My game dev team under the name of Ethereal Chaos are working on a game right now, but are looking for artists. We have found some excellent ones, but we need funding to buy them, heh. I have a design document almost doe, a small website up, some concept sketches, and a logo. Tell me how do I find some funding? not publishing, but funding

I assume that you haven´t registered a company yet and are basically a team of hobbyists. If you´re really planning on spending money on your project make sure you do it right. As I´m sure you´ve noticed artists cost a lot of money, so you gotta be sure that the money is going to last until they´ve done their jobs.

Going from what you have (small site, incomplete design doc) I´d have to say that you have little to no chance to get any funding from either businesses or private investors. If you don´t have a good track record you probably won´t find anyone willing to put some cash up for you - the risk of failure is too great at this point.
So one possibility would be to get a bank loan, talk to some banks about financing your project. Again, they´ll have a look at the chance of your project actually making money (because if it doesn´t there´s a good chance they won´t get their money back). This path puts your private savings on the line, I strongly recommend against it - a lot can go wrong and it isn´t always in the development team´s hand.
If you are serious about making games then you´ll have to register your company anyways (an .ltd most likely), then your obligations are limited.
Another option would be to try and get the artists on board for a percentage of the earnings. If your game looks promising then you might be able to do that.

So basically all of your fundraising chances come down to the issue of whether the game is going to get finished (in time) and whether it´s going to sell.

If it doesn´t work out, do some more work on the game before you try to tackle the financial side of things - a working engine can do wonders.

you can buy artists? Damn, think of all the money big-time computer game companies are wasting simply renting them!

You''re a genius!

There are only four sources of funding.....
1. Publishers
2. Your bank
3. Other business investors
4. You/your family and friends

1. Publishers wont sign up your product because you don''t have the team yet and you don''t have a demo, a full design or a track record in the industry.

2. Other business investors such as venture capital - same as for the publishers.

3. Your bank - well first you would need a company, then to open a bank account and convince them (using a business plan) that you know what your doing and you will succeed. If you can do this the most they are likely to do is loan you enough to create a demo that you can use to raise more finance from options 1 or 2 above. Most likely they will require that you secure this loan on your house or other property.

4. To get a venture like this going you need to have enough money of your own to get a game demo done with good code and graphics. If you don''t have the cash then you need to talk to your faniliy or get the team members to do the work for free in return for a share of the profits.

If you wont invest in your game it is unlikely that anyone else will.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions

"If you won''t invest in your game, it is unlikely that anyone else will."

That should be a quote that all beginners are forced to learn.

Charles Galyon