As a programmer, how do I sell myself to an artist?
polycounter lvl 3
I'm aware there are no coders here, however...
I'm a programmer who is looking to put a team together to make a game, and I'm wondering what the best way to sell the project to an artist is? If I was an artist I could put together an awesome showreel or portfolio which conveys almost instantly the quality of the work I can do.
As a programmer however, a lot of the things I do are behind the scenes. I could show you some really sexy code... but somehow I doubt you'd care.
Does anyone have any ideas? If you were joining a programmer on a collaborative project, what would you want / not want to see??
So far I've put together a demo of the game mechanic that I'd like to make a full version of. I'm planning to release it for free. A video of the gameplay is below (skip to 2:40 get past the intro). The level may look familiar - it's the Sci-Fi lab by Tor Frick (used with his permission).
It's currently in beta - msg me if you want to give it a go! (Windows XP ,7, 8 @ 130mb)
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvyDrDrlJHY"]3D text-adventure latest gameplay video - YouTube[/ame]
https://vimeo.com/88543875
I'm a programmer who is looking to put a team together to make a game, and I'm wondering what the best way to sell the project to an artist is? If I was an artist I could put together an awesome showreel or portfolio which conveys almost instantly the quality of the work I can do.
As a programmer however, a lot of the things I do are behind the scenes. I could show you some really sexy code... but somehow I doubt you'd care.
Does anyone have any ideas? If you were joining a programmer on a collaborative project, what would you want / not want to see??
So far I've put together a demo of the game mechanic that I'd like to make a full version of. I'm planning to release it for free. A video of the gameplay is below (skip to 2:40 get past the intro). The level may look familiar - it's the Sci-Fi lab by Tor Frick (used with his permission).
It's currently in beta - msg me if you want to give it a go! (Windows XP ,7, 8 @ 130mb)
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvyDrDrlJHY"]3D text-adventure latest gameplay video - YouTube[/ame]https://vimeo.com/88543875
Replies
The biggest thing to think about is if you are going to pay the artist, or if you are hoping to find somebody willing to work for free. A decision like this will often lead to changing the scope of your project because game development is a team effort. It'll be pretty difficult to find AAA level artists who are willing to work for free versus finding somebody who learned how to model from watching nothing but youtube tutorials that has never done any kind of professional work and might not even have a portfolio
Another thing to keep in mind is the actual background of yourself, your project, or your team. A good artist is more likely to accept working for free/a really low salary if they are working on a project from somebody with some kind of well known background or on some kind of revolutionary project.
Unfortunately, if you don't have any money to pay an artist and don't have a background in the industry, you'll likely have a tough time finding people to work for free. There are some other routes I think you could look into if you find yourself in a situation like this.
For starters, you could look into purchasing assets/asset packs, I'm sure a lot of people are willing to do custom assets for your project as well (for a price of course).
The other popular route would be to just learn the asset creation process yourself. I've seen a lot of people who primarily program end up learning the entire asset creation process themselves and they've come up with some cool things.
Here's a video of some work by DrunkenLizardGames on the game No More Heroes. I believe the team originally had one or two artists along with the leader who is a programmer, but now it's just him.
[ame="
I would suggest advertising your project in as many places as you can (where it is acceptable) though. If you don't want to take the learning route, or the custom asset expense route, then I'd imagine the best choice would be to try and pick up some more amateur level artists for free. After all, I'm sure the result of this project is to learn about game development while having something to put on a resume, so why not make it a learning experience for everybody involved?
Good luck!
For myself, the last time I tried it was 3 or 4 years ago when I was still really new to this. I will probably not try it again, so my opinion is a little one sided, however...
The hardest part of taking on a project is finishing. It's even more of a problem in an collaboration like this because there is no guarantee of money or incentive waiting for you. IF I was going to collaborate, I would want to see that the programmer has a track record of finishing. Small games, medium games, completed demos, projects of any relating type, whatever - just something to show me that this is a person who sees things through.
A portfolio of unfinished projects would be a no go.
Here's the questions that pop into my head:
Did you use Twine to make that text adventure? If not, why not?
Are you willing to use an existing engine and plugins? With Unity and Playmaker, I can prototype anything myself. Plus, I bought plugins for SQLite, AI, Gui, and everything else I need for under $400. Or do you want to code your own engine from scratch?
Can I sell all of the assets I make online? If I make assets for the game, can I put them on the Unity asset store? Or do you claim some form of ownership for my work?
Why don't you offer money? Are you broke, a teenager, or something else? Most decent programmers can make enough to pay for assets.
How about you make some free stuff for artists? Make a plugin for Unity and give it away for free. If you do that, I'm sure artists will be appreciative and maybe help you out.
Isn't there an unpaid work section already?
you'll struggle to sell a bad game with complex graphics, you'll have an easy time selling a fantastic game with simple graphics.
Go all proteus programmer art style!
1. Pay or no pay. If pay, how ?
2. How committed are you ? Are you just starting ? Are you prototyping ? Can you finish the game with just primitives like cubes or spheres ? What's worse than work for free is to work for a waste of time.
3. Are you just wanting artist's assets. Or are you willing to accept/implement suggestion from the artist as well ? Is it colleague/colleague or boss/worker relationship ?
4. Are you looking for AAA artist ? Are you AAA programmer yourself ? Do/Have you work with big companies ?
5. How much artistic freedom can the artist use ? Can the artist have fun and go wild at it ?
I would also recommend to provide a working prototype when you search for artists. That's even more convincing than the previous projects. It shows that you have the knowledge and skills for what you want to do. There is plenty of placeholder graphics out there nowadays. Some programmers even don't hire an artist anymore but relies at the stuff that you can buy in the asset shops at Mixamo or Unity or ... . There's even free stuff around.
Money is a crucial issue as told before. When you pay the artist then the artist doesn't mind anything as long as he gets his money and told what to do.
But a hobby project with more than one person involved is always close to fail. That's the way it is. It's a special hell ride to convince a team of volunteers to work into the same direction. And you have to live with fluctuations here.
And you better don't make the mistake to make promises like *once the game makes money ... * . This just shows that you are not experienced enough. Either it is a hobby project. Or it is a commercial project. You just attract the wrong people with such a statement. Which is a question of quality then. Professional quality costs money for good reason. And the game market is flooded with games. You get the former years top hit for a dime or even for free nowadays.
It is a bit more complicated.
A game is a multimedial thing. When one of the components fails, then the whole project suffers. One bad sound effect can ruin the whole gameplay. The art is to make all components fitting together. No matter what style or quality the graphics or the rest of the game are. A 2D cartoon style game can make as much fun as a triple A title. As long as it is consistent in itself.
It is of course less time consuming to make cartoon art
And it is roulette nowadays too. As told, the game market is flooded with games. You need a good marketing machinery and lots of luck to be commercially successful. Angry birds or flappy is the one to a million chance.
This seems a bit odd to me, for an artist this sounds like a wonderful idea. You would have the ball in your court so to speak, you could write up all the story (it's easy to find writers), do all the art and have the game 90% done on your end then when everything is ready bring on a coder when the game shows promise.
Issue #2: You're making a text based adventure game, this isn't going to appeal to most artists. Most guys that end up making 3d art grew up with kick ass comic book characters and actiony games, they want to make a game with this same sort of vibe. Your project just seems to have such a niche appeal. If you want to start up an indie team, you're going to have a much easier time bringing people on board if it's something a broader set of people are interested in.
Issue #3: What exactly are you looking for?! I don't even know what you need reading this post! How do you recruit an artist? Show exacting bullet points of what you're looking for or you're just wasting everyone's time.
Issue #4: I'll be blunt here, you're making a text based adventure game and the writing isn't up to par. A minute into that video and I wasn't enticed at all, you REALLY have to sell the core mechanics of 3d mixed with text in those first 10 seconds, so people immediately see the potential of the project. I'd advise trying to find a great writer first, and give them a bit of "ownership" of the project and creative freedom, only way you're going to bring people of any quality on board without pay.
The good news here is finding a great writer is a hell of a lot easier than an artist without pay. Maybe focus on creating a small "vertical slice" of the game and if all the writing, code, and art comes together you guys can push forward and finish up the rest.
Here's another thought, there's TONS of sci fi art people have done for their portfolio's just sitting around collecting dust. Once your game has solid writing and everything is coming toghether, may you can just straight up ask people for scenes from their portfolios, I'm sure you could find a few artists for a rev share situation in this scenario, it would be as effortless as just sending the art files your way, maybe find an artist competent enough to just handle previous artist's assets.
Here's the most important advice i can give. Keep your scope small. Don't do human characters, don't do fancy effects. Want an example of an incredible adventure game in 3d? Play the stanly parable. Some games are often BETTER because they don't have insane art requirements. Learn to see the value in what your game does and what it doesn't do. Don't rely so much on fancy graphics and instead focus on creative and awesome text based dynamics, there's so much room here for your game to excel. The more you rely on others for this game to be a success the less likely it ever will be one.
RyanB: Yes, there is an unpaid work section. My plan is to post there but it occurred to me I'm not really sure what you guys are looking for. This post is really just me doing some research!
ysalex: I know what you mean about those unpaid collaborations falling through. I've been involved one or two. For my own part though I have never failed to deliver.
crazyfingers: I appreciate you being blunt, and I can see your point on a lot things (including the poor writing unfortunately).
At the end of the day I'm not looking for people to make MY game, I'm looking for people to collaborate on SOMETHING, even THEIR game. I put that demo together to at least be able to say I finished something.
Thanks to your replies I now have a much clearer idea of how to approach things, and how to offer my services in the unpaid section.
Thanks again!
I didnt read through all, but definitely search on IndieDB aswell
Its the perfect place for this, and nearly all projects run on freetime basis,
just wanted to bring this up
http://www.indiedb.com/
I would look for a solid:
-Business Module
-Pseudo code
-Detailed UML diagram explaining your idea.
-Rough diagram of the instances of the game mechanics and rough ideas of the Code blocks to explain (Not really necessary because you will explain that with UML anyways.)
so all i can do, is wish you good luck with your project, it looks promising and fun