I am creating a cell phone game and pretty much have the development finished, however I am only using place holder graphics at the moment and need to find someone to team up with to do the graphics. I am looking for someone who can do 2D tiles, a title page and some webpage graphics for the game. As this is a side project and not my job I can't afford to pay money up front for graphics, I am looking to team up with someone for a longer period of time and to try to market and sell the game and then split the profits. I realize this might not be the best place to put this request as mostly developers come here, but if anyone can point me to a better place to post this request then please tell me. Here is a link to my original request and a link to a very basic webpage http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=345355 http://www.geocities.com/gch412001/ Thank you, Greig Hamilton
Hi, Had there been some sort of money in it I probably would of been interested but as it stands I have too much to do otherwise so cannot afford the time away from other projects if it is not payed for. Good luck with that tho ok all the same,
If you're looking for cellphone graphics, you can try the forum on pixeljoint.com but expect a lot of mocking for demanding hard work for no money. People with those skills tend to get tired of constant requests to work for free. They will still sometimes do it, but ONLY if your game sounds really interesting and you give the impression of being enthusiastic and capable (and therefore likely to actually finish what you start). You have to be able to sell yourself and your game to them.
I totally agree with that Btw: I designed the retail packaging for Charm School when I worked with Xing.
Thanks for the prompt replies and useful advice. It seems like I may have found someone who is happy to do some sprites etc for me. My next question is: 'What is the usual stuff you put in a simple contract?' I have the following: Include in the credits either 'your name' or 'your company name'. Include in the game website a link to 'your website' and also include a note stating that 'you' created the graphics for the game. Now is the awkward part. If I manage to sell this game how should the profits be split? The artist will be doing a much smaller amount of work compared to me who has done the programming and will now start to do the sales/marketing of the game. What should the split be? 50/50 seems a bit unfair to me but then without the artist I have nothing to sell, so what do others do if you are splitting profits? Also if anyone knows of somewhere that I can get a basic contract outline then that would be fantastic. Thanks, Greig Hamilton
I usually get around the profit share problem by suggesting a 40/40 split. Artist and programmer both get the same, so the artist doesn't feel cheated, but there's also 20% of the profits towards additional costs and anything else you might need ( sound/music ) so the programmer doesn't have his 50% eaten up with costs. EDIT : And yes, I know technically profits are after costs have been taken out, but I've found people usually expect to get their percentage of whatever you get from Plimus/BMT and the portals, and "forget" that hosting, marketing, etc costs money too.
We'll do the job but we don't work for royalties. We are cheap though. www.puzbox.com/samples < if you're interested.
www.deviantart.com is a good place to find naive young artists willing to work for free on a project that may or may not produce any money.
Keep in mind that a lot of people on forums like pixelzone, pixeljoint, pixelerate or pixelacademy are non-professionals. They pixel for fun most of them have not even come close to doing gfx for a whole game. The main problem I had when looking for some help on those forums is reliabilty and motivation. It's all great for the first sprite or two but soon the glamor fades and they become bored. Hope you have some luck nevertheless... There are heaps of good ones out there - finding them is the problem...
For fun is fine and no problem For me as a pro indie that relies on revenue from deals and contracts to live and eat and pay bills and all the rest of it - not fun and very bad in fact That is/was my personal point, because when you consider that free work usually (but not always) ends up being wishy washy in terms of how work is undertaken and agreed and ends in arguments between both parties... or even worse no game/product at all down the line!. Eweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :/ Nevertheless a good way for a newbie artist to break into the games biz tho but not for a (dare I say it) veteran like meself me laddo hehe
Thanks for the offer Robert, however I will persue other options first. Also thanks to the others who gave me other websites to look into. If getting art via this process proves to be too problematic then I will consider paying for artwork but at this point would really prefer not to. Thanks for all the responses. Greig