Paid* Concept Artist for SciFi Shooter wanted

wow, that would be around 1 to 10 €cents an hour. thats pretty much

I dont mean the models Potter, only the 10-20 minute Skech for use as a reference Image.

<edit> Please nevermind on this, the project was cancelled!

You need to be more Realistic on your requests. Even a good Concept Artist will not go that cheap unless you want what you pay for which will be like you said a 10-20 min job. I know good concept art does not get completed in 10-20 mins unless you want a sloppy job. It might be a canceled job but I can take you to other Job forums besides this one and you post something like this .... they will just laugh at you. Something to think about.

Paul Tanner.

Thank yo ufor the advise, but I just need basic sketching, and I know of my own
experience that sketching is about 10-20min PER SKETCH.

Kevin Erkelenz

Show us a 20 minute sketch.

that questio nwas kind of redicilous, because why should I hire somebody if my sketches would be good? My drawing skills are not very good, and maybe that is why but I think that a professional concept artist can do a drawing in about 20 minutes.

Hmm.. i must say that if you are going to design a character then make it detailed and then have it in 2 different views and that mush the same character that you really can use it as an reference image and in an that good quality so you can see how it is supposed to look like it is about a minimum of 6 hours for each character... but if the character design is going to be realistic you have to make researches about how things work and then make a design from that and then it will take more time... I must say that that prise you said there is low.. Not even worth the time to scan them and send them...
But I can only speak for me… ad a 0 on that MAYBE payment and it should sound interesting...

I see where you're comming from OA_Sylver. You're obviouselly not looking to hire a professional, but I'm sure there are plenty of aspiring artists with talent who'd do it as a favor and pocket $30. I used to do this all the time.

No reason to flame a guy when he says he'll pay a little, there's plenty of people who ask this (and much more) for free.

As for sketches, I've worked with plenty of artists who can sketch quick pencil poses and what not and scan them in, in under a half hour.

Sorry can't help you much, but good luck, and sorry to hear your project was cancelled.

I think he's saying, if it sells he'll pay. But what I was driving at was people always seem to ask artists for allot and won't even go to the trouble of googling reference material for their own project. But I guess your right it's not very constructive.

My advice.

1)Don't ask for to much.
2)Find as many Visual examples as you can of what you want.
3)Give as much information as you can a storyline about your project.
4)Offer what ever you can, be it money, or scripts, or what help you can give, or other game resources.
5)In other words be as descriptive as you can so that it becomes more likely someone can give you what you want in 10-20 minutes.


Hope this is more helpful.


Guardian

Soapbox time again kids...

For those who care, the sKetch artists at companies such as Raven Software, spend all day quickly whipping up concept are as fast as they can to keep up.... this usually ends up as much less than an hour per sketch (depending on the subject) and half hour sketches are far from unheard of. Keep in mind a starting position of that nature is around $30,000 / year, which can roughly equate to about $15 / hour.

Keep in mind the scetches are also VERY good. Beyond what many of us would need for concept art.

I had a guy in my art class who did 5 alien humanoid concept sketches for me for $40.

He did them overnight, probably longer than 20 minutes each obviously, but to him, a fine artist, it wasnt so much work. He didnt think he should make a fortune off it! he didnt even think he deserved the $40! Now THAT'S an artist!

Besides, even if an industry standard would be like $500 or more for a model, that doesnt mean you'll get it, and it doesnt mean you should ask for it anyway. Why be so damn greedy? What kind of kind contribution is that to the community? If I wanted to get bent over i'd go get an exam done.

And though the 'pay after publish' thing isnt such a hot idea, I submit that people are just too stuck on themselves. If you got people beating down your door to do work for them, more power to ya.

But anyone who expects to be paid royally as an indie, well, don't expect to accomplish any completed titles either. Pay after publishing is pretty much the norm around these parts. These nay-sayers are people who obviously won't take any risks, and you want to start at the top of the ladder. That to me sounds more unrealistic than hoping someone will make some scetches for $50.

Heck, I'll do a few sketches for $50, and you can wait for your pot of gold by doing no work. And the results would be worth more than they paid. Why? Because I also have pride in my work. I often am underpaid for my results. I could make more, but then i wouldnt get the work either.

Greed Greed Greed. The only people who deserve such high pay for their work are people who are presently working for some firm, or run one themselves. If you're an indie looking to suck the meager earnings from an indie developer because you think you're so good, ask yourself why you aren't working for a company making the big bucks.

Take what you can get, even if it's just practice :P

Don't anyone be scared to ask for something with little or no pay up front. That's normal for indie development, and there's true artists out there who will do it. Not everyone will, obviously, but it's the only way as an indie. I'm betting a lot of the people wanting the big bucks also go online to find free resources! Hypocrites.


Jason

*** Is it so unreasonable to ask for cheap help?***

Can I name the number of ongoing Gamestudio projects under that premise? No, I cannot, and don't pay that much attention. But that's 3dgs.

I don't have enough fingers and toes to count games made otherwise that succeeded under those circumstances. And thats what I meant by the norm. Indie development in general, not 3dgs.

I don't think paying for work will quarantee a money making project any more than finding people to help for cheap or free. So equally, paying big bucks for models etc also can equate to vaporware. More so since you blew what little money you start with on overly pretty models and art instead of advertising/ marketing.

Just because people hate to give good prices to their fellow 3DGS users doesn't mean thats how the rest of the indie community does it.

I agree having someone live nearby helps a lot, but it's not necessary, obviously. Maybe for 3DGS it is, but I dunno why.

I think if a person looks in the showcase forums and did some research, you'd see a lot of the successful teams are spread out. So that's possible. Does everyone on those teams recieve a salary/wage to do the work? I don't think everyone does, though obviously a lot do.

Let's not forget the teams working on projects who don't post in the forums. There are those, So neither of us can say with 100% accuracy whats going on.

I see your points, but they're a bit too pessimistic for my taste. it IS possible to do pay after play. Theres over a decade of indie development backing this, and by definition is what indie development is. Working for the eventual fruits of your labor. It is possible. Not so far in 3DGS maybe, but thats my point. What makes us modelers, artists and level designers so great?

And if someone is 'too good' to join a team, and put in the hours, well they'd be the reason for failure if they joined a team. And maybe thatss why the failures you mentioned. I wouldnt suggest making free stuff for a project you know will go nowhere. But that doesnt mean you deserve top professional dollar for your work. Again, if a person is that good, why are they looking for work in forums instead of a fortune 500 company?

Because for all our talents, modelling, level design, art, programming, we are a dime a dozen. You don't want to work for free? Thats understandable. Too good to work for cheap? There's hundreds of people standing in line behind you that will. And they're out there because people (except here in the 3DGS forums) know that your name on a project is good advertisement. Your name gets out by doing work, not turning it down. To argue that the only way to get help is by paying big bucks is ludicrous.

And many people have cross project relationships... I model for your project, you level design for mine. Does anyone get paid? Nope. Not a dime will exchange hands until a profit is shown, yet everyone got the help they needed.

It's one thing to say "You may wish to bring up the price of payment to get more interested people" and quite another to sit and argue with the poster why their post is rediculous. It's mean and unacceptable in these forums. If you don't want a persons job, dont reply. It's like going through the newspaper and calling the job postings and telling them their business. Noone would do that cuz it's a waste of time and they have no interest in that job. It's no different here.

It's OK to agree to disagree, I just didnt like the negative feedback, since it wasnt a feedback topic, it was a request for help. You know me, always sticking up for people in posts :P

My point was not to be afraid to ask for cheap help. It's out there. Point #2 is people should not make snide commentary to such requests. In fact, if they have nothing to contribute, such as acceptance to the offer, they have no place posting anyway.

Jason

You not what I think, one of the dudes that leads the forum should propose a ...group project. Something that will test all of the very best of you, bcz I have yet to see anything built with GS that I would buy in my local games store...

I am not saying people haven't made excellent games, put in lots of hard work and produced something that is fun, challenging and all the things that go with it. But nothing here is triple A.

The potential is there....

I have seen bits from shader posts, model post showcase and so on, that are fantastic and independantly of AAA standard, but no one seems to get it all together to produce something complete.

First off all those that worked on it would be credited, but also be able to site their envolvment in the project....which in turn should raise their profile and maybe generate more paying work...

As an open source project it would also provide a great guidline for all the ultra-prenours out there....

Just my 2 cents.

Oh and splitting the forum , paid for work and help wanted is a mighty fine idea and should be implemented at once

To address point 1), there are plenty of other communities aside from 3DGS that can offer this experience. These include school clubs, IGDA chapter meetings, modding a game, being a beta tester, being part of a games QA. Even other engines such as Torque or 3DRad could have a small project you could tack onto and gain experiences. While these won't likely teach you much about how to program or model, they will teach you how to communicate with others, be an effective part of a team, and perhaps even insight into what it takes to get funded and published. If our community doesn't have this (and IMO it won't for a few years at least), then it's time to look at other places to fill in the gaps (such as gamedev.net or gamasutra.com or igda.com).

To address point 2), I can only offer a series of cliches:

"Every journey of 1000 miles starts with one step" - Ancient Chinese Secret
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it" - Goethe
"Just do it" - Nike

You can read and listen and take classes all you want. But until you put finger to keyboard or pen to tablet you will never transform education into experience. The only way to start is to do just that: start. I can think of no simpler approach.

Also:
"Start Small; Dream Big" - Me
"The best tool I've found to bring the vision to life is prototyping" - Will Wright

If you want to make a MMO, start with a single Client/Server chat program. If you want to make a FPS, start with two blocks tracing each other. To use the parlance, you have to do a Work Breakdown Analysis of your project and start with the smallest tasks first. Be these prototypes or actual working modules, if you start trying to make the whole game at once, you will actually end up making nothing.

And finally:
"Know Thyself" - Bible (I think)

If you know your strengths and weaknesses, then you can compliment one and mitigate the other. Not everyone is meant to be a game designer or producer. Some people may only have enough time to do a few models a week or program a new module every few months. The sooner you know this about yourself, the easier it will be to ask for help and if you are offering help, it will be easier for you to be honest about your abilities (and get paid accordingly)

Here is another idea ...

I think that if you advertised for just one other person to help you with a small game - as fastlane says - start small...you would be unlikely to get that much flack... Look at a game like this one

in showcase II

Forget the time it has taken these guys - this is not their first game ... but look at the scope. It is not a huge multi-player game or a many level game with a story line etc.

It is a containable project and the sort of thing you should target for your first game. Get just one other person helping you on it...admit it is the first game so there are no misunderstandings or false expectations - and work through the exercise start to finish.

There is a casual market for such games which makes it an even more attractive first project to cut your teeth on.

Anyway - just another idea.

Like I said, I could count the success of remote teams on one hand.
The only exceptions to this rule are people like Nardalus with a proven track record of completing games and 15+ years in game development...hardly representative of the 3DGS population.


That would make the score:

successful remote teams 1;
unsucessful remote teams 100;

I want to say that AB, BBR, and Glider were also made with remote teams, but as I don't know of their internal affairs, I can't say for sure. Assuming for a moment that they were, the score would be

Success: 4
Unsuccess: 97


Thus my point stands: remote teams have not yet proven themselves to be a successful development model for commercial or non-commercial game development within the 3DGS community. Add the pay-after-publish business model and you have an almost 100% guaranteed failure rate IMO.

Trophy Bass may just be the exception to the rule.

However I still stand by my previous statement, all be it with an exception. The quality or completed titles with GS on the whole is not AAA standard. This is not a bad thing, it is just a factor of development. Some things that looked like a AAA title in the making, never got further than a few screens, bcz some of the dev members left, or had no time or got better jobs....

In contrast I know of a company with 36 employed AAA standard programmers, designers, modelers and animators who sold a million+ copies of their first title, yet their sequeal which had a bigger budget, failed misserably.... So AAA isn't everything

There are a lot of very talented people here, and the potential to create a top selling title is there.... I just havn't seen it yet. But then, who am I to judge? After all I have no AAA title of my own to show!

Personally I think when you start out on this game development road, it is very lonely, and the thought of having a few others working with you on your idea is a comforting thought. Yet, if my company could afford to employ a handful of the experts here for a project we would. Why? Simply put bcz then its a job not a hobby.

If one of the team are not pulling their weight how can you change that if they are a volunteer? working for a far off reward that seems unlikely?

Finally, if your concept is good and you are a capable Production Manager, why would you want to hand out royalties or % of your money? I would sooner pay a fixed fee for a contract apon completion, than give away ownership of my titles.

What happens if you create an iconic game, get some of the expert character modelers to come up with some models, your game is very succesfull and the merchandise department wants to make figures of your characters.... who gets the money?

I write music as my hobby, if I produced the music for your game who would get the royalties? Performance Rights? Wouldn't I be paying myself out of my % of revenue???

Working for free is fine, but working for a % of revenue or royalties is bad business.

As several people here have pointed out, Work for % of possible sales is not something you see in a proffesional business plan, games industry or otherwise, and it would not make sense to embark on this road IMHO.

However, as far as I understand things, in most cases you would not be developing a complete game. The aim would be to develop a working demo to proove you can complete the full game, should it be picked up. To have 90% of the game code in place is a good start, but 100's of models and world environments is not. You should only develop what is needed to complete your proof. This is something easier to budget for and raise funding for. Produce your business plan, establish what is required for the proof, then work out what you need, in terms of resources and man power. Then and only then, would I look at recruiting more people.

Just my 2 cents

Hi Ricardo,

This is a very good way for a team to get rolling.

The is one little hitch that may or may not come up. This is the fact that the publisher would only want a portion of your team. I.E. the coders, and not the artists, or the artists but not the coders. This occasionaly happens when publishers pick up new projects.

For Example, my artists had to take a back seat to the Disney artists when Disney was publishing my software.

You want to be careful what you can promise your team once you start pitching the game. Being a new team your leverage will be very small. The publisher will have ultimate control of what your team make-up will be.

A split of profits for team members is a fairy tale. It's just is not going to happen in the real world of publishing. Anyone offering that has no experince in getting projects published and should be avoided like the plague....

You need to think in terms of fixed costs.

6 programmer months @ $25 per hour = $24,000
9 artist months @ $25 per hour = $36,000
3 Producer months @ $25 per hour = $12,000

Project Development Cost Total $72,000

Maybe these can be converted into shares of ownership in the project.

Things get complicated if you have one group do the demo, then a different group does the actual full game production.

Additional costs to the group:

Now how much money would you pay to have an experienced game pitch man get you a deal. Many companies pay up to 50 percent of there revenue to the group that gets them the deal. 30 percent seems most fair.

Cost's associated with travel for face to face visits with publishers, purchasing skills not in the group, purchasing materials to create marketing materials.

Who is the "Bricks and Motar" contact person / company. Publishers will want a contact person that has a permanate mailing address, etc.

Bottom line the most succesful teams do this not for finacial rewards but other rewards. Like being part of a motivated team, reputation, resume upgrading, and just good old fashioned experience. A balance of an experienced and newbies is a good way to spread the knowlege wealth in building games with remote teams.


Ken

Some very interesting discussion here. I'd like to get back to Sylver's problem for a bit.

Franky, I think what he was offering was very reasonable. My impression of America is that everyone is rich and I bet even the street beggers make more than $25 an hour, which is probably why you have so many of them. I could be wrong, but it seems that way.

My first job as a graphic artist paid $NZ180 per week for a 40 hour week. That works out at $NZ4.50 per hour, a bit more if you count in my meager holidays, but I didn't get any special allowances for transport or a pension plan or anything like that. NZ$4.50 is about US$2! I was one of the lucky ones. Only one other person from my art course went on to a full time job afterwards, and that was because he went to London.

For my $2 per hour I would produce ink and chinagraph illustrations of the clothes the store was selling for newspaper advertisements. After a bit of practice I could kick out a finished peice in less than an hour often inclding cut and paste (it was an old fashioned department store. No computers).

If you paid anyone US$30,000 per year in NZ, it would put them in the highest tax bracket, and they would have to pay about half of it to the government and be considered wealthy.

The highly talented manga artists in Tokyo make less than people who work in comvenience stores. Starting programmers and artists in the game industry make make about &#65509;180,000 per month, which is about US$1,600. They tend to work longer hours for that, too.

For a talented commercial artist, kicking out a professional quality sketch in twenty minutes shouldn't be a big issue as it is something they do all the time. If they are not up to the level where they can produce art quickly and confidently like that, does not make them worth more because they need to spend more time on it.

Anyway, I just wanted to show you another perspective. Especially for artists, even making a living out of it can be tough.

In any case, Sylver, do not advertise how much you are prepared to pay. Call for portfolios first, then talk with the artists one on one and see if you can negotiate a price that you are both happy with. Here is not the only place to look. Go to a site like Deviant Art and browse. Also, as Ken said, a lot of people aren't doing this just for the money. You might find someone who wants to be a part of making a video game (but give them a contract and pay them anyway).

Interesting and related thread on the IGDA boards discussing outsourcing and royalty team models.

http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.ph...mp;pagenumber=1

As you can see, most people in this professional forum are also disenchanted with the royalty model and assert quite firmly that they don't know of any current projects that use this as their main business model.