Rakilonn

BitMaster sumed up what I wanted to say.

I will just add that on every forum there are trolls, so don't be surprised if someone is offensive (especially in programming where errors can be easily seen).

But for the majority of threads I read, I think the community is great, helps a lot (even with harsh words) and there are even some real gems.

Free and opensource  that's the interesting part

For those who want to dig in the Id source codes, Fabien Sanglard did some great reviews. http://fabiensanglard.net/

If you really want to be an artist and work on PC, you should take a graphics tablet. Drawing with the mouse on PC is really a pain even when you are a good artist. Wacom is well known for that and they have a tablet for beginners : the "Bamboo" model. Don't take a huge one. I took one and I only use a small portion of it.

Of course, as it has been said you can also draw on paper and scan the drawing to color it.

The best pixel art tutorial I found, is this one : http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/42648699708/pixel-art-tutorial

For pixel art there is also this website : http://www.pixeljoint.com/default.asp (go in the gallery and enjoy )

Here is my advises :

Try to build your drawing with basic forms like a line for the vertebral column and a oval for the head.
Something like this :


Found on http://www.foxprints.com/tracy/misc/tutorial/char_drawing.html

You can use his basic forms, they are very good and common.

It's important for anyone because if you constantly start with the details, you will realize that you will not be able to draw something with an original position/point of view.

Learn how to draw something with the perspective.

Learn anatomy and proportions.

Copy shamelessly your favorite artists BUT always start with the basic shapes (as mention above) or you will learn barely nothing.

And of course draw a lot.

When you are comfortable with these points (especially the anatomy) you must take a big book of Burne Hogarth.

This artist has an old style sometime, but it will give a real deep knowledge about anatomy and muscles (and how to draw them properly).

Oh I jumped on that thread thinking that it was about games like Arma 3

But for SimCity, as Mratthew said it, it's because it's like a simulation of life, and everything is moving, improving (or not) and alive by itself. And this sense of live is fascinating and hard to render sometimes.

For the new SimCity, I heard that it was badly rendered (citizen go to sleep in the shortest house) but for games like SimCity 2000 and also Holiday Island it was good. Especially Holiday Island because you were able to follow cars.

If you want to try a SimCity-like, give it a try

Also I heard that Cities XL is better rendered for this where you can view where every people go to work with the path, by clicking on their houses.

If you had implemented some websites, you would though that flash is awesome because the result is consistent for everyone.

On the other hand, sometime I hate doing this type of things (i.e. HTML/CSS coding) sometimes, because at the end if you want to do something great it's full of hacks and anything can brake after a patch of a web browser. (Recently, that happens to me with chrome which now doesn't want to render a transition properly)