[R>Artist 2D] Paid Wanted: Artist for Monster Rancher Game

[gruntlord?]

Personal Project
Placeholder Name: Silk Empire
Game Premise: 2D Monster-Rancher Breeding Sim on a Fantasy version of the Earth's historical Silk Road.
Goal: A Two-handed Fantasy-Breeding Menus-Game focused on the stats & genetic lineage of bred monsters.
Developer: I’ll be in charge of oversight, since I’m personally funding this game.
Purpose: Personal Project, current variety of breeding games don't meet my desire. This path is more costly, but the long term satisfaction will be worth it.

Gameplay:
1: Think of a breeder/rancher living alongside the ancient Silk Road, managing dozens, hundreds, thousands of various livestock, but they're of various monster lineages(and some human dilution).
2: No combat. Just breeding, managing and trading of monsters. Limited ingame economy of trade and meeting contracts.
3: Players can take Breeding Contracts. Satisfying enough of specific contracts grants the Player different types of licenses, allowing more monster diversification.
(Ex1: Oriental Army needs 20 low INT wolfmen with high Attack, bonus if high defense. Genetic variance & tree-diversity not a concern.)
(Ex2: Merchant looking for ONE Cowgirl with high Int, +35% human genetics, and infertility. Must be virgin.)
4: Game impact from Customizable MC. At the start, Player gets limited amount of points to spend on MC’s perks. Customization can impact Player's personal gene code. If Player chooses to breed with livestock or stud out to other farms/private requests, offspring can inherit stats&looks. Maybe good short term, but if Player is reckless, its costly in the long-run to their MC's brand image.
5: Player runs a breeding ranch, by selecting and deciding pairings for the next upcoming breeding season. That includes themselves. Impregnation time reveal can vary. Some monsters have requirements/limits/sexual preferences.
(Ex: Jane the cowgirl doesn’t reveal signs of pregnancy until after two weeks. She’s fine with mediocre housing&food, loves breeding with lycans, is okay with being bred up to 5 times during the season, is only willing to breed with no more than 2 different studs in a season, but hates breeding with androgynous OR shorter males. Player need to balance this satisfaction bar, as it affects the conception chance; too low and the monster will REFUSE to breed.)

Visuals: 2D and mostly static. Future animations planned, but that’ll be a future job post.

Lewdity: Lewd content is currently text descriptions(Ex: Jane has tanned Fcup breasts. She has a small chance of her bad habit occurring, where she orally takes the stud's release. Jane was creampied 5 times by the Stud). Post-release goals would be lewd display images, then basic 2D animation system visualizing the breeding in progress.

Development Status: I’ve been working on and off this for the past few years.
Writing: 100%(Species, Subspecies, Hybrids, Perks, Locations, Resources, Contracts, blurb for menu navigation, etc.) Please note there is no story.
Genetic Mathematics: 45%.
Coding: Already hired. Coding In-progress.
Audio: 100%(Royalty free background music).

Game Inspirations: Over the past decade, I've seen games that have almost met what I desired, but for various reasons, didn't meet the cut. They are Breeding Season, Portals of Pheron, and several others. If we delve into further discussions, I will point out the exact positives & negatives.

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Job Detail
Looking for 2D Artist(s). I need the following done:
1: UI Boxes & Interface, with four visual styles(Basic Fantasy, Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian, & Wuxia).
2: World Map, with four visual styles(Basic Fantasy, Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian, & Wuxia).
3: Region Map, with four visual styles(Basic Fantasy, Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian, & Wuxia).
4: Several maps for several cities, with four styles(Basic Fantasy, Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian, & Wuxia).
5: Ranch Map that’ll have two layers. One stagnant, the other interchangeable objects based on Player decision. Both layers will need four visual styles(Basic Fantasy, Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian, & Wuxia), & four season variants(Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) for each visual style.
6: Multiple indoor locations, with four visual styles(Basic Fantasy, Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian, & Wuxia).
7: Several wildlife locations, of various biomes.
8: Various resource icons & Monster symbols(NOT 8-bit retro or similar!).
Note: More details for these commissions will be given AFTER you’ve applied, and I’m satisfied with our discussion.

Employment Type:
This will be paid commission work. You will be credited for your work. You can show off your work after the game is released, or if six months have passed with no sign of life from me. Due to payment-processor regulations, this will be a free-game, so there will be no revenue share. If a donation-tab is created, it will be split between hiring for post-content, or recuperating costs. If costs are fully recuperated and there is no more post-content required, the donation-tab will be disabled.

Work commitment:
I don’t plan on commissioning artwork for more than a year. You don’t have to solely commit for me, you can work on other simultaneous projects. You’ll have a timelimit to turn in various artwork, but it’ll be reasonable. Like 1-2 months, not 48 hours.

Preferred method of contact:
After a few rounds of satisfying discussions on F95, we’ll move the discussion to Discord. Due to irl work, on weekdays I’m only available online for an hour or two.

Application Requirements: If you're still interested, you must meet the following below.
1: Have an average proficiency in English.
2: Awareness of the following games: Crusader Kings, Rimworld+mods, Massive Chalice, & Niche.
3: Having played several adult games from the earlier listed “Game Inspirations”.
4: A portfolio of various work, progress-shots included. Hellenic, Fantasy Arabian/Persian, & Wuxia styles would go a long way.
5: You need to DM me here on F95, with a link/attachment of your art-portfolio.

Application Duration
Unlike the previous job post, the application duration for this one will be more abstract. I hoping to hire someone suitable before the end of year.

 

[gruntlord?]

I've receive similar questions in the past, so I'll place answers to them below. (This might get updated).

1. "Why do you want this game?"
I enjoy spreadsheet games, adding lewd mods to those games, and playing lewd games with the premise of "breeding".
Sadly, the countless breeding games I've seen over the years HEAVILY NEGLECT the spreadsheet part. If you look up ANY IRL breeding program, you'll find that there's LOTS of paperwork. VERY detailed focus on the family trees. Also, spreedsheet games are almost ALWAYS E-rated, with modding not always being reliable. Most Funders are only interested in the lewd part of the breeding games. So, instead of crossing my fingers for a decent dev, I've decided to take action.

2. "Why aren't you releasing this on Steam?"
Publishing on Steam means dealing with the public & company's regulations. It's the same reason why I'm not interested in a Patreon or similar.

3. "Why aren't you doing a Patreon/ETC?"
That would mean content development be at the behest & control of any Funders & Patreon/ETC content-regulators. I want the core concept to be realized first, without any distractions. Funders could derail development by making ridicilous demands(Ex: 250 people could vote for a cat-waifu NTR story with 50 animated scenes be the sole focus on for the next year). A content-regulator could take one look at the game and screech "OH NO Alabama-simulator!"(Crossing of family trees is VERY common in irl breeding programs). So, I'll be funding this out of my own pocket.

4. "When do you want to upload the build and activate donations?"
Honestly, if we do upload, it'd be with a functional 1.0.0 build. Donation-tab would be activated at the same time.

5. "How are you paying me?"
My past experience solely comes from hiring concept artists and modders. So, I’d REALLY like to use the current system I've used with them. That is, have a total price, and break the payment into milestones. For example:

Client: “Here’s what I want in entirety for X-Thing.”
Contractor: “I estimate 5 weeks for X-Thing. I will charge you $3,000.”
Client: “Okay X-thing can be broken down into Milestone 1, 2 and 3. What is the workload timeline?”
Contractor: “In matter of workload time, I estimate 1 week, 3 weeks, 1 week.”
Client: “So how does, $600, $1,800, and $600 sound? I’ll give 20% for starting each milestone, and 80% upon completion? That’s $120, $360, and $120 to start. Then $480, $1,440, and $480 upon completion for each milestone.”
Contractor: “Can we adjust for...."

Obviously this would be WAY more hashed out and discussed on Discord. The above was merely an example.

6. "What's the budget?"
It depends on what currency you want to be paid in, and on what platform. Budget & payment periods would obviously be impacted by that, due to possible currency exchange-rates and platform fees.

7. "Wait, is this 2D game supposed to have moving sprites or not?"
No, there is to be no moving of any Sprites. It's a static game that will primarily be menu-based, similar to something like Crusader Kings.

8."You want us to send an art portfolio!? You're just gonna steal my work!"
I'm not going to steal any work, not because I have morals(yes I know funny how I'm on a porn-website), but because I wouldn't want to deal with an outrage crowd. Besides, if you're THAT paranoid, just place multiple giant art-tags on your artwork.
Please keep in mind if the game reaches release, and someone makes a mod with a bunch of stolen-artwork, I can't take responsibility for that(aside from calling them out IF they're charging for the mod). When this game goes out into the wilds, it's out of my hands. I'm only responsible for making sure it's not a broken pile of slop.

9."Didn't you say on your other job-post that you weren't gonna hire an artist anytime soon? Why you posting this now?!"
I had several really good & well-said conversations with several other devs. One of the points boiled down to: Hire an artist now, not later. While I'm still in firm belief of off-holding 2D-animations until post-launch, I've decided to open applications for artist(s) to make static 2D artwork. Also my placeholder artwork was making me die of cringe every time I looked at it....

10."This game is too vague. Please post your entire work plan & all your finished written content."

Only people who are hired get full details. Otherwise, you'll have to wait for 1.0.0 release!

 

[linderthrust]

Hello there
I came across your post here and wondered if you’ve gotten it done?
If no, can we discuss what you’re looking for?
My discord is eepytiger

 

[Fluhor]

I think it's pretty cool, would like to give it a shot. I worked doing mugshots, concept art, RPG maker style, comics, and illustrations. Have a fine arts background and teaching career. So honestly I find this pretty cool. Love monster girls, that's a given.
I've done logo work for users in here and have done Graphic design in my previous job in marketing, and honestly? Doing UI is pretty fun. But I'm open to anything, I'm versatile.
Sent you a DM

 

[gruntlord?]

Sent you a DM

Responded to! Please check your inbox.

If no, can we discuss what you’re looking for?
My discord is eepytiger

Please send a DM on F95 if you meet the requirements!

 

[Yandere4GameCreation]

10."This game is too vague. Please post your entire work plan & all your finished written content."

Actually, I'd say this is one of the better post, you even provide a basic map of the scope of work.

The fact that you can even begin to list out some things I think puts you ahead of many other posts. The problem with trying to hire an "artist" is that an artist can certainly dabble in a lot of fields of art, but just like many other fields of study, different artists have different specialties. Not just 2D vs 3D, but say, in my case, I have no attention span for environment art, I don't have the tools, workflow, nor skill set for it. But on the other hand I've done +10 years of character art and have refined what I prefer for my own style/projects. I'm more a programmer/technical artist, and the only thing killing me is slowly trying to grind through making environment art crap.

But with you listing things out, at least this way you can start cutting up the work and maybe commissioning it out to different artists. IE I know there are artist on itch.io that would take a commission to make high res resource icon (usually on the agreement that they can continue to sell the art pack to reap more profit for their efforts).

As for maps, what you'd likely need to do is, again can't rely on one artist to carry all the weight, is imagine that if you were an artist, you would be able to read this list and get an idea of how much work is involved (which for non artist is hard, because art gets undersold as is on the internet, ie time and effort >> estimated at a glance value of the final product), but if you could see all the steps needed, such as if I were a contractor who's job was then to subcontract the art out to others, I would commission one artist who specializes in making plan and foliage to make just a single pack of foliage for one scene or type of map or zone. I may need to commission another set just for rocks or scene objects, and then assemble all the packs together to make the map, or higher a level designer for the map making (combining the assets together). I'll need a different artist who tends to make interior items or drawings to make interior assets. All and all, It would be a spider web of different things that can be grouped together that could be commissioned, because yes, I could make the environment art all by my self (just as an example), but unless I a master 'general' artist, tricks I use to make plants come to life wouldn't transfer over more solid objects like furniture. But of course style maters as well. you want something that looks uniform, I'm more of a simple vector or drawn style with minimal shading because it's easy to make everything look uniform even if I am not as skilled with certain things vs others.

Anyways, it was cool to get a preview, its awesome you have a plan. But like many projects, the art scope looks like something that will require someone who'd need to be hired full time to really be able to put in the time needed, or, and I've never seriously considered this before, but basically an artist contractor to subcontract and delegate the work, but that would probably prohibitable expensive unless you were a full time fully staffed studio with existing income (and insurance).

I just wanted to throw my two cents at what I thought was one of the better project listings I've seen, appreciated some of the more meaningful detail on what work is being requested. I wish you the best of luck!