Thank you and welcome.
I'll be using my own placeholders initially for sure, and will save all art assets for last, I want to be sure I can handle this project on all other levels before I start spending money on hiring others to help me. But thanks for those recommendations, I've written them down in a notepad and will go check them out when I am ready. I've heard stuff that goes from between $25 to $100 for a piece of competently drawn art, just from my google searches, and that's fine for a few images, but I'm gonna need a lot of different art assets for a game like this. I was hoping I could order it in bulk, so I am glad you suggested it, meaning it's a possibility, do you have any guesses on what the bulk order discount would be? Because I did some estimates for how many drawings I'd need per character, and I also wanted to have more characters than in Imperial Gatekeeper to give it more variety, and these were my estimates, assuming $25 per piece (though I am hoping it's a silly pricing, as drawing something like 1 pair of panties with no background will probably be cheaper)
2 Nude Body States (un/embarrassed) + 4 Hair Styles + 3 Pubes + 4 Shirts + 3 Bras + 4 Pants + 3 Panties + 4 Shoes + 3 Accessories + 3 Contraband x 2 for Front and Back drawings = 66 drawings x 15 Female characters = 990 drawings @ $25 = $24,750 Cost.
And this is not including Facial Expressions, all the UI and menu's, the male characters or the chibi game world on the side screen. I'm willing to spend a few grand making something look really good, if it means I could hopefully one day get it on Steam. But I am hoping I don't have to go above 25k. If only I could draw well. I wonder what the budget for Imperial Gatekeeper was.