Mystic River
Member
Seriously, that is awesome stuff.
edit: sweet, bottom of the page. I can hide this here.
nice, is it 3d voxels or just 2d drawing?
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
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nice, is it 3d voxels or just 2d drawing?
Theanine3D
Member
Texture baking is fun~
Made this low-poly cheeseburger for one of the boss levels.
This was the original hi-poly sculpt.
Made this low-poly cheeseburger for one of the boss levels.
This was the original hi-poly sculpt.
AlphaProspector
Member
Oh, yeah, the VN train is in motion again! Just got the sketches for the background art out from Badriel (he has worked on several VNs so I'm confident he'll deliver in the final results)
One sample
And one of the artists finished another fairy. Two more remain.
I'm a little concerned at the main character artist because he hasn't gotten past the approved sketches for line art... I know that step is obviously the most time consuming for artists and I'm very forgiving with deadlines and such but, the wait is painful and I'm trying to avoid all the problems other devs have faced with CG/character art recently (there's been some discussion about this topic within the VN community).
Either way, I'm giving the guy some extra time but if by September I don't see at least some progress, I'll have to switch artists. And I'm glad I can do it at this stage and not when things are further into development, which can be a shot in the lower rear. (Still, it's a painful waste of time to have discussed so many details at the sketching stage, having produced so many pieces only to leave me hanging like this, ugh.)
One sample
And one of the artists finished another fairy. Two more remain.
I'm a little concerned at the main character artist because he hasn't gotten past the approved sketches for line art... I know that step is obviously the most time consuming for artists and I'm very forgiving with deadlines and such but, the wait is painful and I'm trying to avoid all the problems other devs have faced with CG/character art recently (there's been some discussion about this topic within the VN community).
Either way, I'm giving the guy some extra time but if by September I don't see at least some progress, I'll have to switch artists. And I'm glad I can do it at this stage and not when things are further into development, which can be a shot in the lower rear. (Still, it's a painful waste of time to have discussed so many details at the sketching stage, having produced so many pieces only to leave me hanging like this, ugh.)
Yeah, it looks like I'm going to have to refactor some of the stuff in my game. Wish I paid attention to this issue earlier. =) My main concern right now is the very first scene that loads. The game sits on a black screen and windows does the "Not Responding" thing right now.
timetokill
Banned
Voxels. Been playing with them recently, liking it so far.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Woot. PS4 Devkit shipped! Super duper excited to do play with it.
Spending some time this week trying to write an actual gameboy game for GBJam 4. I've never done z80 assembly before so it's been a big learning curve. Not sure I'll have a proper game by the jam deadline, but I'm doing my best to cobble a submission together.
Finally have enough bits and pieces working to make fun screenshots/gifs though, so I thought I'd share.
Finally have enough bits and pieces working to make fun screenshots/gifs though, so I thought I'd share.
I don't know why I even bother joining teamup websites, I have one guy claiming that he's been working in a project for a year and that the game has a following but somehow he has no link or anything to show me... yeah, right. I bet the guy only has an idea.
Idea guys are so annoying, all the time they invest trying to convince people to work for them for free could be used to actually make a game.
Idea guys are so annoying, all the time they invest trying to convince people to work for them for free could be used to actually make a game.
high roller
liliththepale
Banned
How much of that are you going to be able to talk about here? Isn't most of it under wraps? Congrats though!
That's most of my stuff.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Thanks duder! Looking forward to it but also not looking forward to setting up the environment. I'm bad at that sort of thing.Congrats, man. Getting new hardware to mess with is always fun.
Not quite ha!
Pretty much nothing that isn't public.
timetokill
Banned
Spending some time this week trying to write an actual gameboy game for GBJam 4. I've never done z80 assembly before so it's been a big learning curve. Not sure I'll have a proper game by the jam deadline, but I'm doing my best to cobble a submission together.
Finally have enough bits and pieces working to make fun screenshots/gifs though, so I thought I'd share.
I love it!
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
This might not be a kosher thing to ask, but since it is coming up as a concern for us for The Future, how much would you guys pay for art? We're talking character, environment, modeling, etc.? Not all of it, just individually?
Damn brilliant.
And one of the artists finished another fairy. Two more remain.
Damn brilliant.
liliththepale
Banned
As a freelance artist, I usually ask $30/hr. Sometimes I can be negotiated down. Some artists will go a lot cheaper, and many ask for a lot more than that. There's no one price that artists go for.
If you're looking for artists, you might have to test out a few by giving them a small assignment and seeing both how well they did it and how fast it was made. Some artists have better technique, but are slower, so you'll get less art in the same time span and pay more relatively per hour.
I've never paid for art, mind you. I've just been the hired artist dozens if not hundreds of times.
Paying for anyone good you'll expect to pay at least $20 - $30 an hour unless you get friend or friendly prices, which is possible. Anyone legit good who has done a lot of hardcore industry work is going to cost a lot more than that, too. $20/$30 is just sort of the baseline price for freelance artists.
It's rough if you need to pay an artist to get your game made -- For so many reasons. Anyone good is going to be expensive, as I said, but artists are also notoriously flakey and hard to deal with. The people who are consistent, predictable, and solid -- Well, those tend to be the real pros, which means a high price tag.
Being a programmer in need of an artist is unenviable, but you could always find a real gem of a person if you look, you never know.
It's rough if you need to pay an artist to get your game made -- For so many reasons. Anyone good is going to be expensive, as I said, but artists are also notoriously flakey and hard to deal with. The people who are consistent, predictable, and solid -- Well, those tend to be the real pros, which means a high price tag.
Being a programmer in need of an artist is unenviable, but you could always find a real gem of a person if you look, you never know.
Yayyyyy you're back!
liliththepale
Banned
AcceptableGhost
Member
Spending some time this week trying to write an actual gameboy game for GBJam 4. I've never done z80 assembly before so it's been a big learning curve. Not sure I'll have a proper game by the jam deadline, but I'm doing my best to cobble a submission together.
Finally have enough bits and pieces working to make fun screenshots/gifs though, so I thought I'd share.
This is pretty awesome. I want to sit down and try making some stuff for old hardware some day.
electroflame
Member
Aw, thanks! You're too kind.
I will freely admit that I missed seeing your semi-daily avatar changes whenever I caught up on this thread.
Candescence
Member
I figured hiring an artist over a longer term was expensive. But considering their talents and hard work, $20-30 sounds about right - it's certainly way higher than minimum wage. It's why I'm hesitant to actually start paying someone over a longer term without a much more sustainable source of funding, even if I'm not exactly worried about rent or food.
Speaking of art, so much good stuff in this thread. Dayum.
Speaking of art, so much good stuff in this thread. Dayum.
This touches on a reason I hesitate to work with artist friend(s). Even if they're like "No really, credits are fine, I can do a little for free", or they work for a low fee, I might feel like I'm taking advantage of them and not paying a fair rate. Or, I might feel like they're pressured to offer a lower rate.
I figure I'll work with more distant people if I have to, and try to maintain friendships.
Nice! I would be pleased to program on PS4 as we well.
Am still alive and kicking!
Got sidetracked by some real world electronics projects in building some
circuitry out of vacuum tubes to better carry over their behavior digitally.
Very interesting to deal with nature that way.
liliththepale
Banned
Thanks! I think I might be sticking with this one for the foreseeable future though.
Yeah. Programming goes for similar and higher rates. Development in general is expensive. But the thing is, artists and developers could be working on other projects when they're not working on yours (in theory), so you have to compensate them the industry standard.
I mean, there are definitely cases of shared vision where people get together and sacrifice wages for the common good. For example, the Yooka Laylee guys worked for a few months on personal savings before doing their Kickstarter. But you have to sacrifice control, and you have to hope everyone's going to be along for the ride, for better or worse, and not leave you in the dirt.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Missile's back woooop
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
For being such an excellent poster
Congratulations, you really deserve it! xD
Would love to, but no Wii U or spare time right now :/
I have to say that GDC EU and Gamescom were truly fantastic experiences and I got a ton of important things to happen during. Huge props for IGDA for organizing part of the trip and the scholarships. Got to meet some childhood heroes too, which was pretty awesome
...now I do have a crapload of follow-ups to do and organize everything needed for the release of Ancestory.
AlphaProspector
Member
Thanks! Heh. That must be my first PM in ages
Heh, half of the result is trying to communicate the artist things properly, giving solid references and a write up. A lot won't mix well with purely written descriptions, simply because they don't speak english at all (how do you communicate things to a Japanese artist then? By writing a doc in japanese of course!
Which is what I had to do. This artist in particular does know english but his knowledge can only go so far, english isn't my first language either so there is also that issue, despite people telling me how fine my english is.)w/e
Art is not cheap, yeah. Especially for a third worlder like me where it takes me 5 times the time and effort to rack up the same amount of cash someone in the US would. F*ck devalued currencies and this country I live in...
You have several options, but most people often go with commissioning assets so the artist sets a price and works on your things while of course addressing other projects at the same time. However, this also means you have to be ready to wait. And sometimes that means waiting a lot. Weeks. Months. Here is where communication is essential. A weekly/bi-weekly update, a mail informing a deadline cannot be met or can be met in advance (which means you also have to ready the resources/cash to afford things in time), etc. That will usually separate the pros who have clean channels of communication from those who simply disappear (there are many pros that do this though, but because their stuff does take a lot of time).
But for someone like me (I work full time and my VN is kind of a side project to keep my soul and humanity, to avoid going hollow... ahem) that's fine. Most japanese doujin devs are in a similar situation, the majority have full time jobs and that's why their games can take years to be finished. Case in point, the STG RefleX took over 10 years to be done (started in 1998 as Project Reflection, was canned for a while, resurfaced in 2004 and was released in 2008). There are only two dates that matter for japanese indie devs and those are Winter and Summer Comiket. Having worked with them so much I kind of have that mindset built in...
Then you can also hire an artist full time as a company but seeing what happened to Dischan Media... You can seriously burn through a lot of cash extremely fast and still end up with unsatisfying results.
It's a brave new world out there, and for code monkeys/writers/editors like me who all we see is text, art is still a mystery, some sort of weird magic (like super complex programming to nail down mechanics) but yeah, there is that fine balance between writing, proper coding, good art and all. Hiting the right spot ain't easy.
Anyway, back to writing it is!
edit: new avatar with fixed glasses. Meganekko forever.
SquirrelWide
Member
Wanted to emphasize this. As a programmer, I don't give out my time for cheap. You may also find this area specific (for both disciplines). I live near DC, and simply wouldn't take a job in the 20-30/hr range as it's simply not worth my time. Conversely, you may want to consider contracting to a lower cost of living state or even country. Lots of talented artists all over the world.
When I do freelance stuff, I always agree a "final" price with the customer. Once I know what I have to do, what kind of art style is required, and all the details about the commission, I estimate how long it's gonna take me, and I apply my rate (15 / hour, but friends get discount). Then I consider other variables, like the urgency of the errand, the economic solvency of the client, the impression I want to leave on him/her, etc. Then I propose this final price and allow a little bargaining.
If I end up needing more time to do the job, it's my fault (unless the customer changes his order substantially) and there's no additional charge.
If I end up needing more time to do the job, it's my fault (unless the customer changes his order substantially) and there's no additional charge.
I've heard Ukraine is cheaper
Mechanical Snowman
Member
Oh, yeah, the VN train is in motion again! Just got the sketches for the background art out from Badriel (he has worked on several VNs so I'm confident he'll deliver in the final results)
One sample
And one of the artists finished another fairy. Two more remain.
Man that is pretty. Hope your artist problems don't cause you too much stress.
Jacksinthe
Banned
This is an interesting concept and one to think about if you are merely a creative director or designer or are simply too swamped to shoulder a project on your own.
I would personally look to parting out production similar to film production with staff coming and going with minor overlap. But that may just be a bit more than a single firm handling it.
I think it's pretty valuable for indie programmers to learn how to do their own artwork if they're really strapped for funds. There are a lot of great books and "how to" videos out there for drawing and animation. I'm personally going through this learning process very, very slowly. For now, all my stuff is ugly is sin, too. But at least the price is right (free).
Icyflamez96
Member
Yup. I'm learning how to draw alongside C# and Unity stuff. Starting off with this book
I'm also taking art classes in this upcoming semester.
Dead Prince
Banned
no gym today. i'm going to stare blankly at the screen and try to get as much learning i can
If i had the funds i would invest them in to a game and never getting a single cent back from it. Also worried to hand random strangers money that you dont know, writing contracts is probably a good idea.
Yup. I'm learning how to draw alongside C# and Unity stuff. Starting off with this book
I'm also taking art classes in this upcoming semester.
How are you finding the book - im in the same situation as yourself but not really started much on artwork - hadn't heard of it till now but i am a sucker for a highly recommended book.....
AcceptableGhost
Member
Our game has launched on Steam! http://store.steampowered.com/app/384280
Hopefully the launch goes smoothly, did some pretty intense bug checking last couple weeks...
Hopefully the launch goes smoothly, did some pretty intense bug checking last couple weeks...
Icyflamez96
Member
I'm only on chapter 6 so I can't speak too much on it, but I definitely like it so far. I'm not that knowledgeable on drawing books in general or anything, but from what I heard, this book has a lot more actual reading than your average drawing book because it talks a lot about the psychology and science around drawing as well as doing exercises. Some people don't like it because they say a lot of it is "pseudo-sciencey." I haven't really seen anyone deny that claim, but the vast majority of people find it very helpful nonetheless and is generally held in high regards.
It's been a while since I posted in here :/ Since last time and my game release, I've decided to try and learn Maya 2015. I've got a newbie tutorial from digital tutors going on, but my program keeps crashing when I try to use quad draw in the perspective window. Is anyone else in here familiar with Maya and know anything about this? Sometimes my X-ray function won't work either, so working with a reference picture for modelling is very difficult in the front and side view. In the tutorial I have, they only draw in the perspective view anyways. I'm not sure how to proceed or where to ask for help. I downloaded the Service Pack 6 for Maya but it changed nothing as far as crashing goes.
I can't find a crash log (I'm on Win 10), and the output window in Maya is unhelpful in this case. I can't really update my graphics drivers as I'm on a super old HD4870 Radeon card and thus on Legacy drivers :/ I don't want to end up simply watching the tutorials because I'm not capable of following along.
Edit: Is there a better community thread for asking about this sort of thing perhaps?
I can't find a crash log (I'm on Win 10), and the output window in Maya is unhelpful in this case. I can't really update my graphics drivers as I'm on a super old HD4870 Radeon card and thus on Legacy drivers :/ I don't want to end up simply watching the tutorials because I'm not capable of following along.
Edit: Is there a better community thread for asking about this sort of thing perhaps?
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