Can one get by with only Adobe Illustrator? Also a Corel Painter question.

Hopefully this in the right forum.

I have been looking at Adobe Photoshop for awhile. But there are bunch of different software in the package. As far as making 2D games goes can a person get by with only illustrator for creating sketches and pixel art for a 2D game?

And is there any reason I would need any of the other adobe software for game creation? I just want to make 2D games in unity for PC at this point. I am not interested in flash games and such. I'm trying to decide because if I need multiple software I don't think I can justify spending $50.00 a month, and I will probably just buy ProMotion. I will be using Blender as well for 3D stuff. Just thought I would throw that in there. Not sure if it's relevant. I find it confusing researching online because I'm not sure if when people mention something like "load it up in photoshop", if they mean illustrator, or a different adobe software.

While we are on the subject. Would something like Corel Painter be a viable option for making 2D backgrounds and characters? I think it would be cool to be able to paint a 2D background in watercolor, or paint a character in pastels or something to give a game a original look. My research online never returns any relevant information about integrating Corel Painter into games.

I do have one final question. Sorry for the long-winded post. I have researched a lot of games made in Unity. And I feel like all the 2D games look like flash games. I do not like this art style. I think it just looks to neat and perfect. The tutorial is a prime example of what I am speaking of. Is this art style something that just happens using Illustrator that I will have to deal with? Or is it just a popular visual style? I would greatly prefer a hand drawn look for all my characters. Or at least something that doesn't look as cartoony. Is this possible without using pixel art?

 

Illustrator is a vector art package, Unity doesn't out of the box support vector artwork or import of illustrator files, so you're better off going with photoshop which will give you all you need including a nice brush engine.

Alternatively there are a number of opensource, free, and cheap bitmap editing and painting apps out there that you might want to look into, from gimp through dogwaffle and artrage and a whole slew of newer apps.

Painter is a fine package for natural media effects, however the trouble it faces is it's alpha support which is extremely limited, painting to new empty layers results in a blend to white which makes creating sprites a pain as you have to defringe and premultiply them. Otherwise its' great for matte and background work and the brush engine is huge fun.

 

So could one assume that both are viae options for character creation habd drawn and pixel related, and creation of tilesets and animation? i feel like im worrying too much about this and i should just get photoshop as the vast majority of tutorials online are in photoshop.

is there really any real reason either would not suffice? or i should pick one over another? i am well aware of gimp and other tools.

 

This is a really good reason to just go with Photoshop. Sure, either will probably "suffice", but do you want to make your life easy and properly support your work or just scrape by? Use the right tool for the right job - it does not sound like Illustrator fits that bill here.

- Documentation mostly talks about Photoshop.
- You need bitmap stuff, and Photoshop is all about bitmaps.
- You could probably get there with Illustrator, but you'll be making your workflows longer and harder than they have to be. This means putting more time into making your tools do what you need and less time working on improving your art, which in turn means a lower quality result.

Edit: Lets put it this way. If someone was doing art for me and I needed bitmap stuff and they didn't have Photoshop, I'd pay for their sub. I'd rather have the benefit of them being more productive and making me better stuff than have the $20/month.

 

Illustrator and Photoshop are used for very different things. If you don't know what you need illustrator for, then you don't need it. Get Photoshop.

 

Well ... hmm... they are very different tools and are used for different things. Because they can both export pngs, does not mean they are equivalent solutions. "hand drawn/pixel related" is not what AI is used form. And neither application drives a style, You don't work in in pixels in Illustrator (that is FW is for). For hand-drawn art that is PS/Painter/SBP/whatever typically. And the many other tools as well. They all can be used to do pretty much whatever style you want,

To be perfectly honest, you need to start with Gimp/InkScape. They are open-source equivalents of AI/PS, they have pretty much all the same features. (or at least enough). You don't understand how things work and what they do yet, so there is no point in spending a dime until you actually know what you need. Play with the those, learn the fundamentals, then you can make a solid decision if you need to.

One of the reasons you are having some difficulties getting answers,(or confusing answers), is because you don't have the basics yet. For example, most adobe products will open in other adobe products. It's common practice. AI file will open in PS or vice versa for a variety of reasons (usually just to take advantage of stronger tool sets.) Or your question about Painter, you are not finding answers because it's not really a question that would ever be asked. Even asking whether to get AI or PS is a better choice for an defined project is a pretty strong indicator that you really aren't ready for either. Or to be more accurate, at your current skill/knowlede level Photoshop is not better than Gimp and Ilustrator is no better than InkScape.

And when it comes to these type of (art content) tools, you are not investing unique knowledge in them. For example, say you are just starting out in 3D, and go with Blender. Later you want to switch to Maya. While the core skills are the same, there will some rampup/relearning app/flow/process. With Gimp/Inkscape it is not that way, if you learn Gimp really well, you can jump right into photoshop and virtually no ramp up. Both are great tools, and free. Save your money at this point and learn both. After you understand them and how the fit in, you will understand why you had challenges you did during your research.

Best of luck
ZG

 

ok thanks. those answers are really helpful. the reason i decided against gimp, was my research online said gimp doesnt have real animation tools. and obviously i will need animation. i will mess around in gimp. i already have it installed anyway. i would just go with cosmigo promotion, but the online tutorials are few and far between. which is sad because it seems really good. i think it would be perfect. but my month trial has gotten me nowhere.

 

There is a new asset available in the store. It allows you to create entire scene in illustrator and import the file to unity.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/25491

 

I believe that if you want an actual pixel art style(as in not vector, neat, etc..) you are better off investing in Pro Motion. It has many tools that make it better than even photoshop for pixel art, at least for the most part. Photoshop for example doesn't have a nice dedicated system for animations. It can do them, but it works using layers, etc... instead of being like fully designed for animation.

Now, as far as Illustrator vs Photoshop....I would choose photoshop if I only could use 1 of them. Photoshop has some vector tools, though not as much as Illustrator, but Illustrator doesn't really have much in the way of raster tools. Also, that style you don't like, that flash game look, is most likely all vector art. Now vector art doesn't have to be that way, but you have to work at it more than if you were to choose a pixel art style, and you aren't likely to get a good pixel art style in Illustrator unless you do some sort of workaround, like block shapes for pixels and export(or shrink later) to that size.

You also mention an important detail about Pro Motion, the lack of tutorials. You can find on their website a set of videos that explain the tools, but you are better off looking at the same series on youtube(this channel has all of them) so you don't have to fully download or convert from the strange codec they used. The thing about it is that it is similar to Blender(and some other software like photoshop) in that there are just so many buttons and settings. You don't really have to use most of them, though they come in handy at times. I especially like the different painting modes. For example, you can paint with automatic dithering between two colors. As part of the palette you can set up specific gradients, and a couple of the brush modes work with them. One for example darkens the colors via the gradient. The good thing is that it darkens all of the colors at once regardless of which gradient they are in if you enable it. So if you have bright green and bright red together in a shirt and you want to darken both at once, instead of having to grab each darker color one at a time, you can simply switch to this tool and paint over both colors at once and it will darken both of them.

So, maybe you should put some more effort into Pro Motion if you are truly interested in pixel art. From what I've heard and seen, it is considered the standard for pixel art much like Adobe products are for what they do.

 

I do the majority of my art work in Illustrator. It suits most art styles I use, and it allows me to export at whatever resolution I want. That meant very easy changes when retina displays came out. It also allows me to scale up graphics massively for the largest icon graphics required for iOS development.

But sometimes Photoshop works best. It is all about how you use it.