GUI artist needed

[CBaker]

Hi all,

I'm looking for an artist to come up with concepts for the GUI in my upcoming strategy title, which is a reimagining of the classic X-Com games. Though the project is still 'officially' unannounced, relevant details are below.

Xenonauts is a reimagining of the X-Com series of games, set in the late Cold War (approximately 1979). An alien spacecraft was intercepted entering Earth's atmosphere ten years prior to the setting of the game, eventually being brought down with a nuclear warhead. Following a ground assault by human troops, the UFO self-destructs, leaving behind only the stark realisation that humans are not alone in the cosmos. To deal with the alien threat, NATO and the Soviet set up the Xenonauts, a secret joint organisation tasked with dealing with the extraterrestrial threat.

Ten years later, with the relationship between the US and the USSR rapidly deteriorating and extraterrestrial activity nowhere to be seen, the Xenonauts are a marginalised and under-funded organisation, trusted by niether side. It is against this backdrop that an alien warfleet jumps into the system and begins a full-scale invasion of Earth. The game sees the player taking command of the Xenonauts and leading them as they desperately battle the aliens in the skies and on the ground; the very fate of the human race on their shoulders.


Consequently, the GUI of the game needs to reflect the time period, the joint NATO/Soviet influence in the Xenonaut organisation and the functional nature of everything there (reference pictures will be provided to successful candidates to make this easier). Basically, though, we're looking for something that's slightly retro quite industrial in appearence, but not to the point where it's in the steampunk/Fallout vein.

The GUI will need to cover two main areas, the Geoscape and the Combat Viewer, which you'll be familiar with if you've played X-Com. If not, then the Geoscape is the strategic world map where the high-level game is played. You can see the GUI of the original X-Com here, and also see the GUI of one of the recent remakes here to give you an idea of what sort of information is displayed on it (mainly the central rotatable globe etc). The second main area is the Combat Viewer, where the turn-based tactical combat takes place. This is a bit more freeform as the amount of controls has been slimmed down considerably from the GUI of the original. Realistically the game's combat GUI can resemble any number of turn based or real time tactical squad combat games, so this is a bit less regimented.

I'd be looking for three GUI concepts for us to a have a look at, with the chosen one going through a couple of iterations to give us a final 'look' for the game. As we're not completely sure at this stage what gameplay elements will be included in the final GUI the graphics don't have to be final, rather it's just something for us to work to. If you're interested in the work, please drop me a line at chris.baker2005 (at) gmail.com with your portfolio and prices, and optionally any rough ideas you might have about which direction you'd go with the GUI.

We do have a budget for the game, but we're an indie team so it's pretty tight - cost will obviously be a factor in our decision! Thanks in advance to everyone that sends in an email; we'll do our best to reply but we tend to get a large number of portfolios through so we can't always reply to them all - don't take it personally!