The Orphanage *concept* *first project*

[Grimn]

First off, like everyone else i am a long time lurker on the forum and have decided it's time for me to stop lurking and
actually contribute to the vast amount of content on this forum.

Now with that said i started creating a few games with RPGMakerMV and i'm actually starting to really like the
program and have started several projects which i'm hoping to dish out in the future. I've quickly ran into problems
though one of which is having a lack of art resources or the means to create my own. So i was wondering if there was
any software's any of you may know about that are simple to use and/or free. i'm in the process of buying the parts
to make myself a monster of a PC so i cant really be dishing out a ton of money all these software's although i plan
to in the future. I'm also thinking of setting up a Patreon page in the future to help motivate/fund my projects.

Well a brief description of the first game i'm going to try to dish out:

The Orphanage: you play as a delinquent child that's been abandoned by his crack whore mother, and has ended up in
an orphanage where the males are treated cruelly while the females are treated with all the love and tender care they
would ever want. There's only one other male orphan besides you there, while the rest are all females, BUT for some
reason you have a feeling you're really gonna like it there.

Anyways that's a quick little teaser for the game that i could actually have a playable demo for in the next month since
about 10% of the story line and events are finished, i just need art. for now i have some art in that i borrowed off
some sites but i'm fairly sure i can get in trouble for that so i shall not use that version for the demo.

Btw, ill go by Grimn hope i meet any expectations i've set above.

[GameDesignDisaster]

Let me start by saying that I like the concept for your game, I don't believe I have seen another game with the same story-line and that's a good thing as originality draws in people. To help you with your search for art I would recommend first posting what fetishes or genres your game is shooting for as just asking for art in general will get you only so far while specifying what you need will allow potential artists to be able to conceptualize what you want from them. I say this as someone who is an artist and who is interested in helping game makers find resources in order to fully flush out their games world and story.

I hope I have given you something to think over and I wish you good luck with your game from here on out.

[Duoiz]

Good free programs for art? Programing? For programming there are a ton, but since you mentioned RPGMaker MV I think what you are looking for is easy to use tools to create, edit and work with images, right?

Krita, to draw images and art, add a free brush set to boost what it can do, but it won't make images for you, you still have to be good at drawing. (Check out the Smoothing option on the brush tool! It made me fall in love with this software)
The animation part of the program however is lackluster at best and has just started to get developed. For now it can only handle frame by frame animations to my knowledge.
I also feel that Krita could still use some work when it comes to croping and streamlining work. (Such as needing to rename and resize 300 image files in an animation sequense isn't fun since you will probably have to do it manualy in the end).
I have yet to try real pixel art in krita. I have edited some sprites, but nothing mayor. So far I find Krita a bit lacking, but workable in this area.

Gimp 2.0 have had a bit more time to mature around these parts, a free program aswell, but I think it is abit clunky myself. Alot of people do recommend it though.

Inkscape. To my knowledge the only free program to mention when it comes to vector based 2d art. I don't like it and find it hard to work with, but as I said, the only one I know of... (I would love to be able to use flash 7, I think it was called from back in 2000, but it is no longer available and I don't own a copy, and all of adobes things have gone to a subscription standard, which I am alergic to...)

Dragonbones (two words?) 3d bones taken to 2d, an free 2.5d animation program. Pain in the arse drm (one time registration, that may or may not work, error msges in chinese), maybe, still very much early access, but DANG I can see potential in this. Basicly allows you to do animations with bones, and Yanfly has made it work with rpg maker MV (If you don't know Yanfly you havn't started using RPG Maker for real... check out his plugin page for almost every need you could have... SummRandomDude is also to recommend, epscially his HudMaker plugin. Yanfly also have some nice to do and todon'ts tutorials on Rpg Maker in general, I suggest checking them out.)

Blender 3d. Want 3d art this is THE tool to use if you don't want to spend thousands of dollars. Easy to get started in, advanced enough to contain it's very own game engine. But once again, this doesn't do the art for you. Hard work is a must. Personaly I think 3d images clashes with rpg maker, unless you replace ALL the art, and even then it is meeh at best.

For music, not sure. Never been my strong side. Audio city is free, but I think that is more for recording sounds, not making bgms and the like. Remember there being a program called fruitloops or something back in the day. I liked it and I think it would be abandonware by now... not sure, even less sure if it works on a modern pc. But there is probably someelse that can give recommendations here.

Lastly don't forget about MSpaint. You might think I am joking, and it is true that MS paint can't even save PNGs with transparancy, but for pixel by pixel art, it is powerful, easy to use, and combined with Windows help center to bring up the zoom to 16 or even 32x you can do quite alot of details even to the biggest pixel image.

Also for some insperation you might want to check out Nergals Zombies life and ... I forgot what the other game was called, Urban demon I think... both are games made with Rpg maker, and both have a young boy as the main role. Or don't you might not want to see what others have made to keep your game more original? Your choice.

Anyways, best of luck to you and remember, there are very few shortcuts when it comes to making a game, or game art. A program only makes the work process smother or harder, in the end, it ins't the brand of the camera but the hand holding it that matters.