Hey!

Where do you look for a game artist?

I can only speak from my point of view as a longtime professional video game project manager. I look for professionals. If my company posted a job opening, applicants that come through HR are going to take high priority. If the resumes coming in through the normal channel aren't enough, I'd expand my horizons. Here on GameDev, you can see the Careers tab at left. I would look there to see what's available there. I would also look at the contractor postings on Gamasutra, and I'd look on CreativeHeads.net. I look for professional game experience. Failing that, I look for an art degree on the resume, and I look for an amazingly gorgeous portfolio. I also want the applicant to live within a 40-minute commute from my workplace.

Lucky for me as an indie game programmer, my neighbor (chinchongcha) also accepts this kind of art job.

Thus my-2-cent unprofessional hint is setting up a house or live near a popular artist/programmer. Then you cater your target with some addicti…., ahh, yummy food.

An additional source, ESPECIALLY if you're not requiring professional quality, is your local schools.

Colleges and universities with art programs are easy to work with. Contact the department, tell them you have a short term contract job opening for a student, tell them the pay and general contract needs. If all you need is finished art and you aren't too particular about the details of how, when, and where it gets done, students produce a wide range of quality but all of it is inexpensive.

This all of course requires that you're doing professional work on your side. Both long-term employment and short-term agreements for work are contracts. The contracts need to be valid and cover your actual business needs. This is also all subject to a myriad of laws, such as employment law for tax reporting and proper worker's compensation, plus there are assorted insurances that aren't legally required but essential for anyone doing this kind of thing. If you don't have those in place, some discussions with a local business lawyer should be your next set of discussions.

This shows me again, that everything is still done locally.. eh.. this leads me to another question (maybe for another post): Why in-house, why not remotely?

Hanna, if you're looking for paid work, then you need to make some changes. But if you just want to build some experience, you can check our Hobby Project Classifieds forum. HPC is all about remote work (unpaid).

thanks

Kimba Rimba said:
everything is still done locally.. eh.. this leads me to another question (maybe for another post): Why in-house, why not remotely?

Employment and labor laws are still a big issue. It is easier to hire locally so you only need to follow local laws. It is easier to meet in person, talk face to face, to gesture and interact with physical objects in hand, and, unfortunately, on rare occasions use the courts that are local. Each of those becomes more difficult the more distant and the more geopolitical boundaries there are.

In games, there are physical assets like devkits and high-end computer systems. Developers have strict contracts for the kits that include physical security requirements. Working in the office also ensures access to office computers with the correct software installed. It's less necessary for contract work but still typical in this industry.

Another concern is the network. When it comes to network speed, games are huge so downloading game assets on the local network may take a few hours. A six hour transfer at gigabit rates for bootstrapping is annoying, but easily done. That same transfer across the Internet to a home computer may take days or weeks and can easily blow out a personal bandwidth cap.

Next, there are documented effects for “hallway meetings” and the immediate feedback that can be leveraged by talking to someone three feet away, instead of looking around online for people to talk with. Some people can behave the same working remotely, but many people struggle.

And if you spend time thinking about it, I'm sure you can come up with more reasons, too. Some may be more excuses than rational reasons, but they're still motivation behind behavior and decisions.

You can look for an artist on Pinterest, OpenGameArt.org etc. or you can buy art assets on Unity Store. Each game has different art style so be careful when choosing your artist on the genre you are working on.