Make it in 3D and render to 2D, that is how I would do it.

Hi Raijin!

You sound exactly like me.

I started coding my game using GameMaker Friday, now I'm at that point where I need to put the graphics together for my first scene before I can move ahead. The graphics available here are great, but there's not enough of the style I'm looking for so it's down to drawing my own.

I have access to PhotoShop and Macromedia Flash, but in the end I've reverted back to good old MS Paint as it's perfect for my drawing style.

If you can't think of how the object should look, then just Google a photo of it to gain an idea and get an outline sketched up.

The main piece of advice I would give is to take your time. Don't try and rush drawing anything, which is what I was doing to start with. Now I'm spending an hour per simple object for my game (household objects like furniture).

Andy.

Some perspective -- Game artist is a full time job.  Game developer is a full-time job.

You're talking about learning two full-time jobs at the same time and then doing them both well.  That's no small feat for anybody.

If you're going to try, I would recommend starting with existing templates and tweaking them.  The Gamemaker marketplace has free demo projects for most types of games and you can learn a lot by studying them.

Similarly, you have character bases here and clipart at openclipart that you can practice (re)coloring - that will teach you about different editing features, shadows/shading, perspectives, etc.

The key concept being: don't try to tackle everything at once...it's an easy way to get overwhelmed and frustrated.

I use gamemaker, and do my own art, and I'm amateur in both,and boomshaka is quite right, it's not an easy feat to try and do both, split your time, as both can take a lot of it, I do a lot of reading of tutorials in the evening, and practice in the day when I have the time, you will not be perfect at either, it will take years. I've been using gamemaker for 4 years now and I still haven't released anything. Be happy with what you have done, it's very much a progression, use your artwork that you create as placeholders to begin with and then you can smarten them up later.:)

You can use Inkscape for making 2d art for games which's a free alternative to Illustartor for making SVG graphics .I have recently used it to create soe very decent 2d art for 2d games .You can read this tutorial on how to use Inkscape to make 2D game art ,although not yet complete but it may help you.