Walking Dead (I imagine you mean the Tell Tale game) uses a very stylized hand drawn, comic book art direction. There’s nothing illegal about using that art style, it’s just an art style. It would be like saying “it’s illegal to create your own blue shirt because Nike also makes blue shirts”, so yeah you’re ok using that style.
Moving on, a lot of people are mistaken thinking that going stylized is easier than realistic simply because realistic looks, well, more realistic. This is a rookie mistake. In many cases, going stylized is even more difficult and has its own set of challenges. For example, say your creating a main character for your game (let’s say a generic dude with a beard wearing typical post apocalyptic clothes, back pack, shotgun, etc.). If you do some image searches on Google, you will find a ton of photos of just that. However, if you’re going stylized, you won’t find your character online- because it’s stylized which means it is something specifically made for a distinct art style. This means you (if you’re a good character concept artist) or someone you hire will have to create dozens of character concepts just for the main character. What happens if you have a bunch of other characters? A.I. enemies? monsters? Now that’s just characters. What about environments, hero meshes, props, vehicles, stylized UX/UI, etc etc, you see where I’m going with this? It’s a lot more work and more labor intensive to make a stylized game.
Do more research first before deciding to go stylized- just because it looks “cartoony” doesnt mean it’s not serious amounts of work.
Making a game is one of the hardest things you can undertake and it’s not cheap, that’s just the reality.
Keep in mind I’m not trying to sound mean or discourage you in any way, just want to give you a heads up before you commit all your time and energy into this project. I wouldn’t worry so much about the art direction anyways, yeah it’s important but if I were you this is what I would do:
- quickly decide on art direction, just download some images from a quick google search on different art styles. Check out games you like and especially movies (film is a great source for art inspiration), collect a ton of reference images that give you a feeling of atmosphere and can convey the feeling of the world you want to create with just an image. Look for stuff that has interesting lighting, composition, and mood.
- once you look through all your reference, decide on a cool art style for your game/project, it could even be a mix of different images- choose the ones you like and then decide on that being your art direction for the time being (from the time you do a Google image search to the time you have the images in front of you and decide on something should be no more than a week or even a few days)
- put a pin in that art direction, you’ll come back to it later. Now it’s time for the most important thing; prototype your game. work on your game mechanics and systems (I’m hoping you created a game design document at some point before all this) and get to work developing your game
- once and ONLY once you have something good prototyped that works and is fun, then begin creating art. By then a lot of time has passed, prob months, time in which ideas have turned in your head and new ideas have flourished. Revisit your original art vision and it will prob be different, you may have a clearer picture of what it should look like. At this point finalize your art direction/style and get to work. If you have no choice but to hire people (because you can’t create the art yourself) you have a great prototype, show it off to investors, VC’s, angel investors, make a kickstarter campaign, apply for a Epic grant, etc. Use what money you raise to hire artists to finish off the art for your game.
If this is the first time you have ever done something like this, I strongly recommend you DONT do everything I mentioned above. Stop now. Instead, create somekind of small demo scene, something small and manageable. Basically something small enough in scope to where a single person working from home in their free time can accomplish, especially someone new to game development. This will allow you to hone your skills, make it more likely that you will actually finish something and see it all the way through, and teach you what it may take to make a game (which is again one of the most difficult things you can undertake as a software developer).
Hope that all makes sense, feel free to ask more questions! Good luck with your game!
). Furthermore, I’m 15 years old so spending a lot of money on a good computer that can actually run high end games or spending a lot of money on assets just isn’t really an option, and because I really like things like drawing and making 3d models I thought I could try to do most of the assets myself (which is, of course, pretty naive. I know).
) Need particle effects? use the ones that come with the free starter pack, there some smoke, explosion, and sparks stuff in there.