Games Design & Illustration - Starting Off

Question

So I primarily have a background in Interface Design and wish to expand my skill set into illustration and game design.

I've recently armed myself with a Bamboo tablet and want to get serious about learning the techniques required to do good design for games.

Could you please recommend a starting point / sites that I could begin with to get the basics under my belt.

I've had a look through google but as any new beginner it all looks overly complicated!

Also with designing games how does one draw each stage of the animation for say a dog walking? Is there a programme that you can define start and end points and it will provide you each frame of your drawing ?

Thank you for your help Stack.

Answer 1

Since you don't mention how much illustration experience you have, and you say you primarily have a background in UI, I would go by these steps:

First, research game styles. Do you know which sort of games you would like to do? Coming from where you come, perhaps a good start would be games interface design (menu, covers, skins). Mobile games are an excellent starting point. So the first step for me would be to embrace your Bamboo and to practise that style.

Now if you are only doing the art for these games, you will probably be working with a developer. Depending on what technologies he/she is using, you will need to prepare the files in a certain format. For mobile it's usually transparent pngs, so I imagine an animation would consist of a transparent sprite that this other person would ensemble.

In short: draw draw draw. If you also want to develop your game, choose a language and platform and go for it. In the meantime... well, draw.