Learning 2D Game Art Design for Super Cat Hop 🎨

After nailing down the basic game logic for Super Cat Hop with SpriteKit, I hit an interesting challenge this week—turning Char’s “awesome” 😹 character drawings into fun, animated characters for the game! I quickly realized that, although I’m pretty good at coding, my drawing skills needed some serious work. So, I took some actions to dive into the world of 2D game art design.

The good news is that I didn’t need to become a master artist—just being able to create simple comic-style characters with bold edges and bright colors would do the trick. I started exploring some free tools and landed on two great options: Grease Pencil from Blender and Krita. While both were awesome, I went with Krita because it reminded me of the traditional drawing apps like Photoshop that I’m a bit more familiar with.

But before I switched to Krita, I gave Grease Pencil a try. I took my Char’s drawing, traced it, and added some colors. The Sculpting tool was cool—it let me move lines and points around to animate the character easily. The animations turned out pretty well, but something about it still felt a bit… off. It wasn’t the tool—it was me! I realized I needed to get better at drawing itself, not just using the tools.

So, I switched gears and started an online drawing course for Krita. After five hours of sketching, outlining, coloring, and shading, I was feeling a lot more confident. For my first practice piece, I drew my Char’s favorite comic, Bunny vs. Monkey. And honestly? It’s one of the best things I’ve ever drawn! Not bad for a beginner!

Once I had some drawing skills under my belt, I went back to Super Cat Hop. I redid the background and simplified my Char’s character, taking inspiration from Bunny vs. Monkey. Instead of detailed hands and legs, we went with a simple triangle body for the character, and it works! I added the game logic from last week, and now we’ve got a basic version of the game where the character hops around.

Next up, Char and I will work on refining the background to make it more original, adding sound, and giving the game a fun title. We’ve decided that instead of aiming for perfection, we’ll wrap this project up soon so we can move on to more fun ideas. With each game we build, we’re learning and getting better—and most importantly, we’re having fun together!