Tip #1: Start with a Color Palette

The is the most common mistake I see, and the easiest to avoid. The default palette for most paint programs hearkens back to the DOS days (can you find the connection between the colors in this palette and the four-bit binary numbers from 00 to 15? Of course you can. If you couldn't figure that out, you'd be a real artist.)

By palette, I don't mean a 16 or 256 color palette from the VGA days. I simply mean a coordinated color scheme for your game. If you start with a well chosen palette first thing, your scribbles will appear aesthetically pleasing and even intentionally "graphic designy" rather than "crap".

But where do I find a palette? I can't even coordinate colors when I dress myself in the morning!

Well, a little color theory goes a long way, and if you spend fifteen minutes googling "color theory" or "colour theory", which is the inferior British version of the theory, you'll be ahead of the game. But if you don't have time for that, here's a few things that work wonders:

1. Use a photographic image. Think about the theme or setting of your game, and find an image that reminds you of it. If you're making an abstract game, consider theming it, but you can just find any image you like. Then, when making your game art, NEVER use the color chooser, instead ONLY sample colors from your palette image with the eyedropper tool. With a little luck, your game will pick up the "mood" of this image.
   
2. Use a palette from a real artist. There are sites listed below that have great pre-built palettes to start with. Start with one of these, and use the colors in your game. With this approach, you'll often need more than the 5 or so colors you get in the palette.
   
3. Resist the urge to free-pick from the color chooser, instead, make new colors by combining ones from your palette. For example, draw atop the palette with a semi-transparent brush.
   

This example uses a "monochromatic" palette, all the colors are different shades of a very similar hue, other color schemes have more variety but what's important is that the colors all work together well.

Resources:

• Adobe's Kuler Site
• ColourLovers
• MultiColr from idee labs
  This awesome site is the best of both worlds: make a palette and get a bunch of photos that go with it. Just pick a few colors you like, then pick an image that looks good, then color-pick from it. Done!

Tip #2: Hide your shame with a clever theme

I can't draw!

Maybe, you're just too cool to draw. Maybe it's intentional. That's it. Instead of making good art, choose a theme that requires bad art. It worked for "SketchFighter" and "Crayon Physics"

     

Or use what you've got available. Just got some crap on your desk? You could have made one of the most popular games of all time, Desktop Tower Defense.

People are starting to catch on to this trick, but it's got a few years of life left in it. Be creative... maybe your characters are all gingerbread cookies, and you can literally bake them up. Or some kind of zombie bacon attacking your kitchen. Or even a furry chest in need of a shave.

Tip #3: Simple Shapes and Silhouettes

Circle, Square, Triangle, Rhombus, Trapezoid, Parallelogram, etc.. You know how to compute their area exactly, but do you know how to draw them badly? Sketch a couple of shapes freehand, and then add eyes (for a character) or wheels (for a vehicle) or whatever. They'll probably come out wobbly and goofy, not very precise at all.

Depending on how much coffee you've had already, they might be a completely different shape. That's ok! That's good, in fact, as the imperfections and variations create "personality" and make them come alive. Don't use the "shape tools" in your drawing program, it is the destroyer of sprite's souls. By making their forms distinct, you make it easy for the player to differentiate between them visually.

"Smiles" from Sykhronics is a great example of this. Distinct shape and color help you immediately recognise the shapes. You could probably still play the game on a two-color iPhone.

Look at the silhouettes of the shapes. You can use "threshold" or select the outside, invert it, and fill on a new layer, to see this directly. Can you tell what they are just by their outline? Can you tell them apart at least?

This is even more important in 3D. Assign a solid black material and view the model on a white background (or vice versa). Zoom out until it's as big as you expect it to be on the screen during normal gameplay. Does it read?

Resources:

This is explained way more eloquently in this blog post:
Good Design lies in the foundation

Tip #4: Draw more than you need

For the next few tips, we'll develop a sprite for a hypothetical platformer. Let's say we need an enemy, something you can't jump on top of without taking damage. My first though was some kind of spikey turtle (real original, huh?).

The first mistake a programmer will make is to think that his or her ugly sprite will get better by just continuing to work on it. It won't! If it starts out bad, it stays bad. So instead of pixel-pushing for an hour, just sketch a bunch of and only detail the one you like the best.

I started sketching some random enemies, not putting to much detail or thought into them. You can do this quickly and just abandon anything that's not working. I didn't like my turtle at all (he looks kind of like a vampire ferret that someone set on fire). I decided I liked the lobster guy the best, because of his interesting shape, clear silhoutte, and I think he's kind of a unique enemy.

Tip #5: Work at higher resolution

For sprite art, I work at 10x the resolution I need. So if I am making a 64x64 sprite, I work using at least 640x640. Sometimes, a rather ugly character at hi-res becomes a pretty good sprite. Even for backgrounds and logos and stuff, I try to work at 2-3 times the target resolution. If you are careful about the edges when downsampling (see next tip) you can get lots of detail with crisp edges.

For the lobster guy, I took the original sketch and traced over an outline. I typed "lobster" into Google Images and that gave me the idea to make him blue instead of red, and gave me some ideas for more details. Then I colored him in on a different layer below the outline, so I didn't have to worry about messing up my outline. Once he was filled in with solid colors, I set "lock alpha" on and just added some shading.

Don't lose sight of the fact that you're going to downres the heck out of him. You can get caught up in drawing all kinds of fine detail, but it will all get turned to mush in the next step. It's always a good idea to zoom out to get an idea of what the finished product will look like (or just check the Navigator window).

He's still kind of sloppy and not very detailed but next we're going to downsample him and that will hide all of that. Well, mostly.

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