2D artist looking for work

[Hermundure]

Hi all,

I played and enjoyed LoG 1 quite a bit, furthermore I really like the dark and worn look of the game, so after the relelease of LoG 2 I would love to participate and assist in some bigger mod project, unfortunately I am not the fancy guy who can create, paint and animate your scary monsters so the question really comes down to: Is there any demand for a 2d artist in modding this game?

Herm

[Isaac]

Hi all,

I played and enjoyed LoG 1 quite a bit, furthermore I really like the dark and worn look of the game, so after the relelease of LoG 2 I would love to participate and assist in some bigger mod project, unfortunately I am not the fancy guy who can create, paint and animate your scary monsters so the question really comes down to: Is there any demand for a 2d artist in modding this game?

Herm

There are a few nearly flat models that could directly take 2D wall art; as in textures, and the same goes for the fabric wall tapestries... Anything else ~dungeon-wise, would require familiarity with UV editing... if not the ability to edit UVs. It's not difficult, but it's not always intuitive, and requires at least a bit of familiarity with the process and concept. It's something that you could comfortably learn in a fortnight.

The real demand could be custom portraiture. There will always be interest in new and interesting character portraits. All that's required is the ability to draw them. To use them in the game they must be sized [or resampled] to 128x128 pixels (IRRC), and stored in TGA format. The upcoming Grimrock 2 might call for larger images, so it would be good to make the originals large enough to resize down to whichever size is needed.

[Hermundure]

Thank you for this reply!

Which software for texturing would you recommend?
Browsing thrugh the net I stumbled upon Substance Designer, Substance Painter and Bitmap2Material.

Can one of them be used to do the things you described or do you have a better suggestion?

Herm

[Leki]

Thank you for this reply!

Which software for texturing would you recommend?
Browsing thrugh the net I stumbled upon Substance Designer, Substance Painter and Bitmap2Material.

Can one of them be used to do the things you described or do you have a better suggestion?

Herm

Well, after this question I'm a little bit confused.
I suppose as a 2D artist you have a graphics program you work with. But it looks like you wanna participate on some project and you no have ani dev skills - so you "picked 2D artist role", because "it looks easy". m8, let me say you are completly wrong with this.

If you really wanna do something, the best way is to start now, to get some experience and be ready for LoG2 moding.
If you wanna try 2D, you can start with Gimp and retexture some original LoG assets - let me say make red hooded Goromorg casting only fireballs.
It means you can make new look, change original script and make your own monster only in few simple steps. It's easy task, you can handle it and people around can help you wit it.

If you don't like Gimp, here is link for another tools: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5121
For additional info, visit : viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3240 especially custom assets

[Hermundure]

Hehe, you really seem a bit confused here

I did not call myself 2d artist because I think its a nice way to start or get some infos on this forum,
I transitioned from traditional art to digital art, enlisted and worked for Salan and his Torchlight 2 Synergies mod for a few month now but to be honest I dont like the bright and colorful art style TL2 is setting up and forcing me in and would simply love to participate in some darker Grimrock project
(For some Mod of the year election I uploaded some of my TL2 works to Deviantart: http://hermundure.deviantart.com/ - klick on Gallery on the top left )

Isaac was pointing out to me that there is not that much to do as purely 2D art in Grimrock and that its easy to delve a step into texturing Dungeon objects.
Keep in mind that I have never done retexturing before so I have no idea which programs are conveniently used in this area and was hoping for some tips on your side.
Of course I have programs I use for painting, PSCS6 (not the extended edition), Sketchbook Pro, Artrage and Black Ink mostly - but as far as I know none of these programs can open and paint directly on 3D objects like Substance Painter is able to for example.

Because of this I was just hoping for some direction pointing to which programs the people in here use to achive these things, no disguise intended on my side ^^

I hope I expressed myself a bit better this time, english is not my first language so sometimes I really mess my points up :-/

[Isaac]

Isaac was pointing out to me that there is not that much to do as purely 2D art in Grimrock and that its easy to delve a step into texturing Dungeon objects.
Keep in mind that I have never done retexturing before so I have no idea which programs are conveniently used in this area and was hoping for some tips on your side.
Of course I have programs I use for painting, PSCS6 (not the extended edition), Sketchbook Pro, Artrage and Black Ink mostly - but as far as I know none of these programs can open and paint directly on 3D objects like Substance Painter is able to for example.

I was not sure if you had ~or wanted to jump into 3d texturing; as it's quite involved and often people don't quite know the depth of what they are asking, or are about to get into with it.
But since you have done some of this before...
Ddo, and Ndo come highly recommended ~though I've no personal experience with them. Bitmap2Material looks pretty sharp; and Substance Designer is used by some at Blizzard.

Nvidia offers a free Normal map converter... this is not ideal, not the best method at all... but it gives decent [functional] results ~and costs nothing. It's a Photoshop plugin. (I think they have one for Gimp as well... not sure.)

Blender is free and does load models and allow texturing... it's powerful, but it's not automated like the dedicated commercial applications; and it's a tad clunky IMO, for this specialized task.
(You can achieve good results with Blender... but Blender is practically a college course all its own. )

[Leki]

I understand now.
Ok - let me say retexturing or any work on models is not the best solution for you, because you no have experience with that - it's a very technical process, you have to know about maping etc. If you transfered from classics painting to digital I guess the best choce in LoG modding is:
- concept art, support project by visualising scenes so 3d artist can create it in engine
- intro images (they can be partly animated)
- NPC portraits for dialogs and player portraits for mods - let me say if someone wanna create sci-fi mod like aliens, he needs marine portraits for players
- Atlas icons for items
- custom scrolls images (maps etc)

PSCS6 is one of the best tools for you - or you can try Painter - as far I know Painter is designed exactly for you case.

Here is something I can image in my mods (as an image from intro sequence) and it's made in PS:

[LocalFire]

Hell if you'll do some intro images I'd love to get some. I'm working on a update for my Prisoner of Bleakhall mod and the images I put together for my intro aren't all that hot, if you're willing to check it out and see if you feel like its something you'd like to do I really be thankful to get something better!

Heres a link tot he mod here: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6463

[badhabit]

Hi all,

I played and enjoyed LoG 1 quite a bit, furthermore I really like the dark and worn look of the game, so after the relelease of LoG 2 I would love to participate and assist in some bigger mod project, unfortunately I am not the fancy guy who can create, paint and animate your scary monsters so the question really comes down to: Is there any demand for a 2d artist in modding this game?

Herm

*hmmm* you are a rare breed... normally it is way around, game projects looking desperatly for capable artists without success while being flooded with programmers.
I guess there are many open source game projects out there who would kiss your feet for contributing 2D content.

For example, I know that the "Forge" project (a fan-made Loom continuation) is looking for 2d pixel artists (background scenery etc). Loom originally was pretty dark and could fit your artistic preferences if I get you right. http://forgegame.com/?p=team

Another high quality open source project to participate could be 0 A.D. (http://play0ad.com/community/participate/)

Even another example which I know is in need of 2d artwork is Gigalomania which tries to substitute the original copyrighted artwork against free one (currently they use incoherent place holder artwork from OpenGameArt)

Many more open source games in this list as starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_games
Also, the fan-made video remake domain could be have interesting projects for you, as several of this remakes target games from the golden "2D" video game age. (http://retroremakes.com)

[Hermundure]

Wow, thank you all for your great advices.
The reason I am not part of any team except TL2´s Synergy Mod is more or less that I like to contribute to games I love playing myself - and I play very, very seldom so my choices are very narrow, hehe.
All in all I am quite happy that I can contribute to Grimrock 2 without having to delve into some new area of art (namely 3D) as Leki was kindly pointing out.
I will take a look at yours and LocalFires mods but would probably need a bit more info on the setting but I come back to you via PM about this to not spam the forums

Usually I was planning to wait until LoG2 is out so I have a bit more time to finish some TL2 Synergy loading screens and icons for the new ranger class but if time permits I will gladly paint something for you as well as soon as possible

Again, thank you for all your advices, you have a great community here.

Herm