Hello,

You probably all know how difficult (impossible?) it is to find quality sprites and graphics to make hobby games or prototypes. Most of the things tend to be either crappy or commercial, or not really what you are looking for ...or you spend days and days searching for something not convincing.

So, what I'm toying around in the back of my head would be to start a kind of "paid" free sprite library.(WTF?!)
What I mean is to start a project at kickstarters or indiegogo, where people could each chip in a few bucks. The whole would then be "forwarded" to commission various artists. The whole in an at most transparent way as possible.

The resulting art would then be available to anyone, for free (*).
- free for everyone to prototype with
- free for "non-profit" games
- commercial games can use them but have to chip in some bucks (used in turn to provide more free content)

As for the content, it would mainly be generic stuff:
- faces / avatars
- "heroes" sprites
- creatures sprites
- items
- spaceships
- fireballs, explosions, etc.
- guns
- tilesets
- GUI elements
- ...

...with a poll to decide which sprite set will be next and which artist to select.

Of course, to make all this viable, it is necessary that sufficient people show interest and to gather sufficient momentum. Then having sufficient funds to pay artists to provide the content. Perhaps in the long-term it would also become auto-sufficient in the sense that small donations here and there would provide new content now and then.

What do you think? Would you chip in on something like this?

I have thought about this in the past -- although mostly without the newer idea of using crowd-funding -- and I think it's an idea that definitely has potential. Essentially, you'd be looking to have basic re-usable assets produced and put into a library similar to "SpriteLib" for anyone to use. I think with the right artists and enough funding it could definitely be a successful idea, but it would take a lot of work to set up and get working really well.

I've seen some "free for non-commercial" resources where the commercial fee is so exorbitant it made me decide not to use the resources for a project intended for commercial sale. If you can avoid that, and also if you can figure out where all these resources will be webhosted and who will pay for the bandwith for the free downloads, and how the content uploads will be either automated or moderated, then it seems like an interesting idea.

I have thought about this in the past -- although mostly without the newer idea of using crowd-funding -- and I think it's an idea that definitely has potential. Essentially, you'd be looking to have basic re-usable assets produced and put into a library similar to "SpriteLib" for anyone to use. I think with the right artists and enough funding it could definitely be a successful idea, but it would take a lot of work to set up and get working really well.

Yeah, that's exactly the spirit behind it! I also think that in order to be successful, we need means to get get in touch with a lot of people so that they even get informed that such an initiative started. Which means some kind of publicity like announcements on gamedev or so. Else, it may just result in a small unheard shot in the void. I think that even with moderate cash amounts we can achieve really good things!

As for artists, I think places like DeviantArt have great potential. There lot's of people there and the prices are very fair.

If you can avoid that, and also if you can figure out where all these resources will be webhosted and who will pay for the bandwith for the free downloads, and how the content uploads will be either automated or moderated, then it seems like an interesting idea.[/quote]

I think webhosting should be ok. Webservers are cheap. If we manage to get 5$ donations/advertising per month, we could probably even self-sustain ourselves. In the worst case, you can host a zip or the pictures on some free servers. Or even on places like gamedev, I'm sure they wouldn't mind some free quality sprite assets.

how the content uploads will be either automated or moderated[/quote]

Just to be clear: it would not be "anyone uploads anything". It would be more like:
- the community poll shows that the next asset will be "magical hats"
- we post commission offers on sites like DeviantArt
- candidate artists show samples and a price tag
- the community of funders and non-funders votes for which artist to select
- the artist is paid to deliver a nice set of "magical hats"
- then, reiterate with the next set of assets

Since it's limitted, I think a few simple web pages would be enough. It's just posting images and polls. Although picture comments, votes, etc, would be nice.

One potential problem with trying to crowd-fund an idea like this would be a lack of rewards/incentives. Normally people earn various things by donating progressively larger amounts, but in this case the aim is to create a free resource -- if everyone gets the final product for free, there's a significantly lower incentive for anyone to donate.

Yeah, there is probably some truth to it. This reminds me of someone describing crowd-funding sites being closer to pre-order rather than idealistic.

I think most people only pay for things they can have an advantage from. Donations from idealist perspective are scarce. It's just about what you get for your bucks. And well, donating for stuff that will be free looks like pretty weak incentive...

On the other hand, that's what the crowd is for. If few hundreds of hobby programmers would pay a couple of $, I'm sure we could get some pretty nice assets. Perhaps we could allow bigger backers to have more impact on the decision which sets are made, or even let them pick one or two. That way, they would pay for a set, everybody could use it, but they would in turn be able to use the others.

Yet ...I'm also suprised this topic has such low feedback. Perhaps, after all, there is lacking desire from the community to build such assets.

I think it would be much better to use a Free (as in speech / open source) licence, than trying to come up with your own. Yes, that means allowing commercial use, which I would strongly encourage:

* It's better to use a standard licence written by lawyers, and one that's been well documented so developers know what they are getting, and don't have to hire a lawyer to check your custom licence.

* Non-commercial use makes your software incompatible with open source - even though those game developers aren't in it to make money, they won't want to add graphics that then restrict the distribution. As an open source developer, your licence would be useless for me, and I would feel it a shame that effort and money intended to support free artwork has such restrictions.

* Does distributing on a website with ads, or distributing on a magazine coverdisc, count as commercial? Do you have a lawyer to work out these issues in the licence?

* Since the artists will be paid, I don't think allowing commercial use would be a problem (where as, I know many artists seem to like non-commercial restrictions when working for free, far more so than programmers for some reason).

* I'd argue that you'd be more likely to get people to donate if the results will be under a Free licence, rather than under some non-Free licence you've written yourself. Of course I may be wrong - perhaps people may be less likely to donate if they felt the resultant art could be used commercially? But then I'd argue that people worried about that might not like donating for something that anyone else could use for free anyway.

* Whilst you might hope to encourage commercial developers to make a contribution - surely any commercial company would just pay for their own artwork directly?

I recall that there have been similar fundraising/donation schemes done for open source projects, where they raise money to fund artwork. So yes I think this is certainly possible. Who knows, perhaps there's room for both kinds of projects - open source artwork, as well as non-commercial-only artwork. But I think it's worth at least considering what kind of licence you want to use.

If you do decide to go down the Free licence route, then it might be worth checking out the site Open Game Art.

When reading "Free for non-profit / x$ for commercial games", it sounds pretty clear and reasonable to me. But well, if you really want some mumbo jumbo lawyer jargon to it, it's your call. Moreover, if we notice an urge from backers to provide a widespread copyleft license, we can still use the Creative Commons one, that's obviously not a problem.

One problem you might have, at least initially, is getting people to buy-in sight unseen. I suspect this would be lessened as the artists involved became more established as producing great content, but its going to be an initial hurdle.

If it would be possible to front enough of the commission cost that the artist would agree to produce the art, but not release it to the public until the goal is met, you might be able to generate more interest. Of course, you can't post a good image of the art or people would just rip it and not have to pay, but some creative counter-measures could be employed. For example, its probably possible that you can query kickstarter to determine what percentage of the goal has been met, and to have a process running on a server that hosts the art which makes the preview image more clear as the campaign closes in on the goal. You'd probably want a few clear teasers from the git-go, but the rest could start really blurry and then get more clear, or perhaps a mosaic-like effect between blurred and unblurred "tiles".

Also, I'd recommend keeping support levels to 3 levels or so, say "supporter", "developer", and "sponsor", where supporter is just a buck or two and intended for people who aren't devs themselves but want to support the effort, "developer" at say a few 5s or 10s of dollars, and maybe the perk is access to a forum/mailing list where they can communicate with the artist and maybe influence the direction of things (if more art is still being produced), and "sponsor" at $50 or $100 where the added perk is a commercial-use license and a sponsor credit.

I intend to, a year or so after my RPG is released, Creative Commons the tile-art used.

If you are really interested in such a free resource site (of which there are a number small-time ones already online: OpenGameArt is growing, and OpenIconLibrary for icons), you ought to contact commercial indie games that were released over two years ago, and ask them to contribute their older games' art, giving you a solid foundation to work off of.

Or, even better, how about mobilizing support and donations for a site that already exists, instead of creating a competitor? Again, OpenGameArt, while fairly new, is growing and already has some quality (and some not-so quality) work. How 'bouts contributing to that one by mobilizing artists to contribute quality art?