What size of item image works best?

[Digital]

@Artist

What sizes are most often asked for in terms of items for a game? What is the common size that you see the most requests for?

Just curious.... 

[chutkat]

Probably 150 x 150 pixels, but then I make them 3-5 inches size for print purposes 8D

[Digital]

2 minutes ago, chutkat said:

Probably 150 x 150 pixels, but then I make them 3-5 inches size for print purposes 8D

Have you ever been asked for smaller or larger generally. Is it always a good idea to draw larger/higher dpi?

[chutkat]

Yah I have! But usually that's around the item size people look for. Not too big but not so small that you can't see anything.
I've been asked for both smaller and bigger depending on what's needed.

I try to do them at a larger / higher dpi in case I want to print the items for my portfolio or the games want to pull out an artbook or something.

[Elm]

As an artist, I've been asked to create pretty much anything between 80-120px on average. 

[edit] I am mostly an item artist.

Edited March 9, 2018 by Elm

[ilrak]

Because of the way my eyesight is, I tend to start all of my animals/people at 750 x 750 and then shrink them to 350x350. Items I do around 250-150, depending on how much detail I do for them

[Digital]

Has any  @Artist here ever been asked to provide say 150x150 and another version at 375x375 for display with those with retina or high-dpi monitors?

[Elm]

Never considered it, although as a minimum I work at double the expected final size for a piece. I used to draw everything by atleast 400px as an item, but I found it to become unnecessary work. 

[Digital]

17 hours ago, Elm said:

Never considered it, although as a minimum I work at double the expected final size for a piece. I used to draw everything by atleast 400px as an item, but I found it to become unnecessary work. 

I was just wondering if anyone had, since retina displays (4k/5k) display graphics at a higher resolution.

[Design1online]

It really depends on the number of items you plan to have in your game. The more items you have the smaller they should be, especially if you're going to try and list them all on say an inventory page. Larger items not only take up more disk space they consume a whole lot more bandwidth.

Edited March 10, 2018 by Design1online

[Angel]

4x real size or more. If an item is going to appear at 100px, the sources need to be at least 400px.

Edited March 10, 2018 by Angel

[Aminirus]

For me, I often get asked for sizes that run anywhere from 100x100 to 300x300 at maximum. It really depends on what the item is used for

[Martyn]

Although I'm not an artist myself, I tend to request that the artist works at a larger size to what the final piece will be on site. That way they can add more details to the items and not lose any quality on reducing the size.

Usually items on my site are 80x80px, but they're drawn at 200x200px or more.
Same kind of idea applies to the NPCs/Maps/etc.

[Deloryan]

I indeed ask my item artists to draw around the 350x350px for retina purposes. Horse items even larger, so I can transform them to fit on the horse, but also to use for printing later on. 

[Rz0rS]

I always work with a 300x300 canvas as it is a comfortable size but anywhere from 200-400 is my happy zone. Anything smaller and it just hurts my brain. If people want it at 100x100 I just resize it. Originally is was 600x600 but that became too large after a few months. Only time I have used larger is by request. All images are done in vectors now (I only understand DPI when it comes to photography but assuming similar to vectors in quality schema) so the images can be sized down to as long as 50x50 which has been the smallest I have had to do or even doubled in size for whatever weird reason with very little drama besides noticing my lazy attention to details in some works.

Any realism piece has either been done painfully by vector or working with double the size required in a raster program.

As a 'consumer' 60x60 up to 90x90 is a reasonable size for items. Not too big that it takes up unnecessary space but not to small that you lose the awe factor in the artwork. As an artist my personal preference is 80x80.