Watch THIS Is You're Going To Make A 2D Game

In this video, I chat with one of the creators of Cult of the Lamb, my buddy Jim, and he explains step by step exactly how to make a 2D game in Unity. And more importantly, if you stick around to the end, you're going to learn exactly how to make your 2D art breathtakingly gorgeous. Let's talk about tools really quick. So, let's just really quick list off the tools you use for the artwork. Yeah. Uh, super simple really. We just draw everything in Photoshop, import it into Unity, job done. For the animation, I use Spine, which is really good. But yeah, beyond that, there's not really much else. It's all What about an Illustrator? Haven't used Illustrator for anything, mate. Me neither. Um I I I I don't like using it. It's so clunky for me. Um it's heavy. I mean, I I always come from that that flash flash game background, which is vector based. Um so, this was actually the first game we ever did that used Photoshop. So, and it was uh quite the learning experience going from doing everything in Flash to to Photoshop. But there's another thing that we kind of noticed looking at a lot of um other games was like having that kind of more textured feel that you you

you can only really get from bit mapap is is gives a kind of sense of I don't know what it is a sort of sense of depth and grit and almost authenticity and it might just be like a what what's currently popular thing but that was kind of definitely a conscious decision as well was to try and keep the cartoon bright colorful style but also add that layer in the the darkness and the and the grit and slightly rough edges to the lines and stuff. So, yeah, it was it was definitely a big learning process moving from that, but then we were like, "Yeah, it's there's no vector. It's all it's all uh all Photoshop." Well, what about hardware? Are we using a mouse? Are we using a Wacom pen tablet? Yeah, I got Wacom, which is great. And just uh I started out on a Mac MacBook. Um, and the the Photoshop files just got bigger and bigger and the MacBook kind of struggled more and more and uh Julian persuaded me to to get a decent PC and it was um y it was amazing to be honest. Like it's amazing having the the scratch discs not

running out and just you know I think once you working with big files it really slows you down eventually. You could buy a Mac that that runs great but it would be five grand. Exactly. So that's true. I'm going to frame this question so that you can you can hopefully give us like the most effective answer. I could say how did you do it? Like how how are you creating art? But what I'm going to frame the question is is a little bit more precise, which is if you were to tell your let's say your 18-year-old self, here's how you're going to do artwork from start to finish for this multi-million dollar explosive viral game. What is that process like from start to finish? That means from ideiation to pen and paper to Photoshop to Unity. What's the process look like from like from a creative point of view or um yeah that the creative side but primarily the technical side like if you were to teach this and and people wanted to learn how you did what you did with the artwork. What's it look like? Um it's tricky. I think just just just

practice lots, right? Uh and and learn how to use the tools as well. And I'm I'm still I'm very stuck in my ways about not learning new techniques and stuff. So I think it's just like I really I really am and it and it's bad, but I I think you know it's really important to be to not be afraid of learning new techniques and cuz even like going from Flash to Photoshop, I was really stubborn about it and I didn't like it and it took me a long while to get used to it. But I think ultimately it was it was for the best. So, I think it's just really important and this is, you know, this is advice for myself right now as well is is don't be afraid of, you know, learning and and pushing yourself to try new things and techniques because in the long run, you're probably going to save yourself a lot of time. Let's let's figure out like the the the line. Okay. So, starting from point A to point B. A lot of times we're just on autopilot. Yeah. And it's like what you just draw a character and learn how to draw a character. So, maybe I'll ask it a different way. Does it start on a piece of paper? Does, for example, a character, does it start as a sketch? I don't do too much drawing on paper. I find it kind of quicker. Um, and I'm

just so used to drawing on a on a computer and yeah, I think it's kind of with Yeah. How do you start out with drawing a character, designing it? I think it's figuring out what the character's personality is and what are the goals that you want the character to be. So for for the cult of the lamb, we wanted the lamb to to feel really iconic and simple, but also, you know, complicated enough that it was it felt interesting. And that that kind of involved lots of tweaking and copy and pasting the same design, but changing the size of the eyes slightly or changing the the style of the ears or and just kind of really going through iteration. And I mean, I'd love to say you just kind of sit and sketch it a few times and then you're like, that's the perfect character, but it's really been a kind of a case of iterating and just tiny changes until you kind of figure out the what works best through just changing things and and kind of going through many many different versions. And maybe that's not the kind of the most kind of creative alter way. like you love to think that um true artists just create things out of thin air, but

that for us that's definitely been the the process, you know, drawing lots of things, picking bits that you kind of like from one and others and kind of putting them together and then redrawing it and redrawing it and eventually you kind of get to something you're like, "Okay, this is this is the one." So that's all done in Photoshop. You just open up Photoshop. Is it a 4K document for let's say a character for example? So would you just start with a 4K document or would you start really rough? Super duper rough. Yeah. just like super lines and kind of because I think you kind of want the you know it's important that the silhouette strong um and the the the main features are like the defining features are kind of figured out first and then once you have and you can do that just with very simple thick basic lines. It doesn't have to like look too good. It's just like fig figuring out what the yeah the silhouette and the defining features of that character are. And then once you have that you can go in and do more details and kind of tweak the different features and try out different ideas for them. um until you're kind of iterating it and then once you're like, "Okay, this is the design and it's still kind of rough, but I've kind of copy and

pasted the horns from this one onto this one." And then I'm like, "Okay, this looks good." And then you kind of actually draw it for real kind of thing. Once you the design is is decided, it's um you actually do the the final one and that's when you try and like really caring about making every line perfect. And until that point, you don't need to worry too much about that. So, it's kind of like a logo. It's kind of like logo design. Yeah, totally. Tell me more about the silhouette. What do you mean by silhouette is strong? What does that mean? So, I think there's this principle that you that a good character has like a really you can tell which what the character is just by looking at his silhouette. So, if you kind of take um Homer Simpson or Marge Simpson and just fill it in full black and all you can see is the the shadow of it, the silhouette. Uh you can still recognize what the character is and it has a very clean well- definfined silhouette. Um and that just really helps with just making a character recognizable and iconic. Um cuz sometimes you have, you know, I'm drawing a character and I'm like, "Okay, I want it to have huge horns and I want it to have these kind of, I don't know, big eyebrows and ears

or whatever, but if they're kind of overlapping and it kind of makes a bit of a mess, it doesn't work and it doesn't it looks a bit messy and you're like, "Okay, well, I wanted it to have these big horns, but if I shrink the horns a little bit and it kind of stops it overlapping from the ears or whatever, then that kind of the overall uh design is is a lot stronger and more easy for for the viewer to kind of decide life at a glance and just I don't know. It's a kind of funny thing that you just kind of intrinsically notice I think or subconsciously. Exactly. Gotcha. So, let's talk about iteration really quick. I'm going to assume, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to assume that you weren't just one and done. It's like, yay, we we made the protagonist and we're good to go. Did you have to go back to the drawing board and do it all over again multiple times? Oh my god, so many times with everything. Like we particularly early on in the game when we're, you know, even when we decided the the cult theme and stuff, we really were absolutely brutal with everything. Particularly like the important stuff, but even the stuff that isn't even that important,

just um particularly like me, Jay, and Julian, just being brutal with each other about what we thought about it and whether it worked or if it sucked or if we think it could be better. And then you finally get to a place where you're like, "Okay, this is good." And you get it in and it's good. And then you're like, "Okay, I'm happy with this. This is great. How can we elevate it?" and make it even better. And that's sort of something we've really tried to do throughout the whole process with everything in the game was was really um when you're happy with it and you think it's good enough, how can you make it better? Y really pushing yourself to to do that. It was brutal process though. Did it ever make you think like we're incompetent and we're we're we're way we're we are a wasteful team always. I ask that from personal experience because I feel that way all the time, especially when I'm delegating to a team because I'm like, "I'm sorry, you're going to have to redo this, but you need to redo it." And then I already apologized for it and then two weeks later I say, "Sorry, bud. You're going to have to redo it again." And so I feel incompetent, you know? Yeah, totally. I always feel I always feel that, you know, imposttor syndrome.

And I think everyone does, but to be honest, I think it's um it's something that keeps you humble. I think as as soon as you think everything you do is hot then you're going to stop trying. So, I think it's I think it's important to to keep that. But yeah, it can be very frustrating and it can be I I think particularly at the beginning of the project where I was at a place where we just don't never give up and it flopped, didn't make any money. I was very frustrated. I was moving from Flash to Photoshop. It's kind of it's about and just um felt like nothing was good enough, but I think you you just have to kind of stick with it and really uh find your motivation and dig deep and and yeah, just just keep banging your head about it sometimes, move on to something different and then come back to it with fresh eyes. I have a very bad habit of kind of sitting and being like, "Okay, I'm I'm going to get this character or animation or whatever it's done this evening and then it's sort of 2:00 a.m. and it's it's still not good enough. No, I'm not going to bed until it's done." But I think sometimes walking away and coming back to it with fresh eyes can be

really valuable. Um, or just I feel the same way.