All Guides: Game Design and Development: Game Assets

Game Assets

Game assets include graphics (characters, environments, logos), background music, special effects and sound effects. There are many tools and resources available to create your own game assets or use assets that already exist.

Graphics

Blender
A free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.
Available in the Maker Hub and Media Lab.
Maya
3D animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software. Use it for animation, environments, motion graphics, virtual reality, and character creation. Free one month trial. Free three years for students.
Gimp
Free software for image editing on Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems
Available in the Maker Hub and Media Lab.
DaFont
Archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author or by popularity.
Google Fonts
A library of over 800 free fonts
Aseprite
A pixel-art tool to create 2D animations, sprites and other game graphics. A free trial is available.
Adobe Photoshop CC
Software used to edit and alter existing images and photographs.
Pyxel Edit
A pixel art editor designed to make it fun and easy to make tilesets, levels and animations.
GraphicsGale
A free animation graphic editor that allows you to preview your animations while editing sprites. GraphicsGale supports many formats, including .ico, .gif, .avi, .cur, and .ani.
Open Game Art
A variety of freely licensed, high-quality art for game developers.

Music and Sound Effects

Freesound
A collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds to browse, download and share
BeepBox
An online tool for sketching and sharing chiptune melodies
Bosca Ceoil
A free tool for beginners to create music with a built-in tutorial to walk you through each step
Sunvox
A modular synthesizer with pattern-based sequencer (tracker) to compose music on any device or system. Free for most operating systems, except Android and iOS