Game characters

General
1

I need game art. It is always the hardest part of game creation for me, as I have little artistic talent. What I am wanting to find, or create, now are character graphics for side scroller / platform games. I have been playing with Spriter, but I don’t have the ability or hours to create quality animations.

Does anyone have suggestions on where to find (or how to create) game characters, with frames for various animations?

2

There’s lots of free sprites available on the web - try free game sprites in google.

If you want to create your own you can use spriter or there are other apps available from the store. I’ve been experimenting with “sprite something” which has some useful tools such as onion skinning to help with animations. On that front if you are after a walking character for a side scroller or platformer have a look at:
http://manningkrull.com/pixel-art/walking.php
I found it useful and informative for a surprisingly simple two frame walking animation.

3

Could try here: http://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=character&field_art_type_tid[0]=9&&field_art_tags_tid_op=and&field_art_tags_tid=&name=&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC&collection=&page=1&Collection=

I also, in times of pure desperation, I’ve been known to get stuff from http://openclipart.org from time to time.

Licensing requirements vary with both, but tends to be attribution at worst. Posting this in the very slim chance you didn’t already know about both of these.

4

Thanks for info. That tutorial you posted, @West, was a pretty good newbie guide. I am now thinking of using Daz 3D to model and dress characters, render them in various stages of the animations, and use these frames in a sprite sheet. I will post animations when I have a sprite sheet complete.