5 Courses to Get You Started With Game Design

If all the coverage of this week’s E3 expo has inspired you to improve your game design skills, read on. In this article, I’ll introduce you to five of our best game design courses. Whether you want to design characters, environments or landscapes, these comprehensive video courses will teach you everything you need to know.

1. Environment Concept Art for Games

In this course, concept artist and game designer Jonathan Lam will teach you how to paint environment concept art for video games. The course will take you through a step-by-step process of learning how to paint and design in Adobe Photoshop. Topics covered will include composition, value, painting with colour, lighting effects, and shape language.

2. Character Design & Animation for Games

This time, Jonathan Lam will take you through a step-by-step process from learning how to design your character to managing your assets in animation programs such as Spine. Topics covered will include sketching, asset creation, posing and basic movement.

3. Landscape Concept Art for Film and Games

In this short course, Brian Lee will walk you through his process of developing several designs as he would in a real production environment. This is an advanced course and moves very quickly from one concept to the next, covering concepts such as color, atmosphere, and composition.

4. Creating Compelling Environments for Concept Art

Join Kalen Chock to learn how to develop a compelling environment for games or film. You’ll learn the core principles of sketching, lighting, composition, color and design. At the end of this course, you will have learned the foundation of how to create your own compelling environments for concept art.

5. Design Isometric Environments for Games

In this course, Jonathan Lam will teach you how to create isometric props for your video game levels and scenery. This course will take you through a step-by-step process of learning how to sketch out and design your in-game assets using both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Start Learning With a Free Trial

You can take all of these and more game design courses with a free 10-day trial of our monthly subscription. So get started today, and who knows, maybe you’ll see one of your own games taking the limelight at a future E3.

And if you want some extra resources to help you with your projects, check out the range of beautifully designed sprites, backgrounds, and other game assets on Envato Market.

We also have some great free tutorials on game design, so check these out if you’d like to learn that way: