The whole topic seems like going down a rabbit hole.

"For do A, first you need to learn to do B...and to do B you need skills you only get by knowing how to do C...and to do C properly you need to practice for years until you develop confidence! Never seek for a perfect result!"

You are supposed to embark in a endless journey learning new stuff, improving slowly over the course of years, never focusing in seek perfection. https://19216811.cam/

But for a indie game developer it is strictly a skill to draw game assets, nothing more.

I know there are lots of free packs or art and the like, but many developers avoid them, as most developers want to create something unique, not a mashing of free assets everyone can find on the internet.

How do you approach to this without spending more time than the strictly required? I have searched and searched but can't find anything that is strictly about game assets, all courses try to embark you in an endless journey, not even a digital journey as they ask you to do ink/paper art.

I am not seeking to be a professional artist, i am seeking a specific set of skills to make 2D game assets AND ONLY that.

Are there any good online courses, PDFs or well-explained series of videos to learn to do 2D game art from ZERO?

mehulkasi85 said:
Are there any good online courses, PDFs or well-explained series of videos to learn to do 2D game art from ZERO?

if u can't draw but insist on learning then find 2D courses on Udemy;

otherwise my advice is if u can't draw and want to focus on game dev, then hire some artist to draw and you keep your focus on game dev; there's a pride in hiring people, it shows wisdom, not just pride in saying “i did it myself”

all the best ?

I've been through this recently, I'm a developer who likes drawing, but it's fair to say that I'm not exactly the greatest artist. For my game #1 (shamesless plug - https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/spacegirl/9pgm3f97jzsj?activetab=pivot:overviewtab​ ) I drew all of the graphics myself originally, this both took me a long time but left me with not great graphics. I've since updated the graphics, but I hamstrung myself unncessarily

I wasn't going to make the same mistake for the sequel and instead used fiverr.com (can give you a referral code if you want :-) ) to find an artist (there are literally hundreds of really talented people out there). This saved me both time and money (assuming that you price your time at something reasonable and you can afford to pay) as well as getting some excellent assets - trailer for the sequel -

Note it's not the same as having a partner who's going to develop the game with you, but you can get some excellent assets. Collaborators can be found on this site - follow Tom's answer above. The obvious complication is that it's hard to find collaborators without a track record etc. a true chicken and the egg

So for practical purposes, how I start:

1. Draw some placeholder graphics - they don't have to be great, but to give an idea of what I'm thinking about for the game
2. Create the game around it
3. Create some trailers - worst case, just record gameplay videos on your PC with a microphone without editing and upload to YouTube
4. Use this trailers to get collaborators / give artists details of what you're actually looking for

If you want to get better at drawing - look at online courses etc. as mentioned above

Tom Sloper said:

The secret is “other people.” It's really hard to do everything all by yourself.

This is the best advice. No matter how good you are at coding etc. that's not sufficient to great games which will make people actually want to play / be willing to try.