I just wanted to share this experience I had working on an Indie game recently. I don't know what to make of it all.

It's an Old School 2d isometric strategy/Rpg with Sprites. I saw they were looking for an artist and contacted them. It's all unpaid voluntary.

I didn't have much experience and offered myself as an apprentice. I thought they had a main artist but turns out he left for paid work. They'd had a few artists before, who had left bits and pieces of artwork, though nothing really matched up with anything else.

They took me on, and I worked for about 3 months producing tile art, character art, and I also tried making a 3d model and animating. Loads of work, and some of the art I produced was useable, some was intended as placeholder art, because it was me trying out new stuff like 3d models (never done before but they badly needed it)

So all that work was passed back and forth for 3 months (I've never worked more intensively), and they put it into the game, even stuff which I thought was too rough to go in.

Then they produced a tech demo to show family and close friends - they said. Instead the fiirst thing the main guy did was show it on some kind of anonymous feedback forum. Apparently someone swore a lot and called some of the artwork 'ugly'. I was a little defensive as it sounded like they got some nastiness from a troll basically. Up till this point i had made every change they asked of me, and was constantly trying to improve the art.

Suddenly they stopped talking to me, answering my email. I was dropped and snubbed. I managed to speak to one of the team on Steam chat who said that my artwork basically didn't cut it. Here's some examples.

Now I'm just angry and upset. Okay, so my artwork don't cut it, but then why put it in the game and work with me over 3 months without saying that?

Also suddenly blanking me and snubbing me after all that work , it feels horrible.

Perhaps i'm a complete mug, but they seemed like a really nice team at first, then they kicked me in the teeth!

What they will do now, with their elephants graveyard of contributions from other artists that left, and none of the artwork matches up because it's all in different styles, I also don't know.

Sorry for this long post. I don't understand what happened really, and I thought some of you might have similar horror stories from all sides?

Hmm.. I find your art pretty cool. If someone would make art like this for me for free, I would be happy :D and many other indies too.

The problem with indie teams are, that there's a really wide range of different team setups. Starting with some small school projects up to a collaboration of industry veterans. I think, that the behaviour of your ex-team just show high degree of inexperience, maybe they need to find their own way first.

With your art skills you don't need to shy back. Just calm down, try to look for new projects and rethink your way to approach an indie team. E.g. hold all rights to the art, take some money and transfer all rights, make a small contract etc. If you volunteer to help, just be prepared to get ditched at any state of the project for any reason. Sometimes people just need to find a cause to their own failure and art is always a good candidate for this task

This thread doesn't belong in the Production/Management forum, so I'm moving it to The Lounge.

The art is good. I've seen better. I've seen a lot worse.

From what I hear, the Steam community is very brutal and full of trolls. I really don't know since I don't participate there. But just like any product reviews, people are more likely to pipe up to say something negative rather than positive. You have to learn to take criticism while ignoring un-constructive comments. Swearing and general nastiness from an anonymous source may sting a bit, but it's unproductive. They often give no basis for their comments, and so can be safely ignored as being emotionally unstable. (Seriously! Who has any rational reason to get all worked up over early art in an unfinished game? Of course it'll get polished up before the final version! Chill...)

So the issue then lies with the indie team that you joined. They couldn't take the heat so they dumped you. OK. That's their choice. Yes, they could have done it much more professionally. But they aren't professionals, are they? Does it hurt? Sure it does. You probably won't ever work with any of them ever again because of this. That's a burned bridge, but they burned it. You didn't. If they continue to work in that spirit, they will wind up with a lot of burned bridges and a bad rep where it'll keep getting harder and harder to find people to work with them. (There's your schadenfreude thought of the day.) So long as YOU stay professional about things, you can keep trying and making connections that will work for you. If anyone else burns a bridge, well... you are probably better off not working with them anyway.

Anyway... I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. Just don't give up because of some unprofessional jerks.

Wow, that's some good looking art. It was really stupid of that indie team to do that...

Welcome to the real world.

Your art has some nice touch, it does have a lot of room for improvement, but this is how things goes, you won't make an AAA game art set in your first try. On what they did to you, use that as a lession. You need contracts to defend you from it. Even if you are not earning anything from a team, have a contract to grant you rights over your art. If you had it, they wouldn't ditch you, cause you could simply forbid them to use your assets.

Other than that, most people are assholes, specially to those they don't know face to face. So try not getting angry, think that most people who said that your art is bad can't draw a sticky man and move on.

This is good art.

I'd love your art for free for certain.

What's noticeably missing here is a bit more context on how you've met with the team, what they were looking for etc.

However, it seems wrong that they had to send the art to the public before finding out this wasn't what they wanted.

Either they have no vision, or are misguided. In general, feedback should confirm or infirm things you're thinking about (and sometimes, help acquires some more obscure thoughts). Choosing to "flush out" the artist on a hobby project based solely on user feedback lets me believe this is a disorganized team.

Look at the bright side: you've stopped working on a product that will probably never ship.

Start working on a project that ships. There are many pointers that will help you pick one that is likely to succeed, unfortunately, none of these are promises that it will (there are just so many ways a project can go wrong).

Regardless, with the art you've showcased, I'd consider going for paid jobs. Not only will it net you some $, but it will actually leave you with something if the project fails. It's also generally a good sign of dedication from teams when they offer compensation (not equity/royalties).

Good luck.

From all of that you gained experience. You learned a valuable lesson at an early stage. Sure, you invested a lot of time, but be glad you hadn't invested a lot of money.

Now, keep going.

I do not know what it is, ive bean staring at the 6th sprite "right down corner" for 5 min its bothering me allot how it looks something is so off it makes me angry and it makes me think its horrible, but its good quality...ey kicked me in the teeth!

"this is 5 more minutes later"
Its that big face, ARGH best evil character ever.

Verry nice coloring keep on

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. It does sound like they were pretty rude and unprofessional. On the plus side the experience you got doing the work is just as valid as it was before this happened.

One thing you might want to do is send them a formal letter stating that they no longer are allowed to use any of the work you did, and must remove it from any games they uploaded (or remove those games), delete copies from their computers, etc. You might want to use this work and it's not at all impossible that they are still using your work even though they are not talking to you.