Thanks for the research. If I was an artist I'd probably try to add some characters.
I'll definitely have a look through this next update though.
If anyone here can draw well enough and decides to mod the game I'd be willing to pay you to work on my own game. I've been spending the last few days looking over DeviantArt for an artist who's got the right artstyle, basically something similar to how ImpG looks because it's actually pretty good art and it's proving more difficult a search than I thought. I am considering just contracting a bunch of people who are close enough and paying them to do a demo drawing and tell them to try to adjust their style to what I need and seeing if they can do it. Also considering just not using DeviantArt and posting a listing on ArtStation which is a professional site but it costs $150 just to post a listing there.
For any of you guys that are artists here, how easy is it for you guys to change artstyles or imitate other styles of drawing?
Depends widely on their experience. Some people can only "draw in their own style" because it's the only way they've ever done things. People who study fundamentals a shit ton and study reality are often more versatile. Quick way to guesstimate it is usually just check if they've only ever drawn in one style or if they have a lot of different styles/painting types in their galleries. A lot of skill or experience in their own style doesn't necessarily mean that they can imitate other styles super well.
To be on the safe side, you're probably better off hiring somebody who is already drawing in a style you like and to not expect much alteration. If you like the artist, anything they do outside their style will probably be lower quality and might be more expensive anyways because they'd have to study/practice something they aren't familiar with. There's not really some secret to art. Everything an artist knows how to do needs to be studied/practice specifically for. That means aiming for somebody with a style you like that's already drawing stuff similar to what you want in the game would be wise.
I should also mention that hiring an artist to work on an entire game would probably be rather expensive, if you want anybody with a decent amount of skill and the experience to create what you want/actually finish shit on time or at all. You get what you pay for and something like 15$-25$ per hour isn't insane for a fairly skilled artist. A whole game (Of about the quality/quantity level of Imperial GateKeeper) could be hundreds of hours of work for an artist, so you can do the math there. Imagine any finished CG art of decent quality could be around 75-200$ (Just kinda spitballing there). I should say I have a bit of experience as an artist but I've never worked on a game so I can't guarantee anything about how that would work. Just mentioning it would likely be more costly than you might be imagining.
There are always people out there that would undervalue their work or just take interest in it because they're interested in the game or maybe give you a discount for a mass work order or something, but you might not want to count on those things (Especially if you don't have any work of your own to show). Again, you get what you pay for. A skill that takes 5-10 years of study to get good at generally isn't going to be cheap.
On the plus side, the artist for this game isn't crazy experienced in my opinion. If you were going for something of similar quality, you're lucky in that regard anyways. Probably the tough part would be finding somebody that can deal with the quantity of work an entire game would require. You'd want somebody that's consistent enough to keep the quality at the same level throughout all the various poses and with various body/clothing types I assume. That's tricky in its own way.
If you're serious and able to hire somebody, make sure they've drawn similar poses (Or just a variety of poses/angles) to what you want in your game as well. That can be as important as their style. Hiring somebody that mostly does bust shots or something for a game like this wouldn't go over well, regardless of how attractive their art is, since it uses a lot of full body shots.
TLDR:
1: Hiring artists is probably expensive.
2: Don't expect an artist to be able to do anything you haven't explicitly seen them do before. From body types, to poses, to art style types, to backgrounds, to types of sexual content. It all needs to be studied/practiced for. With more experience an artist can pick up new stuff quicker, but it's still a slow down and they might not be comfy doing something they don't have enough experience with. Thankfully if you want to imitate a specific game like this, you can at least show them what you have in mind.
