Several more games are in the app store that were made with free art from this site! Here’s a rundown of the latest:

Kinder Pop

Kinder Pop

by Mohammad Azam
Uses Wallpapers, Pet Santa game pack, and Free Starburst Icon Backgrounds

Kinder Pop is a simple, fun and educational app that teaches your toddlers alphabets and numbers. Each letter or number appears in a bubble. A voice indicates which letter/number to pop, and the player gets rewarded with virtual toys.

This app uses a lot of the free art on this site, including the animals from the Pet Santa game pack and the free starburst icon backgrounds. He also licensed the desktop wallpapers for a small fee (to get them without the website link on them) to use as his backgrounds.

See it in the app store here!

Screenshot of Kinder Pop

RPS Mutants

RPS Mutants

by Ken Toh
Uses Cloud Jumper game pack

You are a mutant that changes shape (switching between rock, paper, and scissors). Other rocks, papers, and scissors come flying at you, and you have to kill the ones your current form can defeat while avoiding the others.

This game uses one of the clouds in the Cloudjumper pack in a background “bubble” effect.

See it in the app store here!

Screenshot of RPS Mutants

Alien Soccer

Alien Soccer

by LittlePeculiar
Uses Pet Santa game pack, War Tanks Top-Down Tileset, and Tower Defense Robot World game pack.

In this multi-directional scrolling shooter game, the soccer player is being attacked by alien spiders. He must kick the ball to destroy the aliens. You tilt the device to move the player, and touch the screen to shoot the ball.

This game uses the person from Pet Santa and the background tiles found in the War Tanks Top-Down Tileset. The aliens are from the Tower Defense Robot World game pack.

See it in the app store here!

Screenshot of Alien Soccer

Snail Race HD

Snail Race

by Tobias Bischoff
Using Monkey Platformer game pack 

In this cute color-matching game for toddlers, you roll “dice” to tell you which color snails to touch. When touched, the snails move forward.

The grassy foreground from the Monkey Platformer game pack shows up here, as does the monkey and the stone statue.

See it in the app store here!

Screenshot of Snail Race HD

Want to make a game with free art?

It’s a great way to make your first app without spending a lot of money on art. Find all of the free art sets on this site here – there are tile sets, platformer sets, scrolling sets… go see if one of them fits that game idea you’ve been thinking of!

And when you finish a game, I’d love to see it! You can use my Contact form to send me a link to your game or app. I will likely feature it in a future roundup!

This is free art – it is under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Type: iPad retina, iPad (though you can resize it for other resolutions)

Download the art here, or read on for an explanation.

4-in-a-row

I’m sure you’ve played this classic turn-based board game as a kid! Now you can turn it into an iPad game. In fact, that’s exactly what Luke Dicken will teach you to do in a future tutorial on raywenderlich.com.

Yes, you are playing on the moon. Don't forget your air tank!

Suggested Gameplay

Two players take turns dropping tokens into the frame, trying to line up four in a row. The first one who connects four tokens either diagonally, horizontally, or vertically wins the game!

Game Pack Contents

All of the art is sized for the iPad retina as well as the regular iPad.  You can easily resize them (and crop the background) for other resolutions.

• Moon horizon background
• Board game frame with computer chip theme
• Two tokens: blue and orange
• Popup background (you can use this for options/settings, a win/lose screen, title screen – whatever you need) with computer chip details.
• Button with grey metal texture

Here's a mockup of those last couple items

Edit: Extra Stuff

The tutorial needed a couple extra things, so I added the following to the game pack. They should make life a little easier if you don’t want to fool with adding text through the code.

• The popup background with two options for the end game: You Win! and You Lose!
• A “Play Again” button
• A “Reset” button for the bottom left while the game is going.

Enjoy!

As always, I LOVE to hear about what games you make with the free art on this site – if you finish a game with it, send me an email via my Contact page or direct message me on twitter!

Who’s not busy these days? Sometimes it seems we are just keeping our heads above water. Take time to smell the flowers, if you can find them under all the rain… or just go for a moonlit swim!

Multiple screen resolutions and non-calendar versions can be found at the bottom of the post.

I’ve been working on a sketching project this year, where I sketch each day from a daily calendar featuring animals. It’s a great way to get yourself to take the time to sketch: find a daily calendar with a subject you like (architecture, people, animals, landscapes), and sketch that subject each day. If you miss a day or two, it doesn’t take long to catch up!

The animals I sketch lately seem to leap into my mind in vector format, and this bear was a favorite of mine. You can see it go from sketch to final wallpaper over on my personal blog.

Here it is without the calendar:

iPhone and iPad wallpapers (learn how to set them as your home screen here):
iPhone 320×480 (without calendar)

iPhone retina 640×960 (without calendar)

iPad 768×1024 (with calendar)

iPad 768×1024 (without calendar)

iPad Retina: 1536×2048 (with calendar)

iPad retina: 1536×2048 (without calendar)

Desktop wallpapers with calendar:
1024×600, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 1920×1080

Desktop wallpapers without calendar:
1024×600, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 1920×1080

If there’s another resolution you need, let me know!

Get your art prayers answered!

Easy – just go where the artists are! There are hundreds of hungry and talented artists out there waiting for your job posting. All sorts of artists, with all types of styles and hourly rates.

But… if you aren’t an artist, you have no idea where the artists hang out.

Fortunately, you are reading this article and will soon be able to find all the artists you need :] Here is what we’ll discuss:

• Budget
• What To Include In The Job Posting
• Where To Post
• Choosing The Right Artist

Also, at the end of the post is a link to an example of one of our job postings.

Budget

The first thing to think about is your budget. Hopefully, you’ve hoarded a few hundred dollars (or a couple thousand, depending on how ambitious your game/app is) to spend on graphics. In general, you should hire the best artist you can afford.

Revenue Share Vs Set Dollar Amount

A revenue share compensation means that you promise them a percentage of your sales of the game.  The pro is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money up front.  The con is that you have to send regular payments to this person for a long time (assuming you make money, which we hope you do!).  An appropriate revenue share for an artist lies somewhere within 10-20%, depending on how much work is involved.

Most artists will prefer the cold hard cash option, however, because unless they know you and believe in your project, they will want guaranteed money for their work.

This means setting a dollar amount on the whole project.  The amount will vary widely based on complexity and amount of art needed, the skill of the artist, and their hourly rates (you won’t pay them an hourly rate, but their hourly rate will affect their estimate for the whole project).

If, like us, you have no idea what the appropriate amount to pay would be, leave it up to the artists! Instead of defining the compensation for the job, ask the artists to respond with an estimate. You will get a wide range of estimates, but in general better artists will charge more.

What To Include In The Job Posting

Explaining the job clearly will go a long way toward getting you the right artist for your project. Here’s a rough template:

• Introduce yourself
• Explain the type of app or project – include a picture or example or demo/beta if possible
• Give an overview of the art requirements
• If time is an issue, mention your timeline
• Ask for them to email you (make sure to include your email address!) with information, including:
  • a link to their portfolio
  • their bid for the project
  • any other information you might want (do they need to have an iPhone or iPad? Ask them if they have one.)
• Finally, list out the full art requirements as completely as you can.

Where To Post Jobs

Each of these sites has a page or forum thread explaining how to write a good post and guidelines for how to use the site, so check those out as well.

• Pixel Joint forums
  • http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/
  • Go to the “Job Offerings” forum thread under The Lounge. You will need to register in order to post.
• Concept art forums
  • http://jobs.conceptart.org/
  • Again, you will need to register.
• gamedev.net
  • http://www.gamedev.net
  • In the navigation bar, go to Classifieds>Job Offers. As usual, you will need to make an account to post a job.

If you know of another great place to post jobs for artists, let me know!

Choosing The Right Artist

After you craft your post and put it up on the job boards above, you will hopefully get at least a few bids. We usually end up getting over a dozen, more if the job is large or cool. So how do you pick?

First, trash the rule-breakers. You will find that many people do not read directions and will only link to their portfolio without answering any of your questions – most importantly, the estimate. Just trash these emails – if the artist can’t follow directions, he or she isn’t going to be a good person to work with.

Then, go through each portfolio. See if the style of art matches what you want in your game. If an artist does mostly clean, cute vector animals, they will probably not be very good at gritty, realistic dungeon graphics. Try to find examples of the type of art you want: characters, backgrounds, toolbars, UI elements. If you like certain artists but don’t see examples of the type of work you need in their portfolio, ask them if they have done anything like your project before.

Next, make a list of the artists whose work you like. Include their estimate. Arrange them in order of preference.

Choose between quality and price. This part is up to you – get the best you can afford, but don’t break the bank! If you want a certain artist but can’t quite afford him or her, think about cutting down your requirements to lower the estimate.

Write a contract. Once you choose your artist and the two of you agree on the scope of the work and the price, write up a contract so that everyone’s on the same page (and you are protected should things go wrong). The contract doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should spell out what images they will be giving to you, on what time schedule, when they will be paid, and how.  Both parties need to sign the contract.

Finally, go back to your job postings and either delete them or update them. You need to let people know that the position is filled, so that they don’t waste their time and you don’t continue to get emails from hopeful artists!

Example Job Posting

Here’s an example of one of the job postings we wrote for a recent project.

And here’s a PDF in case that link is expired.

Have Something To Add?

If you know of another site to post job offers for artists, or if you think of something that could help people trying to hire artists, please let us know in the comments!

This is free art – it is under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Type: iPhone, iPhone Retina, iPad, and for the first time, Android! (at least the 800×480 resolution)

Download the art here, or read on for an explanation.

Tower Of Hanoi

This game pack is for another tutorial on raywenderlich.com, this time from Ali Hafizji about creating a puzzle game like Tower Of Hanoi. The tutorial is for making the game for the Android platform, but while I was at it I also made art for the iPhone and iPad.

Use this game art to make a Tower Of Hanoi game for mobile devices!

Suggested Gameplay

You can read the whole concept of Tower of Hanoi puzzles here, but the basic concept is that the rings must be moved from one tower to another, one ring at a time. The catch: no ring can be placed on top of a smaller ring.

However, the background is separate from the towers (imagine the image above without the red towers or the blue rings), so if you have another idea that can use this background, go for it!

Game Pack Contents

For Android devices:

• Background – sized 800×480 pixels
• Tower
• Three rings to stack

For iOS devices:

• Background for iPhone, iPhone retina, and iPad
• Tower – regular and retina size
• Three rings to stack – each in regular and retina size

Bonus: Geek Trivia

Speaking of Tower of Hanoi, did you know that this game is even in Star Wars: The Old Republic? Extra geek points to the first person who posts exactly where! :]

(Ray made me put that in – I have never played Star Wars and so I have no idea!)

Enjoy!

As always, I LOVE to hear about what games you make with the free art on this site – if you finish a game with it, send me an email via my Contact page or direct message me on twitter!

Use one of these images as the background for your app icon!

Every app needs a good app icon. If you know the basics of how to create a clear, visually appealing app icon, you know that you need two things: a single symbol of your game or app, and a complementary background.

You know it's true.

One of the types of backgrounds that look good are starburst backgrounds, where rays of light are shooting out from your main subject.

It draws attention to your subject and makes it seem like a prize or a superhero.

In this zip file, you will find five starburst backgrounds: red, orange, green, blue, and purple.

Take one of these backgrounds, put your main character or other symbol of your game or app on top, and you have an app icon!

I’ve used this starburst style for several of our icons that we have used in our apps (especially Gamecenter icons). It is often the little touch needed to transform an icon from ho-hum to eye-catching without making the icon confusing or busy.

Butterfly icon we used in Wild Fables

Each color starburst image has two sizes: 512×512 pixels and 1024×1024 pixels (since now we need iPad retina size icons!) You can resize them for the other app icon sizes.

If these were useful, or if you have other ideas for app backgrounds you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments!

This month, I just felt the need for a zebra. We all have those months.

Multiple screen resolutions and non-calendar versions can be found at the bottom of the post.

I took more of a graphic design approach this month (rather than an illustrative one), working with simple shapes and colors. As usual, I did a lot of the work in Illustrator and then transferred my shapes over to Photoshop (as either Smart Objects or Shape Layers) to add some texture and to arrange the composition for each resolution.

New this month is the iPad retina resolution, which is already the headache I knew it would be. I have never dug in my heels over technology except for the iPad retina screen, because as an iOS artist it makes life a lot more complicated. And I need to upgrade my computer to deal with the large graphics. But it sure does look pretty on my new iPad :]

Here it is without the calendar:

iPhone and iPad wallpapers (learn how to set them as your home screen here):
iPhone 320×480 (without calendar)

iPhone retina 640×960 (without calendar)

iPad 768×1024 (with calendar)

iPad 768×1024 (without calendar)

iPad Retina: 1536×2048 (with calendar)

iPad retina: 1536×2048 (without calendar)

Desktop wallpapers with calendar:
1024×600, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 1920×1080

Desktop wallpapers without calendar:
1024×600, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 1920×1080

If there’s another resolution you need, let me know!

The new iPad - Image courtesy of Gizmag.com

As developers of iPad and universal apps, this concerned us. Would our apps look horrible on the new iPad screen? Did we need to rush out upgrades to all of our apps, putting our current projects on hold?

So we got ourselves a shiny new iPad to test on. Now that I’ve played with it a bit, and we’ve tested some of our apps on it, I thought I’d share my conclusions.

As A Developer

You can definitely tell a difference between hi-res retina graphics and normal iPad graphics. Apps with retina images have an extra polish, a little sparkle over other apps. It’s a subtle difference, and possibly only visible if you are looking for that difference, but it is there.

As A Consumer

To be totally honest, if I weren’t paying attention to the difference between the retina and low-res graphics, I wouldn’t have noticed. Yes, the screen is crisp, but when I looked at our first-generation iPad after spending time with my shiny new iPad, I didn’t recoil in disgust. Maybe it’s my eyes, but I barely noticed unless I was actively analyzing the image quality.

When deciding which apps to download, I didn’t care if an app was upgraded for the new retina screen. What mattered most, what always matters most, was the core of the app itself: the features, the fun, the experience. I never even checked to see if an app I wanted was upgraded for retina graphics. If it was, it was a nice little bonus. If it wasn’t, I assumed it would be upgraded eventually.

Moving Forward

Of course you should upgrade the graphics in your iPad app at some point. Work it into your next update cycle. Keeping your app high-quality as technology advances will help keep it competitive.

But don’t panic. The slightly-less-than-perfect quality on the new iPads won’t be apparent to most consumers, for most apps. It certainly won’t stop someone from buying your app- or enjoying it – if the app itself is a good app.

One thing to note: if your app has both photos and vector graphics, definitely work on upgrading those photos. Some apps, like Wikipanion, have both: the vector graphics are retina, but the photos in the articles are all normal computer screen resolution, not retina. It’s a little jarring, but understandable – there’s no way they can update all the photos of all the entries. Moving forward, make sure all your photos are twice the size that they were before.

Here’s what we did: we were about to update one app anyway (Wild Fables), so we upgraded our graphics too. It added a day to our project, but it was a good time to do it. We also upgraded our most popular app (Math Ninja). But we have several other apps that we aren’t going to upgrade right away with retina graphics, because we have other projects that take precedence. We’ll upgrade the graphics the next time we update those apps.

Anyway, I hope this helps some other developers out there wondering what to do now that the iPad retina screen has made its appearance!

Have something to add? What do you think about the retina iPad screen? Chime in below in the comments!

Save time resizing retina art with this action!

If you made your art in Illustrator, this is not a big cause for alarm.  Since Illustrator is a vector-based program, resizing the art will not result in blurry graphics. 

In fact, all you need to do is Save For Web & Devices as usual, then go to the Image Size tab, change the percent to 200, click Apply, and save.

Unfortunately, if you have a lot of images even this simple step takes a LOT of time.

There is a way to speed up the process somewhat using an action.  Actions are simply recordings of a set of commands or events.  Once you create an action, you can play it to apply those commands and events to a piece of art.

Read on to find out how to make an action to save out Illustrator art at double the size!

Step 1: Record The Action

Open the Actions panel

First, open the actions panel.

To do this, go up to Window and choose Actions.

Make a new action

Next, click the New Action button at the bottom of the panel. 

Name it “Double”. 

Set a function key that will trigger the action – I chose F5. 

You can also add a modifier key like Shift or Command by clicking its box. 

Click OK.

Save as usual but double the size of the image.

The action is now recording everything you do, like an angry ex-girlfriend. But more useful.

Click on the artboard of the image you want to resize. 

Go to File > Save For Web & Devices. 

Click the Image Size tab, change the percent to 200, and click Apply. 

Make sure any other settings are as you want them; if you are saving out iOS art, you will want PNG-24 with Transparency checked. 

Click Save.

Navigate to the folder you want to save the art to.  The action will save all future art to this specific folder, so keep that in mind. 

Name it and click Save.

Step 2: Stop Recording

Be sure to stop recording!

I often forget this, but it’s an important step: click the square at the bottom left to stop recording! 

If you don’t, and you run the action, it will ultimately give you an error message.

Step 3: Use The Action

When you have tons of arboards, the time add up!

Now click on the next artboard of the next image you need to resize and save. 

Press F5 to play the action.  You can also play the action by double-clicking its name in the Actions panel, or by clicking it and pressing the “Play” icon at the bottom.

It will Save For Web & Devices and resize the art to 200% automatically, but you still have to click Save. 

Name the file and click Save again.

This action only shaves a few seconds off the saving process, but when you have dozens or hundreds of images to resize, trust me – it’s worth it!

Problems I’ve Noticed

Pesky artifacts occur every once in a while but are easy to get rid of.

I have seen one problem that only occasionally happens when saving this way: every once in a while, the image that is saved has odd artifacts along the bottom or right edge.

You can just open these particular PNGs in Photoshop, delete the artifacts, and save.

Know Another Saving Tip?

If you know of a better way to do this, or have other tips to help resizing and saving art, please add your voice in the comments!

Four more new games have been made using the free art found on this site! We’ve got Flash games, Windows Phone games, and of course our beloved iPhone/iPad games. Read on to see the creative games developers have put together!

Save a Mole

Save A Mole

by Vladimir Sanchez
using Mole Whack free game art pack

Type: Flash

Save a Mole is a free Flash game on Doki Games. In a neat twist on whack-a-mole, you are actually trying NOT to get the moles squashed.

You get points for popping the moles up and then hiding them before the mallets come down.

Find out more here.

Screenshot of Save A Mole

Broccoli in Space

Broccoli In Space

by Nikola Kirev
using the Space Flier game art pack and the Four Spaceships game art.

Type: iPhone and iPad 

In this quirky space game, your spaceship must destroy all the broccoli flying toward you!

The developer used background objects from one pack, a spaceship from another, and added their own broccoli and other images. A great example of mixing and matching art!

Find out more here.

Broccoli In Space screenshot

Tap The Mole

Tap The Mole

by Konstantinos Chalvantzis
using Mole Whack free game art pack

Type: Windows Phone 7 

Traditional mole whacking fun, with a few tweaks: Hit the moles when they pop out of their holes before the time ends. If you don’t touch a mole, they come out more slowly. When night falls, only hit the red moles!

Find out more here.

Tap The Mole screenshot

Fling It

Fling It

by Christopher Leiva of Leiva Games
using Cloud Jumper free game art pack

Type: iPhone and iPad 

This is a puzzle game where you slide a bubble around an obstacle course to gather three stars.

The developer used the cloud blocks from the free art pack to build the levels, and added backgrounds, stars, bubbles, and the user interface.

Find the iPad version here, and the iPhone version here.

Fling It screenshot

Want to make a game with free art?

It’s a great way to make your first app without spending a lot of money on art. Find all of the free art sets on this site here – there are tile sets, platformer sets, scrolling sets… go see if one of them fits that game idea you’ve been thinking of!

And when you finish a game, I’d love to see it! You can use my Contact form to send me a link to your game or app. I will likely feature it in a future roundup!