Don't forget you don't always have to start from scratch with art. There are tons of resources in the public domain that may not have originally been intended to be used in this way, but are too awesome not to make use of.
Check out for example these amazing illustrations of fish:
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/images-from-the-earliest-known...
They'd certainly make for great 2D sprites. There are many sites like this - check e.g. Wikimedia Commons or the Internet Archive.
If you take the time to make a pack of ready-to-use sprites out of these works, you'll congribute a great deal.
Consider sharing your creation under CC0 to give back to the public domain pool.
Have a nice day and happy remixing :)
Yeah, these are amazing.
Thanks, that really is a great resource!
and for anyone out there thinking those fish aren't wild and crazy enough for their tastes, try this one out:
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-drolatic-dreams-of-pantagr...
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Those could fit right into a horror game.
I also love how it offers absolutely no explanation of what these creatues are.
I'm already making the collection now, I'm using the fish and several other works such as
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/flemish-mask-designs-in-the-gr...
https://archive.org/details/architecturemona02lenouoft
so probably pick something else if you want to do it too, in order to not duplicate our efforts. There is a huge list of source sites on the PublicDomainReview site, so pick one and search for interesting stuff :) Don't forget to double check the work is indeed in the public domain - plus the rights to the digital copy have to also be available (watch out for this one!).
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
website: http://www.tastyfish.cz
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
a small teaser :)
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
website: http://www.tastyfish.cz
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
It's done :)
https://opengameart.org/content/public-domain-pack
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
website: http://www.tastyfish.cz
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
Nice! Another great resource is the British Library Flickr, which has endless (literally more than a million) scanned pages of old public domain books.
I've painstakingly created search queries for the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons that search public domain stuff - millions of results - enjoy :)
IA - PD
Wikimedia Commons - PD
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
website: http://www.tastyfish.cz
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
This can be used as an entry point:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliodyssey/page1
If you click an image it generally has a link to a blog entry which has a reference to the original work. Then you can get the original image. (I don't advise getting the images directly from the flickr site, as they might have been edited. Also some of them are not even public domain)
Not bad collection. Thanks.