[NateG]

I created an online game called Pit of War (http://www.pitofwar.com). It's a strategy/management game that puts you in charge of a stable of gladiators. You train your gladiators, outfit them in armour and weapons and give them a set of strategies to use during the fights against other players. Strategies start off simple and grow in detail and complexity as gladiators gain levels, skills and better equipment.

[LyndsySimon]

I've always been at least mildly interested in game development, but what has stopped me cold to this point is my inability to create the necessary artwork. Did you create the art yourself, or did you have someone else do it?

[riskable]

Even if you can create the art it's a lot of work! More work than coding the game, even.

Seriously, I started learning Blender so I could make assets for my own games and even though I have some training in art it is one hell of a learning curve. Not Blender itself, no. The first three weeks were a bit slow but then I started to get a workflow going and now I'm confident I can make decent-looking characters.

No, the real hard part. The serious drain on time is the art part. If you haven't had years of experience making art on a very regular basis you're going to have a slow go of it. Not only that but experienced artists will look at your work and give you a handful of tips that will make you feel both stupid and inadequate.

Art is a skill that can be learned... Just like programming. However, just like programming you're going to spend the first few years making absolute garbage. It takes time to be a decent artist.

You can learn to make one kind of art pretty quickly. For example, I successfully mastered the art of creating 3D anime girls (which are for the game idea) in about a month. Can I animate them with any semblance of, "that looks kinda natural"? No. I'm still working on getting the hair right. I've yet to even begin animating walks or arm movements!

...and for those who've done this: Yes, I'm using Rigify to save time. I'm in the process of writing a Python script that works like the Ragdoll script for hair or rope-like structures (because I'll be damned if I have to spend any more hours positioning a pony tail by hand @60 FPS!).

Edit: I had to take a break for a while to work on non-art stuff but here's where I stood three weeks ago:

https://imgur.com/a/I5YwR

Note that she has eyes but they weren't showing up in the Cycles render output for a reason I haven't figured out yet :)

The entire head was made from scratch by me. The hair was my focus when I was last working on it (the animation thereof).

[NateG]

I did some of the UI art myself, but for the character art and gear I hired artists to do that. I directed them but they made the magic happen. If you're interested in making a game but don't want to do the art or can't do the art yourself, consider using a game engine like Unity where you can then use their asset store to buy the art you need. There are also open source art sites out there with free art you can use such as OpenGameArt [1] to get you started. Start with free (or cheap) art assets to test your game ideas and learn, and once you have a fun design and game you can consider hiring someone to make better looking art or something more specific to the style you had in mind.

[1] http://opengameart.org/