Second hand material and game experience

[clannadman]

I'm not necessarily a skilled artist and have used some second hand material (sprites, backgrounds etc) which should be fine when quoted in the credits. I just wondered what you guys thought about games with this sort of stuff and whether it interferes with your enjoyment of the story. If you recognized a familiar sprite or background, wouldn't that distract from the gameplay. I'm a little worried about this. I've downloaded a very basic sprite building program although it tends to create loli girls rather than the highschool students I'm aiming for. I'll commit myself more to original concept if possible, but I just wondered what you guys thought about whether the second hand material gets in the way?

[James]

I can't really say yes or no for sure, because some VN turned out really great using second hand images, those are the story driven and program driven types.

The way I see it there are three types of VN out there.

~Story driven - ones with a soild storyline that can evoke strong feelings.

~Art driven - ones with beautiful artwork and BG arts that makes a big impression.

~Program driven - ones with minigames and interactions that keeps you entertained.

You should know if you are better at writting, art, or programing best yourself. If you can make a story driven or program driven game then I wouldn't mind the 2nd hand art.

Metropolitan Blues had pretty simple art and the programing was elementry. But because the story was really good at evoking sadness, I overlooked the rest of the elements.

[dstarsboy]

I encourage the use of free BG resources. They're not as noticeable and if you were to hire an artist for those, it would cost you a fortune to get them done. However, as for the sprites, you can get those done fairly cheaply and they will likely be used a ton in your game, so the bang for the buck as far as spending some money on art is concerned would definitely be in sprite work. Sprites are also the most noticeable, as far as free resources being used in multiple projects.

I guess it depends on how near and dear to your heart this project is. My advice is, if you want the best for your project, you'll throw some money at an artist for sprite-work. BGs, meh, use the free ones.

[clannadman]

how would you feel if the art style was a little inconsistent? all the characters have similar proportions, but eyestyles alter and some characters are less well developed.

[Greeny]

Personally I'm not as optimistic. If you're not going to do the art right, you should consider not doing it at all. If the story is what drives your work, bad or inconsistent artwork carries a heavy risk of taking away from the quality, where using none at all only has the disatvantage of less appeal to draw people into actually playing it.

[papillon]

Some people are picky about art. Some people are SO picky about art that no amount of custom hand-crafted art will make them happy. Don't worry too much about it, so long as the resources you have available are legal for use. In particular, if you're making your first game to get a feel for what game making is like, don't go crazy trying to get everything perfect - use what you learn to plan ahead to make your next one BETTER.

[Elenakiara]

I think that it would be best if you could use at least the same style of characters. Mainly, I know people who get their sprites from BassNovel. There are many quite similar sprites there and you can always click on one of the artists making the drawings to get exactly the same artist making them!
Because, while I believe that generic backgrounds and some music that we may have heard is okay, but sprites should be more important in a way, because that's what we'll be looking at the whole time! :3