How to compensate lack of gfx-art?

Greets.

Just being curious if it is only me that lacks abilities for creating graphic art, or you also had to find some good solution to overcome that?

There is a very limited royalty free, public domain sprite resource available on the net, this can't be sufficient for every programmer...

*Thinking: Construct is great, but how to create things without gfx?*

1. Try a minimalistic but stylish approach to art.

Knytt stories is a great example of this, the graphics by themselves look very simple, like a few pixels, but when the sprites, backdrops, and tiles come together it forms one cohesive stylistic piece of art that wouldn't be an exaggeration to call beautiful.

2. Create a really interesting and/or unique game with placeholder graphics.

If the game is special enough to catch someone's fancy after playing a small demo, it might be exactly what an artist was looking for to contribute his art to.

3. Using photoshop on photographs.

If drawing isn't your forte, I have seen people use the effects in photoshop to manipulate real photographs to create video game art with

4. Finding copyright free art.

like you said, there has to libraries of sprite art out there, I'm not exactly sure where, others could probably suggest popular websites

Well most major games start with block test graphics then up the quality as the game progresses.

My suggestion is make your game with primitive graphics and once you have a game you will get your choice of artists wanting to contribute.

http://www.opengameart.org/ is a start, you could also take a look at http://www.openclipart.org/ and see if anything there might be useful, too.

Braid was developed with programmer's art. When it was done, an artist was hired. Or so I am told.

Don't waste too much time on graphics. Engine comes first, content second, graphics third, sounds and music last.

i as an artist have to tell you, the other way around isn't easier either - i have no problem in finishing art to a decent and market ready level, but finding coders which are able to count on is hard, and if you found someone like that its most likely that he is filled with work and doesn't have too much free time

so basicly to bribe someone like me to do the graphics for you, you#d need to sell me your game, this doesn't need graphics, it just has to work and i should be able to see that its worth putting time into