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

I think that people should have the opportunity to work together on a project that is unfunded to learn from it and what if it was successful. If your first couple of games are bound to be failures as advertised - then pouring money into them doesn't make a lot of sense to me and younger people are the less likely to get proper funding anyway.

Why not leave them alone and let them form a no pay until published team - as long as they are being honest about it. They need the experience. How are they going to get it?

Quote:

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I don't think paying for work will quarantee a money making project any more than finding people to help for cheap or free

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It is a proven fact that the availabililty of funds does not increase the success rate. Heaps of money will not guarantee success. If you look at the top ten reasons why projects fail - only one of them deals with money. And it deals with the mismanagement of it by not properly tracking project costs - a management error. Running out before the project ends because of improper estimates and tracking. But even if you can't run out of money - because you have more than you need - the project can still fail...for the other nine very popular reasons.

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

Quote:

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They need the experience

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Now address this one. My question stands.
How do they get the experience they need?

1. There are not enough funded projects on this forum to offer all the people who are looking for experience an opportunity.
2. How does a new person get started on their first game - which is likely to fail - but which they have to get through in order to gain experience.

ideas?
I have couple...but if you want them you will have to give me a gift certificate.

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)