   Getting artists (or at least art) for your indy game.
  This post may not belong in this sub-forum but the article suggestions forum is a graveyard and readers of this sub-forum are the intended readers.I was hoping people could share their experiences with getting art for their indy projects or ways they attracted a quality artist to their project.The assumption is that the project is the common variety, "commercial, with a percentage of royalties paid on earnings." type project.I'm going to list some common sense issues to get them out of the way, as well as some common solutions, but what I'd really like to see are people that have done it sharing how it happened for them.My specific situation is I'm nearing the end of a proof of concept project but in order to show off the design and the concept, I need a lot of art assets.3d models(high and low poly, along with some baked AO and normal maps), with rigging, skins, and animations. A decent and legal musical score as well as a variety of sound effects. A lot of 2d art for things from the GUI to environmental art to the textures for the particle effects.To further compound this, a current gen game requires a crazy amount of artwork. The engine I'm working in only supports Max and Maya(or more accurately the exporter is only functional with Max and Maya native formats). An art director that can tame all of the ideas into a common look and feel is just as important. To do this correctly is quite a challenge.When you take into consideration an honest goal of a commercial end product, you also need to be sure your entire tool chain is legitimate.So you don't just need a willing artist, you need a willing artist with legal access to a $4,000 piece of software.I've read on the subject a bit and there are some ground rules that are pretty obvious:1)To get an artist interested your game needs to be able to display the art before you look for an artist.2)For the "chance to earn royalties" to be meaningful at all your project needs to appear to have a chance of actually getting finished. Further, your personal resume; Have you shipped anything? What other projects have you worked on? Becomes quite important.3)A solid renderer with a high through-put is more fun for the artist than a hardcore limit on polycount because your engine or design requires it.Some of the obvious solutions are:1)Buy pre-made models that you feel fit your design. - This is hard to do, and especially difficult to have any real continuity. In my limited experience if you buy a model that comes with rigging and some basic animations it's 50/50 if you can get them imported and working. Further, I'm not qualified to decide if my art direction is well implemented. I need someone that can recognize the direction before the destination. 2)Contract a pro to make your models. - this is great if you have the budget for it. There tends to be a lot of people that do modeling, but not rigging; or rigging, but not skinning. That may just be an issue at the lower price bound though.3)Post in the help wanted section of a variety of forums, including gamedev. - This can work well but you tend to end up writing an ad. You better have screenshots or a lot of detail if you want to capture someone's imagination.4)Do it yourself - Some of us are blessed with both analytic and artistic skills. Some of us(like me) can't even pull off a competitive game of pictionary. You can do some fun things procedurally, but good artwork is what makes a game, or a proof of concept look good. Some people can put together decent models but can't do 2D art, etc..Ideally if people would share links to good sites to find artists, whether it's paid artists or recruits, as well as maybe a decent list of resources to buy pre-made art it could serve as a resource for all of us.For those that have a game or some deliverables under their belt, please share your approach to this issue and what worked and what didn't work.   
  Check out turbosquid.com for artists whose style you like - then shoot them an e-mail asking about some contract work.From my experience - if you want to have the art done your way, on time, and decent quality you're going to have to pay *something* up front.  I personally prefer to pay for the art 100% upfront and we all go our seperate ways after it's done.  Obviously I use the same artist or studio for each type of artwork (ie: all the game's guns, or vehicles, or characters would all come from the same source to mitigate slight art style differences between artists/studios )I've done this for a few projects I totally self-funded ( low $xxx,xxx ) this is basically a shoe-string budget if you need 1000s of "next-gen" art assets created.   ;Quote:Original post by dgreen02Check out turbosquid.com for artists whose style you like - then shoot them an e-mail asking about some contract work.From my experience - if you want to have the art done your way, on time, and decent quality you're going to have to pay *something* up front.I've done this for a few projects I totally self-funded ( low $xxx,xxx ) this is basically a shoe-string budget if you need 1000s of art assets created.I appreciate you posting DGreen, the part about contracting modelers was based off of reading your journal as you developed your game. Didn't you run into an issue with the first modeler where he lead you to believe he was doing the work and then didn't deliver?Also, did your contractor do everything you needed? The model, the skins, the rigging, the animations, etc?;Quote:Original post by Dreddnafious MaelstromQuote:Original post by dgreen02Check out turbosquid.com for artists whose style you like - then shoot them an e-mail asking about some contract work.From my experience - if you want to have the art done your way, on time, and decent quality you're going to have to pay *something* up front.I've done this for a few projects I totally self-funded ( low $xxx,xxx ) this is basically a shoe-string budget if you need 1000s of art assets created.I appreciate you posting DGreen, the part about contracting modelers was based off of reading your journal as you developed your game. Didn't you run into an issue with the first modeler where he lead you to believe he was doing the work and then didn't deliver?Also, did your contractor do everything you needed? The model, the skins, the rigging, the animations, etc?I edited my ^^ post and added some more info -No I've never had any problems with an artist not delivering ... I always pay on delivery of assets.  I've worked with too many art sources/contractors/studios to really count, but to my knowledge it's all been pretty smooth ... getting the art created turns out to be one of the easiest parts IMO.* Edit2 - in my other post when I said pay upfront, I meant before the product is published/released....should have been clearer on that.   ;  http://3drt.com/Good site as well. They should have something to get a prototype looking decent in just about any genre.   ;  Check out FPS Creator, tons of super cheap decent quality models. I have already contacted them and they are OK with buying models and using them in other projects royalty free.   ;  I would have to agree, paying artists up front is important. I have learned this through experience. Luckily for me i live near San Francisco, so i just go to a local video game developer mixer and find lots of starving artists looking to see their art in a game (and very talented ones at that).EDIT: I tried the royalties part.... but found that the planning and payment for these guys who had yet to have done anything was hard for me to stomach, and hard for the artists to take the plunge. Really it just ended up showing myself that i wasnt willing to put anything in writing for somebody who hadnt yet yielded any results.So i went with the above approach. Found an artist who is between jobs, and very very talented. Since the game is indie i am keeping the requirements minimal, and we are in the style/concepting stage right now so its just a couple of rough sketches a week. and when we see something we like, add color, more detail. (we pay the artist a certain amount every week (not much since it is very part time)).Art assets become as much of a process as developing the engine or anything else. ensuring that you follow the steps and not just model something from scratch will ensure a level of quality and consistency in your models.This is how i'm going so far and it's working pretty well. One disadvantage is that apparently when an artist has a fulltime job a lot of times it is in their contract that they cant do other work. I dont know if anyone can confirm this as a common thing but maybe it is.