Get Art and Ideas Online

There is nothing wrong with going online and looking at other people's artwork as a source of inspiration. This has been done since the beginning of time. There is something very wrong with going online, downloading someone's art without permission, and then calling it your own. Don't copy, but do carefully analyze (and imitate!) the styles of art that you like.

Also, there are many useful tutorial sites online where you can get a lot of tips on working with a particular paint program, or achieving a particular "look" from scratch (I did a search on hotbot.com for "Art Tutorials" and came up with quite a few hits.) Learn to draw just like how you learned to code - read the tutorials, follow along, try them out, and email the author if you have any questions.

There are free sites online that allow you to download simple GUI or HTML artwork (buttons, lines, etc.) for use in web pages and the like. Usually, if this art can be copied and used on your web page, it can also be used in a shareware or freeware game. However, if you don't know for sure, play it safe and ask permission first.

Buy Clipart

There are many comprehensive clip art CDs available. Unfortunately, most of them aren't really suited for game development - they contain line-drawn images that work best in desktop publishing (unless of course that fits your game's style). However, some of the clip art photos can make cool backgrounds or title screen art.

Often times desktop-publishing clip art can be modified for use in games (again, check the licensing agreement) - for example, you can import it into your paint program and shade it or re-color it. The bad news though is that it's unlikely that you'll find every piece of clip-art you need.

Also, don't forget that some fonts are "clipart" fonts, and can be used as art for your game. The classic example of this is the Wingdings font, which contains several commonly-used symbols. By taking a Wingding, coloring it, and shading it, you can create some good looking icons or symbols.

Resolution & Rendering