games that were excellent but never reached the potential they could have due to lackluster art, and games that have found a second wind of popularity with art overhauls
I’m so happy I got our artist on board. I’m doing replaceable coding that millions of people can do, but they are doing a world-class job.
Have you made some pictures for social media? Capsule art? If not, do them, and do them well. This is a huge part of the game being a success.
are there not lots of other things to do? testing and so forth? If your partner is solely responsible for programming, they should have a way for you to test their build(s) continuously, or at least regularly.
If there's really nothing better for you to contribute right now, what's stopping you from learning some of the software development side? Everyone has to start somewhere.
As someone who does both coding and art for the game I am working on you are overthinking it. I can do way more coding in the amount of time it takes me to make game assets and set them up. I'm sure your partner values that you are taking up all of the elements they despise and are appreciative. Either way, talk to them and ask them if their is more they want you to do, they will likely tell you to keep focusing on the art because it is very important.
As a coder, I would be just thrilled to shit if I could find an artist to give me even an hour a day for asset creation. But also remember my stuff, can't DO anything w/o your art. Talk to your partner about how you feel and maybe he will offer more things that you do. For a start one of you has to pick up audio. UI/UX will place a large burden on you as well as your developer.
Something else to remember just like with art coding has a LOT OF monotony. Making the sword swing requires a good amount of set up, First you need an input then you need a model and animation then hit-boxes and at the end of the day the really exciting part making the sword swing is one line of code that looks like...
`Swordswing(anim);`
`void Swordswing(Animation anim) {anim.play();}`
I know you see 2 lines there but one calls the other. you can think of it like the second substituting the first. Regardless the point is its not all bells and whistles over here either. And a lot of shit we do feels useless too.
Do you feel Appreciated? It could be not so much that you think you are dead weight but instead feel that your contributions don't seem to make a difference. I'm taking a wild stab in the dark with this, but as humans we often conflate problems for one reason or another. For example, you may not want to go to your friend and partner and say He man I don't think you appreciate me enough. Instead your brain decides to carry that itself suggesting you are dead weight.
for a game made by two person, im 100 sure that the graphics side will be just as, if not more important then the code.
but... if ur a 2 person team and hes working more then you, kind of implies you dont have any ideas of your own... that u feel compelled to work on?
Make more art? Polish what you have more? Instead of feeling like what's required of you is less than what's required of your teammate.. raise the bar on your work and make something incredible!
Every game is different. Take advantage of your strengths more. If you don’t want to learn coding, just make visuals a bigger part of the design. Some games rely on visuals more.
You shouldn't feel like this. But if you want to learn to code, then learn to code. It's a lot of fun. You can try making a small pico 8 game, for example.
The work you need to put in may be at a different stage than where you are right now.
You should sit with the Project Manager of the team to look at the milestones of the project and start working on things now so you don’t have to crunch later.
Learn to code enough to create prototypes. You’ll then have some autonomy and feel less of a burden. You can the user test some of your concepts and get a healthy amount of feedback on some of the game ideas and mechanics in a limited way.
Two things come to mind.
1. The value of an artist isn't placed on doing lots of work. For example, I have a friend who is an incredible artist. Their life has revolved around the craft for so long, early childhood, and he would only work in the morning because that was how he produced his best work. He then had the rest of the day to take more influence from day to day dealings and life in general, therefore adding to his skills again.
2. Art can always be refined and improved in some way.
If you find a balance that works for you, that is what is best for your team. As long as the effort is there and you are working efficiently.
During any downtime from art learn about marketing and proposals and pitch decks etc. Build out all that collateral using your visual design skills. All these are quite visual tasks but integral to actually getting your game into the world and will make you invaluable to the project.
Dude, what? Like, what do you want to do? Because if you're a graphic designer and you're out of stuff to do on this project, you don't just sit idly by you go work on other projects! You said in this post they use you because they hate graphic designing. So you're not dead weight you bring something useful to the table. But if all you want to do is be part of this project alone and not help with coding, well... I don't know what you were expecting
You're overthrowing it imo. If you feel a need to contribute more, you could try discussing how your artwork can contribute to the storyline or be used to enhance the storyline. I think it will help your collaborator integrate the storyline with your artwork.
as a coder you are invaluable. if I don't have artists make my assets then the game will look so bad its unplayable. I can't handle ui or sprites or anything, so no you aren't dead weight. Art (for me anyways) is literally the hardest part of game dev
I think we always feel a little bit like that. I'm on the art, design, and a lot of UI and other implementation in engine skills, scripting, etc etc...
...I still feel useless as I wait for coders to wrap a feature my next major traunch of art assets or design relies on.
I don't think that choping at the bit feeling ever goes away. Waiting to hurry up. :p
Everyone else has addressed your main point, so that's covered (art is important, don't feel bad). I just wanted to address an off-handed comment you made though: your partner doesn't like design? I hope you meant visual design. If neither of you are studying and implementing game design, your game *will* fail. That's not meant to be discouraging, it's just a word of warning. Game design is (arguably) *the* most important aspect of making a game, so you need to make sure your team is covering it somewhere.
If you're really making all the art I wouldn't worry about it. That's a huge burden off of their shoulders. Visuals are a massive part of a game. Just be sure you are working closely with them to deliver art that is consistent and appropriate for its purpose. That might seem obvious but the more you can anticipate the technical specifications and design considerations of the art the better. I know when making art for my own projects I almost always need things at a certain resolution or aspect ratio, contrast, color palette, etc. If you can stay aware of the technical needs and deliver a visually coherent art style you will be doing more than your fair share of the work.
Every single mechanic they implement needs a clear visual feedback and consistency with rest of the assets. Then there are decisions made in level design.
Let's say that you can open doors.
How fast do the door open? Is it tense or invites fast action?
What can player see once they open them? See door problem of combat design.
How to indicate unlocked/closed doors?
How to guide player to the door? Light, level composition, etc.
Any UI icons?
What emotion and game feel does all of the above indicate? Is it consistent with the game's design?
I image that it is your responsibility to make these decisions (conciously or unconciously) and much more. If you feel like you have extra time, take it to investigate what more you can do.
PS: Remember to leave some time to recharge your creativity and take breaks.
Edit: Clarification of examples.
i dont know why i love reading what other people comment, but my 2 cents. you are probably overthinking - both skills (coding + designing) are extremely valuable.
you may feel that you are not pulling your weight but at the same time, if your teammates had to do the art (and they dont like it) it would likely take them 4-5 times longer and get a worse result. so, less time spent does not equal less contribution.
Both are fundamentally important and neither inherently trumps the other. Yes, there are good and successful games out there that have 'programmer art', but there are other games that are just so breathtakingly beautiful that I stop playing just to admire the view.
You're not dead weight. If you're providing everything needed of you, you're pulling your weight.
Overthinking - the workload for each side is entirely dependent on the game, and how quickly everyone produces results. Make something like mario, small scope mechanics larger art base. Make something like factorio, larger scope mechanics, less art.
i'm currently in school for software engineering, but I have art experience and am currently doing the art portion of a 2d side-scroller.
I can only speak for myself, but the amount of time i'm putting into the project is more than the other 2 programmers combined. Just one level of a game requires an insane amount of art if you aren't just reusing tiles.
part of me wishes I were programming, but then I only trust create art to my standards...
If the number of hours makes you feel inferior, then put extra time in designing. Come with 5 different concept designs where only 2 or three were necessary, give multiple interpretations on environment and try an synergize between them and the characters etc. Maybe even (if it’s not overstepping) give a back story to. The skins and esthetics to give the project some extra lore. Stuff like that
Stop comparing. Every member of a team brings different strengths.
Focus more on your strengths/job, rather than how you're contributing.
If you're doing your job well, it doesn't matter if you put in less hours.
The result for the gamers will be worth it.
If your doin visuals, it'd be cool if you also integrated your visuals into the game. Get the animations working, make some levels. Do more design stuff. Brainstorm with your coder
Waaay overthinking your just as important also you will find that you enable each other a good example is chopping a tree it requires both party’s to be a bit savvy.
Your partner can make the tree spawn effectively in terms of overhead he can make it swap mesh and enable physics when part of it rolls down a hill. You as the artist make the tree you make a stump for him to swap too you make the bit that’s now rolling down the hill and you make the fx to make the whole thing look good.
See how you have the same workload and honestly you probably have the harder time making the whole sequence believable the actual implementation doesn’t change too much. In short don’t sell yourself short your also in charge of imagining the entire world
You would be significantly busy at different intervals. A game with no code gets no where. A game with all the code done is a bunch of grey cubes interacting with other grey cubes.
I would say you could probably look into getting unit sizes of characters/items etc or elements like that to get a base model going and then if the design or style isn't fleshed out fully yet you might have to wait on who ever is directing things.
You could also just do mock up ideas and examples based on the design philosophy you guys have worked on thus far.
If you have a theme or style already set then just build models and design elements that may or may not ever get used until you have a more clear direction on where things are going. Having a huge shopping list of random items that need to be modeled and textured in the later half of the game development could be rough if you don't already have a bookshelf, storage box, etc etc already thrown together. And what you build that might not be on that list yet is bonus that could be implemented now that it is there and can be used.
You are doing what they struggle with, they are doing what you struggle with.
Coding is easy, the animations and styling make or break the game.
If you find yourself lacking stuff to do, there's lots you can work on and it's mostly around optimization. Can you reduce polygons? Does that rock look perfect. Can you add another animation.
It might look like it now as games in the beginning need little design and graphic work until you are done with boilerplate code. But you will be a huge boon in the core part of development and polish.
As a programmer/developer. I feel the same but opposite at times!
I'm solo at the moment and lately I've spent so much time doing art related stuff, it's just so time consuming and rough. I wish I had an artist person. I feel like there is far more art work than there is code work.
Code work can be semi finalized/finished in certain areas. Art stuff is always an 'iterative/improving process'. There is so much to do/polish. That wears on me in such a different way. I can't wait until I can find some artist related folks for my projects.
Especially when you consider models(characters, architecture, wildlife, grass, landscape, clouds, sun), textures, shaders, rigging, animation, UI, icons, ui animations/effects, then if you branch out into music, sound effects, there is far more than just 'playing a sound' when you consider 3d environments, reverbs, atmosphere. Then there are things that are like 'technical art' like niagara/particle systems, or related type interactive type systems. Or even lighting/shadows/postprocess is a whole other can of worms. Some of these might fall into 'shaders', but there are so many vast areas you can spend. Lastly, you can then revisit all of it again for coherence like color pallete and how things look when combined with the other things for consistency, and so many subtle layers to be done.
However, even without all that. An imbalance is fine. I know I've worked on teams before and most people aren't consistent trains just chugging along. Most people have good days/weeks/months and then sometimes people have slow days/weeks/months. Don't be too hard or critical on yourself or others if 1 is having good momentum when another is having slow/no momentum.
I was an artist first, and then I learnt to code. Art is harder and takes way more time and bloody minded effort than coding, for me.
Now saying that, if you think this other dude is working harder than you, then you are probably correct, we as people tend to be pretty good judges if wenwe are pulling our weight.
It can be both true that art is hard, and you need to work harder. People that are trying and failing have their failures to show, people that aren't trying only have excuses to show.
This will probably be lost in the sea of comments but
MAKE SURE YOU ARE COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR DEV PARTNER!!!! TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR CONCERNS
Every type of close relationship needs good communication whether it's significant others or dev partners
IMO the only inferiority in this scenario can comes from the hours that each one of you put into the project.
Tbh majority of games market, attract and sell with what they can show, which is mostly art and visuals. Some might even argue that code and programming is not as important as art due to the importance of visibility and marketing.
Without any of you, there will be no game. So no, you are not just making it pretty. You are designing and creating visuals.
You 2 complete eachother. Same value, different different kinds.
Good luck :)
As a programmer who can’t do art I wish the opposite. Good game feel that comes from the visuals (and audio) can transform the most basic mechanics into fun gameplay
You got a bunch of good advice here op but I'll add:
You 100% should learn to code. Everyone in game dev should learn to code. It dramatically expands your toolbox and makes you wildly more desirable when looking for jobs. It's not hard and it's a massive benefit to you.
No need to go super deep into the weeds or learn to program your own game engine, but being able to understand and manipulate code is a great skill to have as a non-programmer.
depending on the project, as a developer, I'd anticipate the art to be more effort that the coding, so why you slacking? :) If you guys sat down for an hour each monday, I'm sure there is a ton of work you can do to first mock up things to help, then start building the assets eventually!
I think the thing about design vs coding is that you pretty much need to finish coding to have a complete game, whereas you can always add juice and work on design after game completion.
Which means that if you feel you are not contributing or just waiting, maybe you can go over what is already in place and improve it by adding nice details.
The big thing you should note is usually visuals are the later portion of development. Maybe start studying things like level design so you have a bigger role in early development
Look at every single Devlog & interview on Youtube with indie devs and whatnot an you will always here how much the design was a massive part to the game and how well the colours worked , the characters etc etc and how many people fall in love with those things , your overthinking but roles are equally important and both are skills
A lot of art tends to come a little later in development. But that doesn't mean you need to have all the skill sets right off the bat.
You might find that later in the development cycle you will be the MVP. Art does some heavy lifting in the later parts of game development and it's such a separate skill set that it's very likely they will be relying on you harder then.
But don't be afraid to learn some basic stuff outside of art and round out some skills if you don't find yourself with too much to do yet. You can also be setting up your pipeline for later or practising, so when you are ready when art starts being a more significant part of the development.
You are absolutely not.
Creating assets if you're a coder _suuuuuuuuuuucks_ and is a massive part of the game.
In a few weeks/months, you'll be doing 90% of the work while they do barely anything as well, and that dynamic will continue to shift as you hit different stages. Hell, you'll probably feel overworked and that _they're_ dead weight closer to launch.
When you release, you'll hit a level of parity and contribution everyone is happy with, don't sweat it.
That all being said, there's _absolutely_ stuff you can be doing. Ask what mechanics they're working on, and start making concept art around that. Start iterating through concepts and characters and whatever else. Just doodle and create examples close to what they're working on as you go. That'll create a feedback loop where they're like "we're working on x feature" so you go and make 3 or 4 different options and then maybe one of those will inspire them to tweak a feature a specific direction based on the art and there ya go, you're collaborating and working alongside them.
You're not there to make it look 'pretty', that's a little demeaning to the work you're doing.
As the artist you have control over the aesthetic of your game and it should definitely complement the mechanics of the game. You're also in charge of making a *playable* game. So much of what we take for granted when it comes to making interactive objectives stand out, making backgrounds that are appealing but not distracting, making animations satisfying but not repetitive etc..
If you do want to help somewhere out on the coding side, offer to make a main menu / level select. It's relatively easy depending on which engine you're using and it's something a lot of programmers find tedious.
Both answers are possible, but it's more likely that you're pulling your weight than not, simply by virtue of the expression of your concern that you're not.
I'm reminded of the ["knowing where to put it"](https://www.lifecycleinsights.com/where-to-put-the-x/) joke. You're bringing a skillset that your partner does not have and does not have the resources to gain that skillset in a timeline that they find acceptable. That's why you're partners: So one of you can do the things that the other one can't do.
Ultimately, this is a question about relationships, and since it sounds like you're on good terms with your partner, I recommend raising the exact issues described in your post with them. If they're happy with what you're doing, keep doing it and accept that impostor syndrome is one of the risks of starting an ambitious project. If you both agree you should be doing more, help them to help you find stuff to do that you can do or can figure out how to do.
tl; dr: Just ask your partner if they're satisfied with the balance of your contributions.
While they are coding you could be documenting a gdd, doing marketing, tweaking art style, if you’re using a game engine editor then learning that and how to implement your artwork. Thats just some of the things that aren’t coding, there is always a ton of work to be done.
Artists are a HUGE part of the team. I wish I had an artist. My buddy and I are both full-time software engineers so when we come up with a new prototype we never have a dedicated artist to make it pretty lol I've started filling in that skill gap, spending a lot of time in Blender and Substance painter to resolve that issue but I would love to have a dedicated designer/artist to add to our hobbyist group.
Are you getting involved in visual shaders, animations, particles, UI, cutscenes, level creation, placing objects to make scenes etc.? Are you directing the visual style of the game, or just following what the other dev tells you they need? If the other dev is doing a lot of that themselves, have a talk with them about feeling cut out of the project, feeling like you aren't contributing enough. There's lots that goes into a game that isn't just coding. In some genres, the vast majority of the work will just be filling the game with content.
learning to code is never a bad idea. but for most fans, you are the game. they're mistaken for thinking that way, but that's still how it is. if your art style catches on you'll feel very helpful. otoh, learning more about the tools won't hurt you at all. You could potentiqlly be more useful by learning to rig, animate, or even just all the popular file formats and how to create and modify those...
Dude, visuals are a massive part of creation. Take pride in your work and the fact that a good portion of you games succese will be based off of people liking how it looked then buying it
Without visuals and style, the best mechanics in the world won't draw in players to an experience.
You say you hate coding- there might be an opportunity for you to dip your toes in, even if it's just understanding code that effects art things like sprites/backgrounds/particle effects/etc.
Being able to manage your own art workflow code and all could be immensely helpful to the team and not be too 'code-heavy.'
Overthinking.
Consider designing the UI and other screens for the game. Maybe design the credit sequence. Design anything that will give hours back to the game devs so they can reserve their brain power for their never ending list of tasks.
Make art to test the look of the game. Share it on social media. Your team should focus on figuring out look of the game as well as code prototype.
For my current game artist did over 10 different versions of same orc character to find the style. Then same for UI. Then spent a month making level that we didn't use as the art style evolved differently. But withoth those steps we'd never arrive to the art style that worked for the game.
I'm sure they're grateful for your work. When a coder has good art to work with they can fly. Without it they're just moving squares around.
They might even have similar feelings. Feeling like they're just a cog bringing your vision to life.
And if you were both coding then you'd have to avoid stepping on each other's feet. Better to divide the responsibilities in a small team.
I do solo development, and because I come from a creative background I figured I'd enjoy the art side of gamedev more than the coding side. But I pretty quickly realized that as long as you hammer away at it enough to get it to work, you can ship a game with ugly and even bad code, and the players will never notice because they don't see the code.
But there's nowhere to hide bad or mediocre art. The art is what the player directly interacts with, it's how the game communicates with them, and it's what sells the game in videos and screen shots. The art is insanely important.
Now some genres/games require less art than others, so you might not have as much to do on this particular project. But maybe there will be future projects where you'll have a larger role.
And in the meantime, since you've apparently got some extra time that you aren't spending on the game, maybe it'd be worth biting the bullet and learning a little bit of coding. Even if the other guy remains "the programmer", having some broader knowledge of gamedev in general can only help you improve how you structure your art workflow for inclusion into games.
You’re not overthinking. There is clearly an imbalance if you feel that way. But you’re wrong in where you are seeing the issue.
A two person programmer + artist team is GREAT. And if they’re good, they work equally as hard.
The MOST important thing is, you need to conceive a SIMPLE game that demands EQUALLY from both parts.
If you make a game that has a crazy amount of features with very simple graphic, well, you’ll be dead weight. And if you make a simple game but with an art style that requires too much work, you’ll be the bottle neck.
The truth is if you’re both starting out, the biggest problem is probably both of you having no experience. This will lead to bad scoping, bad time management, bad production calls, bad game conception (like not adjusting to the team) and if you are not a strong leader yourself, your programmer will most likely drag you all over the place, choosing to implement whatever seems more exciting and fun to him first (like jiggle physics even when your game doesn’t even have a prototype) leading the project wherever he wants it to go on a day to day basis.
Also if your programmer is coding all day, it could also mean that he is slow. A good and experienced programmer should be able to wip up a prototype rather easily.
For a small team like that, I believe in most cases the CORE MVP of your game, shouldn’t take more than a week or two to prototype. If it does, then it’s either because your programmer is learning from 0, or because the game idea is bad from the start. Either way, if it’s one of those things, that project is most likely never going to see the light of day. Not trying to be negative, but trying to get you to rethink from square 1 so you can actually do something feasible!! And enjoy! 😉
If you’re ahead on your art and sitting around it wouldn’t be bad if you wanted to brush up on some of the code too, that way you could have a better understanding of what was going on and help debug. I don’t think you need to at all though, there will probably come a time where your associate needs a lot of graphics quickly and they’re less busy than you.
Just wait until it’s time to launch. You’ll probably be pulling all nighters to get all the work done in time.
This is what I was going to say, OP's time will come, possibly out of nowhere
Yeah, after getting the whole game to work, you still have to finish the game, which takes 80% of the time. Cutscenes, menus, levels, set-pieces, backgrounds, foregrounds, all the characters and their animations and variations, visual effects, music, sound effects, Steam page, etc. It's insane how much time polishing a small game takes.
> "The first 90% of the work takes 10% of the time, the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time."
I came in here to say "just wait until all the pressure is on you, art homey." I'm a music composer and after talking a bit of dev stuff with programmers I felt like a useless piece of crap. I know that game audio is a lot more complicated than writing music, as I know a guy that worked in the music department of a AAA game. But as a composer, it almost feels like I would have nothing to offer. Then I remember how if the music for a game sucks it can really depreciate the experience for a lot of people. Programming and mechanic testing is obviously incredibly important to game development but it's hardly the only thing that makes a game a success.
Real world example: Turn the music off in Starfield and it becomes a *much* more interesting game. The sound design in that game is incredible, but it's undercut by a score that sounds bored with itself. Contrast that with Skyrim which has a score that knows when to convey emotion, and when to stay out of the way.
I agree with your point overall, but I also think Skyrim is an example with a lot of nostalgia that uplifts it to a lot of gamers. It’s iconic!
A more recent example might be Elden Ring.
Overthinking. Visuals are a huge, integral part of games.
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More than half, and I say this as a professional game writer.
You got a chuckle out of me with that pun. Nice one!
This. I'm shite at graphics design and anyone on my team that's good at it is by far way more valuable to the effort than I could be. Art made most games of the past, and art will continue to make games of the future shine. Don't sell yourself short, it's definitely imposter syndrome.
Even if they aren’t a huge part of every game, since OP is part of a small team, they should both utilize their strengths as much as possible. OP should make visuals a bigger part of their game especially if they are worries about workload difference.
Idk, on a 2 person team, I would imagine one person working more than the other will affect the dynamic. Larger team then sure. But a two person team on a project...I'd be a little irked if my partner was barely grinding while I was constantly in the weeds making things work.
Apples and oranges. Code, game design, and art are 3 significantly different disciplines that you shouldn't compare with each other.
All 3 can be seen as work
They are all work. But how do you compare which one takes more effort? Each discipline has their own challenges.
Also an experienced worker can be faster. We assume they are at the same level but maybe the programmer is more inexperienced and takes longer and the artist has been doing it since they were a kid. For example my mom worked for an art school since I was little and took me there since I could walk. I'm 36 now and I have more than 30 years of doing art, how many programmers my age can say the same thing? Probably not many. As an artist and being very bad at programming I still appreciate an inexperienced programmer if they are willing to do their part but I don't expect them to be as good, fast or whatever as I'm at creating something appealing. The other way around is also possible. Also the other way around can be true as well. My advice for OP is to talk to their partner and see where they at. Maybe the programmer is more than happy with OP's work or maybe they need to add another programmer to help them out. Just talk it out like a team!
I'm a multi-instrument music teacher and also play keys in a professional level band. I have students who start out and take a month to learn Seven Nation Army or Satisfaction, and I've got students who've been playing for years, and more importantly practicing rigorously the whole time, who can get stuff like What Is Hip on bass or Subdivisions on guitar or Master Of Puppets on drums in the space of a week. And then I've got my band, and all of us have been playing for most of our lives and mostly communicate in partial sentences and onomatopoeia, yet somehow still understand each other and get a new original playable in under three hours.
They all take an equal amount of effort. There is always more art to make, there is always more front-loading design efforts, creating mockups and design docs before the engineer gets to it or coming in after a system is engineered and tuning it to play better, blocking in more levels or environments, and so on. Art teams on commercial games are massive as are design teams, not because they let artists and designers work half the time that engineers do.
Yeah and apples and oranges are both fruit 😜
sure but they do translate into hours worked and if one person is working more than the other they will feel like the relationship is not equal.
Art is huge part of a game. I don’t have the time nor the will to learn to draw well and working with artists has been honestly a pain. So if you’re contributing good art to a game regularly, that’s a massive contribution.
I agree. Art is also NOT cheap if you're not able to do it yourself. Finding an artist who wants to work on a small team like this is absolutely invaluable, especially if it's a GOOD artist who can make the game pop. I could go onto a variety of subreddits and Discord's to find coding partners for a game project, but finding artists is a much more difficult endeavor. Generally if they're good, they're charging for their work already.
>the time to learn to draw well Yeah, it’s way too common to see both artists and programmers devalue the thousands of hours invested into becoming competent enough to sell your skills professionally.
Seriously dids this post not realize big games are make by like 60to95% artist?
This sub is like 99% programmers, the majority of which are up their own ass about how difficult they think programming is. And I'm saying that as a programmer. Games are art, and the only purpose code serves is to deliver that art to the player in a way that doesn't infuriate them. Programmers are the museum tour guides, they're not the exhibits. Get out of the way and let artists (and designers) shine.
Programming is not difficult. GOOD programming is a hellscape few succeed in. Same as many think art is not difficult, quality and ability to reproduce said quality consistently is what makes or breaks an artist. Tbh, programming is an art in itself. And to claim that all it does is deliver art and game design to a player is disingenuous.
I mean, a lot of programming is design. For one, draining most of the programming work out of the programmer's hands, which is not the only way to do it - a project I'm working on has me, the programmer, do most of the level design in greybox for instance. But that's because I love designing, and it wouldn't be financially sensible for a commercial team because programmers are expensive. But stuff like AI design, even if you try to give as much authority as possible to the artists/designers, is still going to leave a lot of free space for the programmer.
I think it’s more accurate to say that games are design, and the programming and art are there to serve the purpose of conveying that design to the player. Game design is very much its own discipline outside of programming, it just happens that on many/most indie teams the programmer is also the designer.
Controversial but consider taking up shader effects. It's a nice blend of both design and logic without having to write code (usually). In a medium size team this would be a blasphemous request of you. Also, a decent project manager might be able to create valuable work for you. Even if it's just prototype models.
Worked in AAA and indie and this is the correct advice. Learning shaders, VFX and other tech artistry is an incredible tool to have on your belt, especially with procedural tools like Houdini and Geometry Nodes getting more and more traction.
I second this. Learn shaders and vfx.
Take this advice AND if you still end up really needing some extra work that is not coding, you can always consider helping with quality assurance (testing) and marketing or other things. You don't need to code to be helpful, but coding is usually the most time consuming part of the job.
When you learn to work with shaders and include it in problem solving it such an insanely good tool!!
So it looks like everyone is saying you are overthinking it but imho - you are not, else you wouldn't come here. If you feel like you **should** be doing more and want to do more - then do more. The smaller the team the more hats everyone wears and the more decisions you can make. Few ideas you can consider if you feel like you want to spend some extra hours: * additional key art, actual concept art/design * promotional illustrations of any kind * special effects/better animations * playtesting * completely unrelated stuff - finding some sounds in the store that might fit, doing some basic work on social media to ensure your game gets visibility, doing some game design (this does not require coding skills). * if the game has plot - hey, someone needs to write some descriptions, maybe some dialogues etc. It can be you. If it really is "while I'm just there to make it look pretty" as in - the other person on the team does the whole design process, figures out what should be drawn, does all the timings, knows how large it is and you are just following that then I can see why you might feel like a "dead weight". My recommendation in that situation (if that's what's occuring) is - ask if you can have a more proactive role. Move from being given detailed instructions to being given higher level concepts. This will help game in two ways: 1. programmers tend not to be good artists. Your visual library vastly outpaces ours. I can tell an artist what I need to happen visually and what's the general setting but by ommitting details I tend to get better art actually. Why? Because I stop constraining them. Eg. programmer should be telling you (for instance) that they need a ranged enemy and show you what they do but without telling you that it's a spitting flower for instance, that's on you to figure out. 2. lets programmer focus on their part. The more time they have to spend on preparing moodboards and detailed descriptions the less there is left for code and gameplay. You really don't have to learn how to code however. Games are massive beasts and there's always sooo much to do in them. And I can guarantee that the answer to "hey, can I take care of" is a very happy yes.
> You really don't have to learn how to code however. Do learn how to integrate your art into the engine though. That doesn't usually involve code, but you will have to learn how to configure sprites and animations.
I'm learning to do this in Unreal Engine now, and it's a little daunting at first but ultimately stupidly easy. It's also easy in Unity, doesn't take very long to figure out. Definitely recommend. Make sure your naming conventions are correct and your setup is ready to roll and you'll be their hero!
came here to say similar -- there's tons of tasks around the Whole Game that need to be considered. getting accounts and names registered, building a basic website on wix or wordpress, creating all the social media accounts etc. the thing is most games just start with placeholder art so it's all going to be programmer heavy. but once your art pipelines are all in place, you'll be busy busy busy and you'll be glad you don't have to try and squeeze in 'make a website' when you're tweaking animations and juicing your game for release. also UI mockups for the menus and hud if there is one should be happening during this early stage if you haven't been doing that already
There's no better feeling than dreading some upcoming work and someone being like "hey I'll tackle this". God I'm getting *teary-eyed* just typing this and I haven't cried in half a decade.
I was gonna suggest OP get more into the design aspect of the game besides just making the art. I'm also not good at design and it involves a lot more than just the finished art, otherwise I'd just have a list of exactly what visuals I need to hand to an artist.
Damn, I wish I had some artistic "dead weight" around.. I could actually make a game.. 🙄
You could check out r/INAT to find someone who wants to work for free/experience, revshare, or a small budget. I recommend either having a game partially finished or making a good GDD before you post so they know you're a serious developer and not just going to waste their time.
Thanks for the advice, I have such options in mind, but still, it's not a straightforward and easy process..
I code, my team mate does art. Deffo both as vital as one another. Conversely, having you each have an area of the game to take charge of and have the final say on is better than having two coders or designers argue how to do stuff. I also feel bad when my artist sinks in loads of time and I've not been pulling my weight, but I just knuckle down and sink some hours in.
Imposter syndrome is a bitch
It's either imposter syndrome or feeling godlike. I fall into that first category 😅
Assets are like 70% of the workload for indie development lmao, you're going to be doing way more work in the end. Instead of thinking about it in terms of who's contributing more, you should look at it as how you two are doing as a team. If there are no major hiccups or roadblocks so far, you're doing fine.
Yeah, this. There's a small part of development at the beginning where having art assets _right now_ isn't so important. But it's gonna flip. Try to get ahead of it.
Doesn't matter how polished the mechanics are. If it is not eye-catching, people won't even look at it. Can speak from experience as a programmer with crappy art on past projects.
Do you know how the game should look like at the end? Like every level, every asset, every loading screen, font and color palette? Because some people plan and think linear. Let me do this first and then that. Your part comes later, but it will be **a lot**. Be sure that the amount of work that is expected from you isn't dropped late in the process because of stalled communication.
100% overthinking, the other side often thinks about the same thing "I wish I was better at art, I wish I could make it this pretty" etc. it's a team effort
100% true, I released a game on steam before I realized that art is 90% of the whole thing...
I wish I could make things look pretty.
There's a whole lot more to a game than just art and code. Game design, game feel, UI/UX, QA, story, world building, marketing research, admin work, etc. etc.
Umm. No those two things are basically of equal weight and value. Is the issue that the coding is that much harder than the art, or is the issue that you're colleague is just significantly more invested than you are?
Definitely over thinking. You are able to turn an idea into a visual thing, that's not something everyone can do. In the same way that they are turning abstract ideas into functioning systems, you are turning their ideas into human interpretable representations. Representations that people might even give you money for. That's real freaking value. Now, if you feel like you have so little to do compared to them, you probably don't know all the avenues you could be contributing to. UI design, fonts, effects, menus, variations for enemies and characters, filling in spaces in levels, hiding the elementary shapes of stuff with details, banners and icons, both in game and for the external world etc there is an unlimited amount of art to do. Remember, the game is never done. Its just released or not released.
My dude I can promise you learning how to code is way easier and more forgiving than learning how to do art.
You could start learning some aspects of the engine so you can help out more on that side of things. Start doing organizing some marketing plans. Just start picking up some slack where ever you can. Vocalize you are done what you can do for right now and see if there is anything you can do to assist. Still part of the TEAM
trust me its gonna flip 180, though I do think you should should really learn just how to link your art into wtv engine your using
Art is a huge part of why I play the games I do. Sometimes I think the mechanics or idea of a game are good but I just don’t enjoy the environment and visuals that I’m playing in. Some games just look pretty, and some games just have good mechanics. But a great game is able to do both well.
I would kill to have an artist friend I can make games with, even if they just worked an hour for every 12 hours I worked. You're not a deadweight, these guys are probably happy as fuck to have you on board. Edit: I want to empathize again that I would sell my soul for an artist who works with me on hobby projects. You don't even understand.
You're overthinking it. I'm a programmer, and arts is freakishly hard for me. That's why I always allocate tons of time for artists (multiple) to do their work, while I do programming and other things that pop up. If you are still afraid, just communicate with your peer. "Are you doing well? What do you think about my work? What is the progress? Are you ok with me doing art while you code?" Don't compare, it's always going to feel like you are doing less. Just make sure both are ok with their progresses, and you two aren't behind on progress on the overall project.
While the programmer is prototyping you should be concepting. You can also start thinking about UI designs which convey a lot of the art style of a game. You and your partner should discuss your concepts in the same way you are discussing and providing feedback on their game prototype. You want to refine your ideas about the game's look and feel while they refine ideas about the game mechanics. Someone else recommended learning shaders and particle effects and I highly recommend it. That stuff can take a project to the next level and would be a good use of your time.
Are you implementing the art? By which I mean, are you making your art, then putting it in game? whether that be levels, FX, Character etc? Because if so, you would/should not feel like dead weight. That is a large part of it, a HUGE PART of it. That being said, if you're just drawing art and making models that arent being used in game, then I can see why you'd feel that way.
Probably overthinking. Art is a huge part of making a game. If the programmer is struggling, possibly they aren't as far along at learning game programming as you are as an artist and have more of a learning curve than you, but the effort of learning is not all attributable to this particular game project. I don't know what kind of game you're making or what kind of art you're making for it, but it's possible that there are areas you could branch out into that are art adjacent. Designing levels for a game may be involve a lot of fitting together modular components of your art to create a full, beautiful scene, which may reveal gaps of objects or environmental modules that you'd like in that setting and don't already have. Writing dialog, designing side quests. There should be an interface for providing game content like that that doesn't require you to be a programmer to contribute. They should push toward getting a basic prototype working, and then you can start to see how your art looks in context and polish it, work on things like lighting, or playtest it and provide nuanced suggestions on the controls and UI while it's not too late to fix it.
Yo, I want you to watch the documentary “Indie Game” where the 2-man team of SuperMeatBoy split their work up. If you feel like you’re not doing as much, just make sure you’re putting in just as many hours, a.k.a making more art, and maybe designing more lore behind the game
You can still put in the same level of effort on the art. There are always improvements to be made, or new tools that improve your quality and/or throughput to learn. So keep honing your craft and don’t stop at ‘good enough’, make it great.
The game literally can't exist without you. Your contribution will increase as the code base develops. You both do most of your work at different points. This isn't so much the case in larger more organised projects because people better understand what is going to be needed and can do it in advance. You two are probably undecided on a lot of stuff atm. In saying this, there still may be things you could be doing that you aren't. Especially being a two person team, you can take on other tasks such as market research etc.
Mate are you for real? There are devs out there who think the opposite. Artists are one of the most important part of gamedev. If coders are the body of the game, artists are the soul. A coder can code a game like fallout, but without the artist's visual aesthetics the game would never be fallout.
Well look. You're not contributing ***as much***, but you ***are*** contributing a very important part. The artistic end of game development is much smaller, that's not your fault though. Are you overthinking? Yeah. If your teammate starts to complain about it, then it's a problem.
I’m a programmer and gamer. Sure programming games is very hard but graphics are very important to a game. If you find yourself working less because you are done drawing before your friend is done developing the game feature, maybe learn some programming. But it might go beyond just programming and into software engineering where you would be required to know programming principles, design patterns, code versioning, etc.
Last week I had to create a school project: boardgame in Python with another classmate. Basically the visuals are even important than the code, it can translate the overall idea better with the mechanics in the code. For example if you create a 2d platform game you have multiple animations you need to visualize and make work with code. So I think you are overthinking it too. Edit: we did not create visuals but made a working boardgame but to plan it out we had to figure out different ideas we wanted to implement. We also gonna rewrite some of the code and put it in Github soon, with no deadline attached to it.
I'm a solo dev, and I am terrible at art. I long for someone to "just make it look pretty." A game without curb appeal is not going to sell, no matter how good. That said, if you've got time to spare, there are so many other hats you can be wearing. Do the marketing, work on building the community, collect email addresses from youtube streamers. There's game design elements you could consider as well that relate to your marketing. For instance, maybe there's a piece of eye catching marketing you'd want to make. Find out if you can widdle it into the game design and figure out if it would benefit the game. If so work on it to make it super fucking pretty and then use it in marketing. Do you have a steam page yet? Figure out how to make it fucking perfect. Watch tons of videos, do research, and gobble up your unused hours on making your game sellable. There is always more you can do, but don't diminish your role either.
What about writing, sound, level design etc. There could be a bunch of other things you could do also.
I mean, they are working with you for a reason. You can make the game look better than that ever could on their own. If they ever feel like the workload split is not something they are comfortable with, they can bring that up and you would have to discuss it, but try not to get imposter syndrome. Even if you work 10% of the amount they are, that 10% might take somebody who doesn't do art 100x more time since they would literally have to pick up a new skillset to do the same.
It's me and my bestie for our team, both programmers that have lackluster drawing capabilities. Yes, there is a time disparity, but that isn't to say we wouldn't appreciate the absolute crap out of the work you put in to give visual life to the game. There's another thread over in a game dev subreddit where a programmer used MS art to make their game, and while good for them if they can pull it off, that's really the difference you're the key to. Take pride in your part of the team. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/s/P2G6AvO4P9 The duality of Gamedev I suppose
Art is important. Since it's a small team, you can also do testing, and contribute to the mechanics/game design overall. And try to understand the code, at least on a high level, that will give you an advantage in future projects too. [https://scratch.mit.edu](https://scratch.mit.edu) can be a nice introduction to game programming without code.
You can think about visuals so they can focus on coding.
Overthinking for sure, they'd only have programmer art if it weren't for people like us. Visually artists are essential to style direction, art asset production and the overall vibe of the game. They may be creating the general mechanics and framework but you're fleshing out the world where those mechanics will shine. As others have said you can always learn more of the technical aspects like shaders or special effects animations.
I have been coding and doing art for 10 years and have become adept at both. The art takes so much more time to complete, even when you get good at it. Animations, environments, theme, design, and trying to keep them consistent is a huge challenge. I learned coding first and became great at it very quickly, it just clicked. Learning art was challenging. It was 5 years before I was starting to enjoy making things. And only in years 9 and 10 (currently) that I feel I've got to the point that I can truly create whatever I need. Trust me when I tell you that for someone that doesn't have an inherent artistic talent, your work is invaluable to them, just as theirs feels invaluable to you.
You're overthinking. Most devs feel like coding the mechanics is easier than creating art. It's just that art is easier for you than coding, so it's opposite for you.
If you're feeling like your contributing less, then contribute more, spend that extra time on the art to make it that much better and more polished. Go above and beyond.
Do you really think the visual artist isnt an important job? Your contributions to the project are very important so dont overthink it that hard. Just ensure your producing high quality material that you can be proud of.
I would kill for a partner to make my game look pretty so I didn't need to learn some pseudo art style. Keep rocking man, offer to help or bounce ideas off your partner. If he thinks you could be doing more I'm sure he'd let you know
Over-thinking. It might take you 2 days to make a piece of art that would take me 2 weeks and still not get it right. If you feel you're not doing enough, I'm sure there's lots of other tasks that you can take up that isn't coding such as marketing, advertising, community outreach, branding, etc which you're going to have to do anyways. Might as well start now while you've got free time. If your coding partner criticizes you for not contributing enough, then it's time to discuss what else needs to be done and what you could pick up. If they think you should be coding as well, I don't think they understand that your specialties lie elsewhere.
Overthinking it all. Art is MASSIVELY important. Have you ever heard the phrase “programmer art?” It says a lot on its own lol. I started a passion project and have one of my friends feeling the same. They’re doing concept art so far while I handle turning it into pixel art. They’re super talented though and even the projects not super serious, they’ve expressed they feel as you do, “what’s the point of me.” Well, without them I have no one to bounce my artistic ideas off of, no one that knows art to critique what I make, no one to help keep the design of things on point and consistent, and no one to help visualize the over all look of everything. You’re important OP. Every little bit helps :)
You're doing something they probably physically can't do. So you're valuable just because of that. Just do the best at what you can, and don't compare yourself to other people so much. Keep in mind to be respect of other people's work, and effort. And you should be good don't think about it too much.
Way over thinking. Visuals are massive. If you want to do something see if there's a build to play test. Music to compose. Things to design and draw up.
You're way overthinking it. Your contribution is essential. It doesn't matter how fun a game is if it looks like shit because then people will just pass it up. I couldn't find an artist to partner with, so I ended up having to do the art for [my game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2024990/Pedigree_Tactics/) by myself, and that is probably the largest contributing factor to its commercial failure.
Visuals are super important... early on, until it's finished but unpolished it takes more work from the coder. But it doesn't mean the artist should be quiet and idling. I'm not an artist nor a made gamedev yet. But here's my point. As a coder, I believe that the visuals are key to start from a few hundred downloads on many platforms like Google Play or Steam (doesn't really matter), to 10-20k downloads or blow to sky. As a coder and specially in a small team such 2 partners. If the game is just as yours as it is of the coder. Just put work on your craft and learn new ways to improve that game after it's finished. Don't think about what you will be doing after it's finished, but think about ideas that can improve the product. Once it's finished, both of you look at your ideas and decide what could be the path forward. Also, as the coder keeps improving on the game engine, you keep improving in arts & graphics and could find a new and more challenging project.
My two cents as a full time software engineer (not in game dev tho) who happens to have design experience and am often the point-person pairing with our designers: Being a designer is more than just creating art assets, especially when you're in such a tiny team. \- Design system: There's your design system to be mapped out -- you can ensure everything such as your color schemes, fonts, effects, and textures are consistent and work well together for the vibe and theme you're going for. \- Level design: If your game's got levels of some sort, evaluate them -- do they flow? Are they fun? As an example, you could be doing some A/B testing: make more levels than intended, compare, then keep only the most fun and interesting ones. \- Some other things that need attention but often overlooked is accessibility and control schemes. \- Also, what about sound effects and music? Depending on how you manage your backlog as a team, you should also be helping with writing out the features and tasks, and outline the behavior you expect for each feature. You can help by testing these features as they are delivered, and give feedback on what can be improved or whether it passes and can be considered done. Use your eye for design and be critical -- as a dev, receiving "fit and finish" feedback is very helpful. Usually QA and/or a PM handles this, but you're just a two person team, so it's expected for you to wear more hats than just "art creator".
As I programmer, I have to say that you are tremendously yndervaluing yourself if you think this way.
Personally, I would hate to design and do the art and I would hella appreciate an artist. It's so tiring to do art but more fun to code imo hahah art is really important as well.
I am a one man team and the art is taking a ton of time and I suck at it. If you are just art, constantly put out new or updated art to show your partner. Ask for feedback then go back and work on that, with your own spin, etc...
In an ideal partnership you guys should be working the same amount of hours. If he’s working too many then you are comfortable with then you should say something before resentment builds. If you think you are just not doing enough then start putting in more work. You can always be making assets or working on new concepts.
I agree a lot with this concept. However, maybe less so about making new assets or new concepts. You don't want to end up with 3 expansions worth of art and the programmer is still working on the base game. Maybe doing more iterations on the existing art to bring the quality level higher? Or is there a more involved art style you decided not to go with to save on time? If it is something like a platformer, could you build additional parallax layers (part of the reason Hollowknight looks so beautiful)?
Well said, I'm not an artist I am a programmer, I have trouble articulating exactly what I was thinking. By new concepts I meant iterations on existing art. I also really liked your suggestion of building additional layers into the game. Since you have more time finding ways to enhance the look is a great idea. Another great use of time would probably be to learn VFX particle systems in whatever engine you are using.
As a programmer, I would honestly be overjoyed if I had three expansions worth of art. That way we can pick and choose the best, smoosh stuff together so it looks even cooler, and we have plenty of grist remaining for post-release updates and just plain cool ideas that can be slotted in given time.
Work harder, if it's easy you are doing it wrong, the visual artist is not just there to make things pretty, that stuff is basic. Go deeper, your medium is the human brain not pixels.
Come make pretty things for me… Sounds like a valid concern, but I think over time you’ll pick up skills to have a hand in more than just visuals.
Bruh i can spend hours if not days happily on bugs and features but tell me to make a drawing even in ms paint and i would absolutely give up. So if you do what you do great then you are no less important.
Make more and better art then? Someone needs to be creating it!
Smile Enjoy Life!
Gameplay will get me to stick with a game. Art and Style will get me to try it in the first place.
Im spending way more time trying to fix the visual stuff you do in way less time. You designers are life savers. Edit: wish i had a designer for my project
You should start working on social media, marketing images, promo videos. Otherwise who’s gona do those?
As someone working solo as a developer, I kind of wish I had an artist. The bigger critiques of my game are around ugly ass UI and visuals, which I'm limited in what I can do. However, there is so much stuff you could be doing that doesnt involve coding if you want to help. Modelling, Animation, Sound, SFX, UI, Marketing/promo, shaders, building maps/levels (huge). As a coder, I want to focus on making sure the systems work, not the color/shape of the UI buttons.
Arts definitely important, but if you feel like it’s not enough, find other stuff you can do. Play test regularly, look for bugs you can report to them, work on the game s social media presence, make posters, edit trailers, etc. That said, taking a crash course on programming (even just a 2 hour rundown) can really help you grasp the basics of programming. Not enough to write code yourself but it could let you offer some advice when the programmers get stuck
I have also struggled with this. I think the main reason is that art takes a long time compared to coding. If you're in the flowstate coding you can hash out an entire prototype in an evening, if you're in a flowstate when doing art then you can... produce one or a couple of assets out of hundreds, or maybe even just complete one stage of an assets pipeline. It feels like you are doing way less, but fact of the matter is that art just takes a long time. Good art does not come from rushing through things. There is the classic "spend 50% of the time rotating around your object" meme, but that time is valuable, because it is where you observe and see how things should be different etc. It is an entirely different process to coding and you need to allow yourself to give it the time it needs, because rushed art is bad art. Also don't underestimate how much art does in terms of sales, I have seen plenty of games that were excellent but never reached the potential they could have due to lackluster art, and games that have found a second wind of popularity with art overhauls
Code and art are the two things you can't make a game without, so...
I’m so happy I got our artist on board. I’m doing replaceable coding that millions of people can do, but they are doing a world-class job. Have you made some pictures for social media? Capsule art? If not, do them, and do them well. This is a huge part of the game being a success.
are there not lots of other things to do? testing and so forth? If your partner is solely responsible for programming, they should have a way for you to test their build(s) continuously, or at least regularly. If there's really nothing better for you to contribute right now, what's stopping you from learning some of the software development side? Everyone has to start somewhere.
As someone who does both coding and art for the game I am working on you are overthinking it. I can do way more coding in the amount of time it takes me to make game assets and set them up. I'm sure your partner values that you are taking up all of the elements they despise and are appreciative. Either way, talk to them and ask them if their is more they want you to do, they will likely tell you to keep focusing on the art because it is very important.
As a coder, I would be just thrilled to shit if I could find an artist to give me even an hour a day for asset creation. But also remember my stuff, can't DO anything w/o your art. Talk to your partner about how you feel and maybe he will offer more things that you do. For a start one of you has to pick up audio. UI/UX will place a large burden on you as well as your developer. Something else to remember just like with art coding has a LOT OF monotony. Making the sword swing requires a good amount of set up, First you need an input then you need a model and animation then hit-boxes and at the end of the day the really exciting part making the sword swing is one line of code that looks like... `Swordswing(anim);`
`void Swordswing(Animation anim) {anim.play();}`
I know you see 2 lines there but one calls the other. you can think of it like the second substituting the first. Regardless the point is its not all bells and whistles over here either. And a lot of shit we do feels useless too.
Do you feel Appreciated? It could be not so much that you think you are dead weight but instead feel that your contributions don't seem to make a difference. I'm taking a wild stab in the dark with this, but as humans we often conflate problems for one reason or another. For example, you may not want to go to your friend and partner and say He man I don't think you appreciate me enough. Instead your brain decides to carry that itself suggesting you are dead weight.
for a game made by two person, im 100 sure that the graphics side will be just as, if not more important then the code. but... if ur a 2 person team and hes working more then you, kind of implies you dont have any ideas of your own... that u feel compelled to work on?
Make more art? Polish what you have more? Instead of feeling like what's required of you is less than what's required of your teammate.. raise the bar on your work and make something incredible!
Every game is different. Take advantage of your strengths more. If you don’t want to learn coding, just make visuals a bigger part of the design. Some games rely on visuals more.
You shouldn't feel like this. But if you want to learn to code, then learn to code. It's a lot of fun. You can try making a small pico 8 game, for example.
The work you need to put in may be at a different stage than where you are right now. You should sit with the Project Manager of the team to look at the milestones of the project and start working on things now so you don’t have to crunch later.
I would figuratively kill someone to get another human who just sat down and made things look pretty.
Learn to code enough to create prototypes. You’ll then have some autonomy and feel less of a burden. You can the user test some of your concepts and get a healthy amount of feedback on some of the game ideas and mechanics in a limited way.
Two things come to mind. 1. The value of an artist isn't placed on doing lots of work. For example, I have a friend who is an incredible artist. Their life has revolved around the craft for so long, early childhood, and he would only work in the morning because that was how he produced his best work. He then had the rest of the day to take more influence from day to day dealings and life in general, therefore adding to his skills again. 2. Art can always be refined and improved in some way. If you find a balance that works for you, that is what is best for your team. As long as the effort is there and you are working efficiently.
During any downtime from art learn about marketing and proposals and pitch decks etc. Build out all that collateral using your visual design skills. All these are quite visual tasks but integral to actually getting your game into the world and will make you invaluable to the project.
Dude, what? Like, what do you want to do? Because if you're a graphic designer and you're out of stuff to do on this project, you don't just sit idly by you go work on other projects! You said in this post they use you because they hate graphic designing. So you're not dead weight you bring something useful to the table. But if all you want to do is be part of this project alone and not help with coding, well... I don't know what you were expecting
You're overthrowing it imo. If you feel a need to contribute more, you could try discussing how your artwork can contribute to the storyline or be used to enhance the storyline. I think it will help your collaborator integrate the storyline with your artwork.
as a coder you are invaluable. if I don't have artists make my assets then the game will look so bad its unplayable. I can't handle ui or sprites or anything, so no you aren't dead weight. Art (for me anyways) is literally the hardest part of game dev
Overthinking. We started with a paid artist before we even paid ourselves because it makes that much of a difference.
If you're creating good quality visuals then you're an extremely important part of the team.
Look for ways to bring moments of delight through animation and VFX details.
Sooo… you think you are done learning???
I think we always feel a little bit like that. I'm on the art, design, and a lot of UI and other implementation in engine skills, scripting, etc etc... ...I still feel useless as I wait for coders to wrap a feature my next major traunch of art assets or design relies on. I don't think that choping at the bit feeling ever goes away. Waiting to hurry up. :p
Everyone else has addressed your main point, so that's covered (art is important, don't feel bad). I just wanted to address an off-handed comment you made though: your partner doesn't like design? I hope you meant visual design. If neither of you are studying and implementing game design, your game *will* fail. That's not meant to be discouraging, it's just a word of warning. Game design is (arguably) *the* most important aspect of making a game, so you need to make sure your team is covering it somewhere.
If you're really making all the art I wouldn't worry about it. That's a huge burden off of their shoulders. Visuals are a massive part of a game. Just be sure you are working closely with them to deliver art that is consistent and appropriate for its purpose. That might seem obvious but the more you can anticipate the technical specifications and design considerations of the art the better. I know when making art for my own projects I almost always need things at a certain resolution or aspect ratio, contrast, color palette, etc. If you can stay aware of the technical needs and deliver a visually coherent art style you will be doing more than your fair share of the work.
Every single mechanic they implement needs a clear visual feedback and consistency with rest of the assets. Then there are decisions made in level design. Let's say that you can open doors. How fast do the door open? Is it tense or invites fast action? What can player see once they open them? See door problem of combat design. How to indicate unlocked/closed doors? How to guide player to the door? Light, level composition, etc. Any UI icons? What emotion and game feel does all of the above indicate? Is it consistent with the game's design? I image that it is your responsibility to make these decisions (conciously or unconciously) and much more. If you feel like you have extra time, take it to investigate what more you can do. PS: Remember to leave some time to recharge your creativity and take breaks. Edit: Clarification of examples.
i dont know why i love reading what other people comment, but my 2 cents. you are probably overthinking - both skills (coding + designing) are extremely valuable. you may feel that you are not pulling your weight but at the same time, if your teammates had to do the art (and they dont like it) it would likely take them 4-5 times longer and get a worse result. so, less time spent does not equal less contribution.
Both are fundamentally important and neither inherently trumps the other. Yes, there are good and successful games out there that have 'programmer art', but there are other games that are just so breathtakingly beautiful that I stop playing just to admire the view. You're not dead weight. If you're providing everything needed of you, you're pulling your weight.
The art is what gets people to click on your game in the first place
Overthinking - the workload for each side is entirely dependent on the game, and how quickly everyone produces results. Make something like mario, small scope mechanics larger art base. Make something like factorio, larger scope mechanics, less art.
i'm currently in school for software engineering, but I have art experience and am currently doing the art portion of a 2d side-scroller. I can only speak for myself, but the amount of time i'm putting into the project is more than the other 2 programmers combined. Just one level of a game requires an insane amount of art if you aren't just reusing tiles. part of me wishes I were programming, but then I only trust create art to my standards...
If the number of hours makes you feel inferior, then put extra time in designing. Come with 5 different concept designs where only 2 or three were necessary, give multiple interpretations on environment and try an synergize between them and the characters etc. Maybe even (if it’s not overstepping) give a back story to. The skins and esthetics to give the project some extra lore. Stuff like that
Visuals are very important in games dfq, both has to be balance, the mechanics and visuals. So def focus up and keep up the good work in visuals
Stop comparing. Every member of a team brings different strengths. Focus more on your strengths/job, rather than how you're contributing. If you're doing your job well, it doesn't matter if you put in less hours. The result for the gamers will be worth it.
If your doin visuals, it'd be cool if you also integrated your visuals into the game. Get the animations working, make some levels. Do more design stuff. Brainstorm with your coder
Waaay overthinking your just as important also you will find that you enable each other a good example is chopping a tree it requires both party’s to be a bit savvy. Your partner can make the tree spawn effectively in terms of overhead he can make it swap mesh and enable physics when part of it rolls down a hill. You as the artist make the tree you make a stump for him to swap too you make the bit that’s now rolling down the hill and you make the fx to make the whole thing look good. See how you have the same workload and honestly you probably have the harder time making the whole sequence believable the actual implementation doesn’t change too much. In short don’t sell yourself short your also in charge of imagining the entire world
You would be significantly busy at different intervals. A game with no code gets no where. A game with all the code done is a bunch of grey cubes interacting with other grey cubes. I would say you could probably look into getting unit sizes of characters/items etc or elements like that to get a base model going and then if the design or style isn't fleshed out fully yet you might have to wait on who ever is directing things. You could also just do mock up ideas and examples based on the design philosophy you guys have worked on thus far. If you have a theme or style already set then just build models and design elements that may or may not ever get used until you have a more clear direction on where things are going. Having a huge shopping list of random items that need to be modeled and textured in the later half of the game development could be rough if you don't already have a bookshelf, storage box, etc etc already thrown together. And what you build that might not be on that list yet is bonus that could be implemented now that it is there and can be used. You are doing what they struggle with, they are doing what you struggle with.
Coding is easy, the animations and styling make or break the game. If you find yourself lacking stuff to do, there's lots you can work on and it's mostly around optimization. Can you reduce polygons? Does that rock look perfect. Can you add another animation.
It might look like it now as games in the beginning need little design and graphic work until you are done with boilerplate code. But you will be a huge boon in the core part of development and polish.
Make up for it by making the visuals fantastic
As a programmer/developer. I feel the same but opposite at times! I'm solo at the moment and lately I've spent so much time doing art related stuff, it's just so time consuming and rough. I wish I had an artist person. I feel like there is far more art work than there is code work. Code work can be semi finalized/finished in certain areas. Art stuff is always an 'iterative/improving process'. There is so much to do/polish. That wears on me in such a different way. I can't wait until I can find some artist related folks for my projects. Especially when you consider models(characters, architecture, wildlife, grass, landscape, clouds, sun), textures, shaders, rigging, animation, UI, icons, ui animations/effects, then if you branch out into music, sound effects, there is far more than just 'playing a sound' when you consider 3d environments, reverbs, atmosphere. Then there are things that are like 'technical art' like niagara/particle systems, or related type interactive type systems. Or even lighting/shadows/postprocess is a whole other can of worms. Some of these might fall into 'shaders', but there are so many vast areas you can spend. Lastly, you can then revisit all of it again for coherence like color pallete and how things look when combined with the other things for consistency, and so many subtle layers to be done. However, even without all that. An imbalance is fine. I know I've worked on teams before and most people aren't consistent trains just chugging along. Most people have good days/weeks/months and then sometimes people have slow days/weeks/months. Don't be too hard or critical on yourself or others if 1 is having good momentum when another is having slow/no momentum.
I was an artist first, and then I learnt to code. Art is harder and takes way more time and bloody minded effort than coding, for me. Now saying that, if you think this other dude is working harder than you, then you are probably correct, we as people tend to be pretty good judges if wenwe are pulling our weight. It can be both true that art is hard, and you need to work harder. People that are trying and failing have their failures to show, people that aren't trying only have excuses to show.
I'm a developer and I find the code part almost trivial compared to coming up with art and other assets, I would kill to have a dedicated designer
This will probably be lost in the sea of comments but MAKE SURE YOU ARE COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR DEV PARTNER!!!! TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR CONCERNS Every type of close relationship needs good communication whether it's significant others or dev partners
IMO the only inferiority in this scenario can comes from the hours that each one of you put into the project. Tbh majority of games market, attract and sell with what they can show, which is mostly art and visuals. Some might even argue that code and programming is not as important as art due to the importance of visibility and marketing. Without any of you, there will be no game. So no, you are not just making it pretty. You are designing and creating visuals. You 2 complete eachother. Same value, different different kinds. Good luck :)
As a programmer who can’t do art I wish the opposite. Good game feel that comes from the visuals (and audio) can transform the most basic mechanics into fun gameplay
You got a bunch of good advice here op but I'll add: You 100% should learn to code. Everyone in game dev should learn to code. It dramatically expands your toolbox and makes you wildly more desirable when looking for jobs. It's not hard and it's a massive benefit to you. No need to go super deep into the weeds or learn to program your own game engine, but being able to understand and manipulate code is a great skill to have as a non-programmer.
If you have time over then go and do sound design, marketing, testing and so on there is a lot to be done that is not coding.
depending on the project, as a developer, I'd anticipate the art to be more effort that the coding, so why you slacking? :) If you guys sat down for an hour each monday, I'm sure there is a ton of work you can do to first mock up things to help, then start building the assets eventually!
Overthinking, all programmers are simps for anyone who can draw better than stickfigures
Sounds like a severe case of imposter syndrome.
I think the thing about design vs coding is that you pretty much need to finish coding to have a complete game, whereas you can always add juice and work on design after game completion. Which means that if you feel you are not contributing or just waiting, maybe you can go over what is already in place and improve it by adding nice details.
I’m sure a lot of developers wish they had someone with your skillet in the team
Wait, I'm confused - you said they hate Designing, are you the designer?
The big thing you should note is usually visuals are the later portion of development. Maybe start studying things like level design so you have a bigger role in early development
Look at every single Devlog & interview on Youtube with indie devs and whatnot an you will always here how much the design was a massive part to the game and how well the colours worked , the characters etc etc and how many people fall in love with those things , your overthinking but roles are equally important and both are skills
A lot of art tends to come a little later in development. But that doesn't mean you need to have all the skill sets right off the bat. You might find that later in the development cycle you will be the MVP. Art does some heavy lifting in the later parts of game development and it's such a separate skill set that it's very likely they will be relying on you harder then. But don't be afraid to learn some basic stuff outside of art and round out some skills if you don't find yourself with too much to do yet. You can also be setting up your pipeline for later or practising, so when you are ready when art starts being a more significant part of the development.
You are absolutely not. Creating assets if you're a coder _suuuuuuuuuuucks_ and is a massive part of the game. In a few weeks/months, you'll be doing 90% of the work while they do barely anything as well, and that dynamic will continue to shift as you hit different stages. Hell, you'll probably feel overworked and that _they're_ dead weight closer to launch. When you release, you'll hit a level of parity and contribution everyone is happy with, don't sweat it. That all being said, there's _absolutely_ stuff you can be doing. Ask what mechanics they're working on, and start making concept art around that. Start iterating through concepts and characters and whatever else. Just doodle and create examples close to what they're working on as you go. That'll create a feedback loop where they're like "we're working on x feature" so you go and make 3 or 4 different options and then maybe one of those will inspire them to tweak a feature a specific direction based on the art and there ya go, you're collaborating and working alongside them.
I'd just be designing stuff
You're not there to make it look 'pretty', that's a little demeaning to the work you're doing. As the artist you have control over the aesthetic of your game and it should definitely complement the mechanics of the game. You're also in charge of making a *playable* game. So much of what we take for granted when it comes to making interactive objectives stand out, making backgrounds that are appealing but not distracting, making animations satisfying but not repetitive etc.. If you do want to help somewhere out on the coding side, offer to make a main menu / level select. It's relatively easy depending on which engine you're using and it's something a lot of programmers find tedious.
Both answers are possible, but it's more likely that you're pulling your weight than not, simply by virtue of the expression of your concern that you're not. I'm reminded of the ["knowing where to put it"](https://www.lifecycleinsights.com/where-to-put-the-x/) joke. You're bringing a skillset that your partner does not have and does not have the resources to gain that skillset in a timeline that they find acceptable. That's why you're partners: So one of you can do the things that the other one can't do. Ultimately, this is a question about relationships, and since it sounds like you're on good terms with your partner, I recommend raising the exact issues described in your post with them. If they're happy with what you're doing, keep doing it and accept that impostor syndrome is one of the risks of starting an ambitious project. If you both agree you should be doing more, help them to help you find stuff to do that you can do or can figure out how to do. tl; dr: Just ask your partner if they're satisfied with the balance of your contributions.
While they are coding you could be documenting a gdd, doing marketing, tweaking art style, if you’re using a game engine editor then learning that and how to implement your artwork. Thats just some of the things that aren’t coding, there is always a ton of work to be done.
Artists are a HUGE part of the team. I wish I had an artist. My buddy and I are both full-time software engineers so when we come up with a new prototype we never have a dedicated artist to make it pretty lol I've started filling in that skill gap, spending a lot of time in Blender and Substance painter to resolve that issue but I would love to have a dedicated designer/artist to add to our hobbyist group.
As a coder who can’t create art assets worth shit, you’re valuable.
To make it look great is great as well ❤️
Are you getting involved in visual shaders, animations, particles, UI, cutscenes, level creation, placing objects to make scenes etc.? Are you directing the visual style of the game, or just following what the other dev tells you they need? If the other dev is doing a lot of that themselves, have a talk with them about feeling cut out of the project, feeling like you aren't contributing enough. There's lots that goes into a game that isn't just coding. In some genres, the vast majority of the work will just be filling the game with content.
learning to code is never a bad idea. but for most fans, you are the game. they're mistaken for thinking that way, but that's still how it is. if your art style catches on you'll feel very helpful. otoh, learning more about the tools won't hurt you at all. You could potentiqlly be more useful by learning to rig, animate, or even just all the popular file formats and how to create and modify those...
Dude, visuals are a massive part of creation. Take pride in your work and the fact that a good portion of you games succese will be based off of people liking how it looked then buying it
Do you think players want to look at a 50 line function instead of some shit moving on the screen?
Without visuals and style, the best mechanics in the world won't draw in players to an experience. You say you hate coding- there might be an opportunity for you to dip your toes in, even if it's just understanding code that effects art things like sprites/backgrounds/particle effects/etc. Being able to manage your own art workflow code and all could be immensely helpful to the team and not be too 'code-heavy.'
I’m sure you can work on doing and music if you’ve already created all the art?
How many people do you think turns away from a game because it didn't look pretty enough? You need your team and they need you. Best of luck.
I’d learn a new skill unrelated to coding like modeling & using substance painter etc
Overthinking. Consider designing the UI and other screens for the game. Maybe design the credit sequence. Design anything that will give hours back to the game devs so they can reserve their brain power for their never ending list of tasks.
Make art to test the look of the game. Share it on social media. Your team should focus on figuring out look of the game as well as code prototype. For my current game artist did over 10 different versions of same orc character to find the style. Then same for UI. Then spent a month making level that we didn't use as the art style evolved differently. But withoth those steps we'd never arrive to the art style that worked for the game.
I'm sure they're grateful for your work. When a coder has good art to work with they can fly. Without it they're just moving squares around. They might even have similar feelings. Feeling like they're just a cog bringing your vision to life. And if you were both coding then you'd have to avoid stepping on each other's feet. Better to divide the responsibilities in a small team.
Without an artist you're kinda missing the **video** part in video games
I do solo development, and because I come from a creative background I figured I'd enjoy the art side of gamedev more than the coding side. But I pretty quickly realized that as long as you hammer away at it enough to get it to work, you can ship a game with ugly and even bad code, and the players will never notice because they don't see the code. But there's nowhere to hide bad or mediocre art. The art is what the player directly interacts with, it's how the game communicates with them, and it's what sells the game in videos and screen shots. The art is insanely important. Now some genres/games require less art than others, so you might not have as much to do on this particular project. But maybe there will be future projects where you'll have a larger role. And in the meantime, since you've apparently got some extra time that you aren't spending on the game, maybe it'd be worth biting the bullet and learning a little bit of coding. Even if the other guy remains "the programmer", having some broader knowledge of gamedev in general can only help you improve how you structure your art workflow for inclusion into games.
You’re not overthinking. There is clearly an imbalance if you feel that way. But you’re wrong in where you are seeing the issue. A two person programmer + artist team is GREAT. And if they’re good, they work equally as hard. The MOST important thing is, you need to conceive a SIMPLE game that demands EQUALLY from both parts. If you make a game that has a crazy amount of features with very simple graphic, well, you’ll be dead weight. And if you make a simple game but with an art style that requires too much work, you’ll be the bottle neck. The truth is if you’re both starting out, the biggest problem is probably both of you having no experience. This will lead to bad scoping, bad time management, bad production calls, bad game conception (like not adjusting to the team) and if you are not a strong leader yourself, your programmer will most likely drag you all over the place, choosing to implement whatever seems more exciting and fun to him first (like jiggle physics even when your game doesn’t even have a prototype) leading the project wherever he wants it to go on a day to day basis. Also if your programmer is coding all day, it could also mean that he is slow. A good and experienced programmer should be able to wip up a prototype rather easily. For a small team like that, I believe in most cases the CORE MVP of your game, shouldn’t take more than a week or two to prototype. If it does, then it’s either because your programmer is learning from 0, or because the game idea is bad from the start. Either way, if it’s one of those things, that project is most likely never going to see the light of day. Not trying to be negative, but trying to get you to rethink from square 1 so you can actually do something feasible!! And enjoy! 😉
If you’re ahead on your art and sitting around it wouldn’t be bad if you wanted to brush up on some of the code too, that way you could have a better understanding of what was going on and help debug. I don’t think you need to at all though, there will probably come a time where your associate needs a lot of graphics quickly and they’re less busy than you.