Strong visual style is one of the important components of a game's success, but it is not the primary component because without a good game idea and its proper implementation, the game would be only a graphical cover. On the other hand, a game with great mechanics and good gameplay but with indifferent artwork may expect only partial success or even failure. Ideally, the graphics is not an ordinary set of beautiful pictures but a tool to establish communication between the game and the player; it tells him the story and demonstrates how the game world works.
The number and types of graphics depend on the game's genre and its complexity. In most simple cases, the game can operate only the graphics rendered by itself. All geometric shapes and even 3D forms are drawn by programming codes, but most modern games use pre-rendered artwork in a form of raster images.
There are several basic types of 2D graphics the games use, which are as follows:
The main principle of a good artwork is simple: solidity. All the elements of graphics must have equal style and quality and should have identical principles of formation. Each of them can have his own color, texture, and details, but all these characteristics must obey the general rule you've designed for your game. Think about the music, a melody (for example, the famous James Bond theme) can be mixed in a hundred ways, can be played faster or slower, or can be rearranged for new genres, but it will still be recognizable because the core is always appreciated. This analogy helps to illustrate that each element made out of the general rule may look fake. The audience will notice that unconsciously and this will reduce the perception of the product's quality.
In the authorized biography by Walter Isaacson of Steve Jobs, there is a wonderful quote by Jobs:
"When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it."
It is pity, but some developers or designers try to ignore such philosophy; their products have a pretty beautiful facade but ugly backyards; for example, menu pages and some secondary-class game graphics are made slovenly, without any love and attention to the details, as though such components "are facing the wall and nobody sees them". This approach is wrong because your game is not only one game screen but a product with many edges, each of which must be done thoroughly. Otherwise, it shows that you don't like and don't respect your audience, and the product is not professional.
I recommend using a vector-based graphic editor to work with artwork for games. It is a much more flexible and secure way to provide graphics for different resolutions and situations. My favorite tool is Adobe Illustrator, which lets you draw complicated illustrations using graphic tablets; it supports both vector instruments and some useful raster effects. There is truly direct manipulation philosophy, not like the layered one in Photoshop, which lets you edit objects more easily. It has multiple artboards, which is very good for exporting routines (especially together with slices). There are symbols (if you know Flash, you will understand their potential efficiency) and dozens of other pleasant tools.
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