Creating your own art work is a necessity for most independent developers. Due to the budget restraints or in a lot of cases the complete lack of a budget a lot of young indie game developer can't afford to hire an artist or buy art assets.
With the help of free software like inkscape, gimp or krita combined with a basic understanding of art creation pretty much anyone can create impressive and professional looking results.
This is the first part of a sequence of video tutorials explaining the basics
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