If you want artists to work on your games, how about bringing them in as equal partners from day 1?

I've realized this from day 1 with my own project. No one wants to work on someone else's dream game. If you're asking them to work for free, the least you could do is ensure them a seat at the table for determining the game's general design (not just art design). Here's the exact words I put in my most recent help wanted ad seeking artists:

This project has six active team members at the moment. We want to continue building a team of dedicated, passionate individuals who share the vision of what Allacrost is to become and want to be a part of making it happen. Becoming a member of this team means more than simply getting told what to create. We strongly encourage people to participate in design discussions and offer their own ideas to improve the game and the project itself. Although the core design of Allacrost is pretty well-defined at this point, there's still a lot of unanswered design questions and features we have not yet implemented. There's still plenty of room for you to influence this title should you be interested in doing so. While we are seeking core team members, we're also happy to welcome contributors who prefer to help out here and there with adding a new feature or creating new art or music, but aren't as invested in this project.

And this is further reinforced on our new contributors page, which is the very first thing someone that is new or interested in joining the project would see. I think it's a good set of policies that our team has, and have helped this free project survived where others have failed. Despite all this, it doesn't seem to be enough to interest artists any more than your average "come make art for my awesome game" type post.

Earlier in this thread someone mentioned that because art can be instantly evaluated without needing it in a game, artists aren't that interested in contributing to a free project because they can build their "portfolio" without needing any game project at all. This is true and a very good point. But then shouldn't the same hold true for composers? I can listen to a piece of music and feel how talented the composer is. They don't need to contribute to game projects, yet I get so many interested that I have to turn some away (we really can't have more than 2-3 composers realistically).

They don't trust you to finish your job as a programmer.

Artwork takes a lot more time than programming.

They have nice tools that make their stuff look awesome. Unless you have the same stuff to make their stuff use PBR, then its a no go.

Start learning art, that is the solution. I'm disappointed in the lack of cross disciplines.

They don't trust you to finish your job as a programmer.

Artwork takes a lot more time than programming.

They have nice tools that make their stuff look awesome. Unless you have the same stuff to make their stuff use PBR, then its a no go.

Start learning art, that is the solution. I'm disappointed in the lack of cross disciplines.

Or "finish your game with placeholder art", if we follow your own words that artists don't trust programmers to finish their job. Cannot argue about that when their job IS actually finished just waiting for an artist to step in and do their art passes over it.

But I think others have a good point... artists are often treated as an "art producing conveyer belt", whereas the programmer is at least the most valuable partner of the designer, if it isn't also the designer, because he has the biggest impact on gameplay usually.

EDIT: Oh, and on the topic with nice tools and making art look shiny... not everyone is all about PBR. And while many people like to look at shiny render stills, there is an inherent magic to moving images that cannot be matched by simple still renders. Which in turn pales compared to the magic that happens when your 3D character does not only move, but can actually be controlled by you or an AI agent.

I am sure that this is a highly subjective topic, so different people have different opinions on it, but I don't think ALL artists will shun your game project just because they have to reduce the shiny a little bit in order to cram their stuff into your game. There are many artists that actually are NOT interested in creating the most HD, most PBR art on the planet, because they are more interested in a distinct art style than photorealistic rendering.

These artists might turn your project down because their art style and your game project are not a good fit.

I am pretty interested in getting some opinions by dedicated artists on this matter though:

1) what do you prefer, getting into an ongoing project that is well under way (and thus more likely to finish) but already has a lot of art and non-art related decisions made, so the artists impact on the game is mostly in helping finish what has already been started, or getting into a completly new project where you might even be able to influence story, gameplay and techical decisions within the limits of your knowledge (if something is decided by the whole team in the project), and where you can at least influence the art style to a large degree, but at the same time you might be a year away before seeing your art really integrated into the game, not to mention having a higher chance that the project fails?

2) If a project is new and a lot of things are yet to decide, there is also a lot of change happening, which means that the art style AND technical constraints might still change a lot. Resulting in many wasted hours drawing concept or pre-production art that might not make it into the final game. How do you as an artist take that?

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that nobody likes to collaborate

I think a more accurate statement would be that many people don't know how to collaborate.

Both of these fit for me. I started off as more of an artist, and I wanted to make games, but I had trouble teaming up with people. I think it was a combination of not knowing how to approach teaming up with people, and having a couple collaborations that just didn't work out because people are unreliable. Most of all, I want to do game design, but I'm not sure how much an artist can influence the gameplay. So instead of focusing on finding a programmer to work with, I learned to code. Now I make games by myself.

This too. People are always asking artists to work for free, and it's tough to get paid for any of it.

Maybe part of the cause is that a full time artist is more likely to be doing freelance work, where a full time programmer is more likely to have a day job? The freelancer artist might see working on a game as another freelance job that they should get paid for, where the programmer sees it as a fun project to work on after work?

I think I can see it on both sides.

I'm probably the textbook example of an artsy programmer. I'll never consider myself an artist unless I seriously go back to practicing arts, but just for this topic, I'll assume I am, because before my return to university in software engineering, I very well could have. I used to draw almost everyday, and people looking at my art often suggested me to take painting classes and take jobs like drawing book covers, and basically try live from my art. And now, I'm a programmer but when I code I'm cursed to always see visual patterns in it! (Like if you put brackets to your if, I don't care how many lines your else has it needs brackets too or it'll look wrong to me. And I passionately hate lowerCamelCasing because I can't find any pattern in it, it's just pure ugliness for the sake of saving one SHIFT keystroke. )

Artists tend to be creative people, and if you expect them to do your patches of grass for free, good luck with that. Personally I enjoy drawing characters most, so if you have a new game and I'm very inspired by your characters ideas, you might be able to convince me to draw your character designs for free. It is very creative work, and it's fun to do. Seriously, drawing people from my imagination is tons of fun for me. Just thinking about it makes me feel like shutting down Visual Studio and grab a sheet of paper and a sketching pencil. But if all the fun designs job are done, I'm not sure I'd be as motivated to start working on the most boring little assets, like creating graphics for beds, chairs, walls, flowers, etc. While at it, I have my own project, with my own vision of how a game should be made, and on top of that I know how to program in C++ and C#, so I may as well make my own beds, chairs and flowers.

Also, I absolutely agree that artists like to show their art. When I draw something cool I like to show it off like a child. Well, completed art at least, I hate showing work-in-progress unless it's to ask for opinions. If they're not sure the game will go anywhere and on top of that you have no creative and fun work to make them do, I doubt you'll get anyone to make you art for free.

Artists on DeviantArt always draw what they want, and they'll probably get more views.

@roots: I remember your project from a long time ago. When I created this account, around 2006 I think, you were presenting your projects in the "My announcements" forums, and since I'm also making a 2D FF-style RPG, your project stuck in my head and I still remember it. (I thought I was a good programmer, but then I took a peek at your code and realized I had a lot of work to do. ) I just visited the site for the first time in years and I'm glad to see a post from 2015 and that you're still working on it, although, sadly, I agree that I'm not seeing a lot of new art.

What a splendid plethora of very good points and some (how do I say this diplomatically?) 'different' ones.

Holy necro, Batman!

Holy necro, Batman!

Sorry for posting too much, Eric.

I think Roots has a reasonable chance of finding artists without pay if he's willing to put up with their learning curve.

I hate showing work-in-progress unless it's to ask for opinions.

This is part of the problem IMHO. An artist doesn't like to share work in progress, but a programmer more often than not loves to share a game that isn't finished yet, and SHOULD if they want to build a fan base. There is a big difference between these two mindsets...

At a guess, it might be because hobby/free teams tend to be made up of mostly inexperienced developers. It's not often you see 10+ year programming veterans working for free either.

Any teenager can pick up "Learn C++ in 21 days" and call themselves a programmer a few months later, and start applying for "lead programmer" positions on hobbyist projects (most of which fail due to this lack of experience ).

It's a lot harder to pick up a pencil and then be a good artist a few months later. When I was a hobbyist, I could make simple weapons and buildings in a 3D modelling program, but I never called myself an artist because they sucked. I did call myself the lead programmer of our project though

When I saw someone painting concept art, I was always in awe at their god-like talent -- people with that talent are likely to have a real job as an artist, just like the 10-year experienced programmer is likely to have a real games programming job.

Well said! I have always excelled with computers, code daily, but couldn't draw worth a damn! The past semester I took an art class expecting to see immediate improvement, I had the best attendance in the class, turned everything in and got a C. My mother is a children's book illustrator, you have it, or you don't. FML.

That stuffs hard!