Hey guys, I've been doing some research on this question but I'm not really understanding enough currently. I'm slowly working on an old-school style turn-based RPG (it's a 2D top-down style like final fantasy I-III), and I've been thinking of setting up a long-term contract with an artist where I commission him for different parts of the game's art as I work on it (mostly at his own discretion since I would be putting him out without a clearly defined time-frame). While I'm on it, is that a bad idea?

However, my main question resides on the creation of the game art. When it is being created, do you need to take into account that some of the assets will be animated, and does that affect how the art is made? Before I go any further, I really want to understand this. Forgive me if it's a stupid question, but I'm mostly at a loss on all this. I'm very much a beginner hobbyist.

On 3/17/2018 at 5:00 AM, ShiftyCake said:

Hey guys, I've been doing some research on this question but I'm not really understanding enough currently. I'm slowly working on an old-school style turn-based RPG (it's a 2D top-down style like final fantasy I-III), and I've been thinking of setting up a long-term contract with an artist where I commission him for different parts of the game's art as I work on it (mostly at his own discretion since I would be putting him out without a clearly defined time-frame). While I'm on it, is that a bad idea?

However, my main question resides on the creation of the game art. When it is being created, do you need to take into account that some of the assets will be animated, and does that affect how the art is made? Before I go any further, I really want to understand this. Forgive me if it's a stupid question, but I'm mostly at a loss on all this. I'm very much a beginner hobbyist.

To answer your first question, it depends... If you're both able to come to an agreement then it doesn't matter. The only draw back is that you might not be able to get the artist to go into "acceleration mode" if the pace of the project changes due to other commitments, and if the artist has more opportunities going on, they may drop you because of priorities.

Onto your second question, normally when I've worked with 2D Artists, they already had the ability to animate. If you're talking about Raster Art not Vector Art, then animating sprites requires redrawing so I would be more comfortable using the same artist who made the initial sprite to animate it. Yes you can indeed find another person to animate the sprite, but I personally have never had a separate person that takes other people's 2D art and animates it. (This only applies to 2D, not in the 3D world where animation isn't destructive to the model). Maybe someone else can chime in on this, but I personally have only worked with 2D game asset artists that could animate as well, otherwise I would pass.

On 3/17/2018 at 1:00 PM, ShiftyCake said:

While I'm on it, is that a bad idea?

Yes, it's a bad idea to hire a artist to work on your game while you are still designing it.

It's true that this is the way the AAA developers work, but they often have a large part of the game already designed and their experience allows them to know what art they need.

Even so it's common for them to change all the art to match a new game. Devil May Cry 5, was intended to be Resident Evil 4, but was altered after a lot of the art was made.

For a indie developer the cost of changing art is too much and if you don't know the work the artist should be doing, you will be paying for them to sit around and wait.

It's recommended you build the game, or atleast a large part of the game using Placeholder Art.

Placeholder Art is fantastic as it allows you to develop the game without the pressure of finding something for the artist to do. It also greatly reduces the cost of the art, because your artist has a better idea of what you need and spends less time fixing art.

For Placeholder Art, see: https://opengameart.org/