How to Draw Video Games: Create Unique Characters, Worlds, Levels and More!

by Steve Harpster

Overview

Gamers, get ready to level up with How to Draw Video Games!
 
From helpful sidekicks to 8-bit aliens and block-style beasts, the video game galaxy is an epic and endless world of battle-ready bosses, spewing lava levels and handyman hero's with the courage to save the day—all you need to do is draw them. This book teaches you how to get ideas from your brain onto paper by following basic demonstrations and using real life cheat codes. Instead of pressing "up, up, down, down, left," grab a sketchbook, marker and pack of colored pencils to start designing cool characters and the worlds they live in without the finger blisters and rage quits!


 • 25+ demonstrations cover everything from inventing hero's and evil villains to storyboarding your game win.
 • Learn how to draw legendary worlds and create difficult boss levels, including scrolling, three-dimensional and Minecraft-style block landscapes.
 • Build cool vehicles, spaceships and sweet rides for hero's to hop on!
 • Includes info on tech techniques, programs and digital upgrades.
 Stop playing video games and start drawing them!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440351853
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/02/2017
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 10.80(h) x 0.40(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

A HERO IS BORN

The Hero of the Game

In this first chapter we will create the hero for our video game idea. Video game heroes come in all shapes and sizes. From humans trying to save the Earth to aliens trying to save the galaxy, heroes are an important part of making a video game more than just a game. The hero adds a story for the player to follow and understand. The hero can be a brave warrior ready for battle or a weak little wimp with little to no hope of saving the day. Get ready to create the most important character of the game, the hero.

Is your hero brave and cunning?

Big and bad?

Or just plain wacky?

Chicken Scratch?

Keeping Your Character Ideas Loose and Fun

In this chapter you're going to see me use sticky notes, index cards and scraps of paper to create rough doodles or ideas for my characters. I am going to show you how to draw various characters, but my real goal is to show you the process I used for coming up with a rough character and then breaking it down into simple steps so I could easily draw it again and again in different poses. I started with a simple chicken character. Our chicken is the hero, but this is not a brave warrior of a hero — it's a chicken.

After creating several rough ideas for the chicken character, I stumbled upon this one. When I broke this character down into easy-to-draw shapes, I saw a marshmallow with eyes and wings.

Then I drew this character in a bunch of different poses. I wanted to make sure the personality of this character is easy to recognize. Even when this chicken is doing something brave, its face should show a hint of fear.

DEMONSTRATION

Bad Guy or Good Guy?

Maybe the hero of the game is closer to a bad guy than a good guy. What if the hero does terrible things to defeat the enemies? Here I'll show you how to create a character brought back from the dead to bring villains to justice.

1 Start thumbnailing ideas for the creepy crusader. I was going for a half zombie and half voodoo doll look. Color is going to play a big part in the design of this character, so I threw some color ideas into the thumbnails.

2 Here is the rough thumbnail I decided to go with. I liked the pose and the face of this living dead hero.

3 Drawing lightly, rough out the shape and movement of the body and the pose.

4 Now work on the hairstyle. I tried a couple of looks but this is the one that looked the best.

5 Add some fun details to the boots. I also added a bandana around the neck.

Even as I inked and colored the final drawing, I made changes to the character. I added spikes to the boots and another bandana to the leg. I decided to make the pupil of the eyes red and added thick black lines around the eyes for an even creepier look.

DEMONSTRATION

Painter Pete

All the colors in the world are being sucked off the face of the Earth by evil color-stealing clowns. Only one person with a magic paintbrush can thwart these color thieves from ending the world as we know it.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "How to Draw Video Games"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Steve Harpster.
Excerpted by permission of F+W Media, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Special Offers,
Introduction,
Chapter 1 A Hero Is Born,
Chapter 2 Know Your Enemy,
Chapter 3 Block World,
Chapter 4 Worlds and Levels,
Chapter 5 Vehicles, Spaceships and Sweet Rides,
Chapter 6 The Big Boss Battle,
Chapter 7 Winning the Game,
About the Author,
Acknowledgments,