Rookie, fledgling video game developer seeks assistance

1. I have no shortage of ideas I wish to execute. Unfortunately, almost all of them are for Touhou fangames, which leaves me heavily dependent on having an artist to work at my disposal for free, since ZUN forbids commercial use of his characters. Where could I look for such artists and how?

2. Failing the "for free" part, I'd have to offer hired artists some sort of reward for my commissioned work, but how exactly am I to do this when I don't exactly have a company yet, nor am I exactly swimming in money to spend?

Would post the generic "Go 2 Kickstarter" remark, but is too tired to do so

Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break

you could go the keiji inafune route and create Expies of the characters instead.

i'll warn you right now that most artists are not really going to want to work for free, most of them have their own projects they want to work on and might not even be interested even with money.

I tried to account for this in the OP but I'm not exactly full of cash, so I can't exactly guarantee a salary or a decent monetary reward for the job done for the ones that aren't occupied.

i assume saving up for some time isn't viable or would take too long?

you're kind of in a difficult position honestly.

Okay... how much do people usually ask for to do a small game's worth of graphics?

You see, I'm quickly learning the ropes of designing mechanics and to an extent levels but I still don't have much in the way of games I could consider finished... furthermore, my plan is to produce both original content with purchases (can be a game with microtransactions or a simple commercial game) and freeware Touhou fangames.

Today's magic words: programmer art.

A game has to work, whether it looks good or not. Very few programers are also artists, and so there is a wide variety of placeholder art in play. If you're comitted to wanting to make a game, start making it and worry about art later. Having a working demo may also help attract fan artists to your cause.

Not a good idea. "Become one of my investors first and maybe at some point I'll make a game" falls way outside the non-commercial guidelines.

Look at ZUN's own art, and at the original sprites for Higurashi◊. Doujin culture has something similar to Three Chords and the Truth going on, where you won't get a lot of sympathy if you insist your game needs to have better graphics than that for people to enjoy it.

The best way to attract artists is simply to make a great game, so that artists will become fans of it and want to work for you. Once you have a proven track record of being awesome, some of your artists will want to stick around and help you on future projects.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who say they have a great idea for a game, but have no idea how much work is involved and never end up producing anything. Unless you actually make the game first, no one will see you as any different.

Look, there's wanting the game to look better than it needs and there's not having a minimum of competency needed to make ends meet.

I'm most definitely on the latter category. I can't do ZUN art or even Higurashi art (furthermore ZUN sprites aren't half as bad). I can't do any art on my own, really, so I all but require this assistance.

So, what do I do? Games with geometric shapes as placeholders? Because that would be something I can do, but wouldn't be appealing or marketable.

i think you are probably looking too far ahead with this. also, thomas was alone is based on a storyline of geometric shapes but still ended up being a compelling and successful game. you have to work with what you have.

if you MUST have something a bit more on the high end there are maketplaces for game devs where you can buy assets to use commercially.

edited 23rd Oct '15 2:26:18 PM by wehrmacht

Honestly dude, just make something dude. Doesn't matter if it looks like ass, or it plays like ass, or whatever, just make something, get it done and you've already accomplished more than 90% of "I wanna make a game help plz" types.

And I'm gonna be a dick about this but you'll probably be fairly disappointed in the first thing you've made. Well, that's normal. So what do you do? Do it again. And again, and again, and again. And eventually you'll simply start doing it better each time until what do you know, you've finally made something your actually proud of.

All I can really is you just got take that sliver of ambition and just grab it by the balls. I mean shit, programmer art. It's bad. Thats a GOOD THING because it let's you focus on working on the other stuff man.

edited 23rd Oct '15 2:35:30 PM by RoboZombie

You might also look into finding royalty-free artwork. It might not perfectly match your desires, but it may at least produce something that looks acceptable.

My Games & Writing

On that note...

edited 24th Oct '15 7:59:44 AM by Prime32

FYI: This guy could make Stick Figure awesome. Like, Bruce Lee level awesome. Don't falter just because you can't draw nice.