How can I attract more artists to my game projects?

aweji

After 15 or so game jams, I seem to be pretty good, somehow, at getting sound and music people to work with me on projects. Artists, however, are extremely hard to come by.

Over the past couple of years I've been dragging my feet trying to get better at 3D Art and I've gotten to the point now where I have been the 3D Artist for 3 game jams. As I try to expand outward and work on a more fullly-featured tech demo rather than a game jam prototype or proof of concept... I find that it's extremely difficult to attract the help of 3D Artists like you guys!

I can only afford a couple hundred dollars per month and I know that that's not enough to fully hire a person, so I've been trying to use that money to invest in teaching myself, though as a programmer it's very difficult to go through the 3D workflow. My eyes glaze over far too easily when trying to go through tutorials! I want to believe that I can somehow become this 3D Art-making machine and hopefully one day I'll get to the point where I'm like you guys and I can just look at something and make a decent game asset over the course of a day or so... but sadly I'm gonna be grinding for many more years at this rate. If only I could find more help!

I was hoping that all of you very talented people out there could give me advice on how to attract people like you guys to come help and work on game jams and other projects that I do in the future.

Thanks for reading!

PS: For context, here are some games I've done: https://jfaw-love.itch.io/ and here is the Patreon I use for my main game project: https://www.patreon.com/jfaw

Noren

Well, making this thread was not a bad move, for starters.

It's not 100% sure what you are looking for, though. It seems to be unpaid work, but then you say you have a couple of hundred dollars per month to spend, and that right there would be the easiest way to find someone. Not full time, of course, and you won't get the top tier, but you could finish one or two small projects with better visuals, which ironically is more likely to attract further artists. 
There's a certain risk with finding someone with a limited budget, too, of course.

Make your content better accessible. Ideally you'll find someone who loves gaming and your games and can't wait to download and play them, but offering a concise page with a short gameplay video like for Firesaurus Rex goes a long way. This might not seem intuitive, but people might not be interested in playing the game themselves, but would like to see their art in it anyway or see the potential of what it could look like with a bit of work.
Reviews and reaction videos are great, too, but indicate what's what (and link directly to the part of the video that showcases your game).

The link for the gameplay video for Granny's doesn't seem to work.

Shrike

Did you try on IndieDB? That is the key location for teaming up

You need a good concept people also want to do and some prototype footage that is promising and then people will come
Why not make something that looks decent with bought assets until you find someone?

Jonas Ronnegard

With a limited budget and since you are still learning yourself I would suggest to just look for someone that is in a similar situation as yourself but that can focus on learning the 3d/art side and grow together without worrying too much about the money.

I have encountered beginner game designers "Idea people" that had a deep wallets and spent a lot of money on hiring professional artists, but of course the projects ended up unfinished and unbalanced. In bigger companies you can hire less experienced people because you have other more experienced people to teach them and correct their mistakes, but in smaller projects with only one person in charge of either programming/design/art etc one less experienced person will bring down the project to that level, you could say the games could only be as good as it's weakest link.

poopipe

I imagine there's quite a few newish industry artists who wouldn't mind a couple of hundred dollars extra a month - it's not like game art pays particularly well.

The important thing is to be absolutely clear about what you want them to make - indecision can quickly eat up those dollars.  Provide placeholders and detailed briefs and people should be able to churn out quite a lot of work quite quickly. 

Alex_J

Yeah I am always on the look out for stuff like this. Working on a one-month game right now. Feel free to message me down the road. I think building games is the best way to learn, however it is difficult to find people who are good at being professional and working with a team (usually those people have jobs).

Only caveats is if I am working for free I am the art director. If someone else is my boss there has to be money. And they have to know how to communicate effectively either way.

aweji

I appreciate all of your comments and thank you for the feedback. My biggest takeaway is that I should hire a mentor and teach me or otherwise try to hire an artist part-time as a contractor.

I hope that one day I'll be better at finding artists to join my teams in game jams and I'm not sure what more I can do other than ask. Maybe I'm just asking the wrong people.