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burdens of reflection
Gavin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
such a god damned tool sometimes
hello, internet
For about 3 months now, a friend and I have been designing a CCG from the ground up. We've done everything imaginable, and work has been slow but promising with a 2 man team. We've reached a point where I'm starting to think that if any one thing is going to hold us back, it's going to be our collective lack of very high-quality art capabilities. I can definitely manage card design elements, and everything looks nice & professional, but the best we can hope for without outside help would be poppy cartoon-ish art in the same vein as MapleStory, as opposed to something like the art in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which is a style I would love to model ours after.
I'm 17, my MALE LIFE partner is 18, and I think it's time to hire an artist.
I really don't know anything about the process, specifically what an appropriate amount for an unestablished indie team to pay an artist for something between 50-100 pieces of work is, or how that pay should even be decided. (by pieces, by hours)
I know one person, 17 years old, whose work is pretty impressive. I've asked him if he would be interested and I'm waiting on a response from him, but from there I don't really know what to say him.
We have very little money, and I want to make this as fair and good an experience for him (aspiring illustrator) while still keeping things effective and affordable (cheap) for us.
I can offer him all kinds of exposure to work experience, but I don't really know what he wants to hear.
If necessary, and possibly even desirably, we could handle scanning, inking, coloring, and even design in-house, leaving him with a page of finished character designs and a list of situations to draw them in.
How much do Artists for this sort of thing usually make vs. the Director, or Designers?
Help?
Suggestions with any of this at all?
I always have a hard time deciding what thread these sorts of questions should go in, so if this is better suited for the Artist's Corner, let me know.
Thanks
-Gavin
For about 3 months now, a friend and I have been designing a CCG from the ground up. We've done everything imaginable, and work has been slow but promising with a 2 man team. We've reached a point where I'm starting to think that if any one thing is going to hold us back, it's going to be our collective lack of very high-quality art capabilities. I can definitely manage card design elements, and everything looks nice & professional, but the best we can hope for without outside help would be poppy cartoon-ish art in the same vein as MapleStory, as opposed to something like the art in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which is a style I would love to model ours after.
I'm 17, my MALE LIFE partner is 18, and I think it's time to hire an artist.
I really don't know anything about the process, specifically what an appropriate amount for an unestablished indie team to pay an artist for something between 50-100 pieces of work is, or how that pay should even be decided. (by pieces, by hours)
I know one person, 17 years old, whose work is pretty impressive. I've asked him if he would be interested and I'm waiting on a response from him, but from there I don't really know what to say him.
We have very little money, and I want to make this as fair and good an experience for him (aspiring illustrator) while still keeping things effective and affordable (cheap) for us.
I can offer him all kinds of exposure to work experience, but I don't really know what he wants to hear.
If necessary, and possibly even desirably, we could handle scanning, inking, coloring, and even design in-house, leaving him with a page of finished character designs and a list of situations to draw them in.
How much do Artists for this sort of thing usually make vs. the Director, or Designers?
Help?
Suggestions with any of this at all?
I always have a hard time deciding what thread these sorts of questions should go in, so if this is better suited for the Artist's Corner, let me know.
Thanks
-Gavin
Gavin on
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Posts
I would like to establish a nice relationship with my artist so that I can retain the maximum possible level of creative direction over the project, while leaving him with a positive experience that would make him want to return in the future.
Knowing just how much we can realistically handle of this in house and how that should effect pay would be nice, and optimally we would handle as much as we possibly can ourselves; not because I'm cheap or greedy, but because we just don't have the money to pay him that much.
Since it doesn't sound like you have money, I guess you can offer a partnership in it?
Exposure is bullshit, especially coming from a teenager. Saying that seems mildly insulting.
If you really want to know how much people cost, it's really not hard. Contact freelance artists on the net that you like. Post job postings. Explain the job and ask for a quote. Not tough at all.
And I don't think the exposure thing is insulting, considering he's never worked in a project like this. I meant that as exposure to a project, more than exposure to employers, but I can see you read the whole post from there with dick-glasses on, so thanks anyways for all the great info about outsourcing to China and "real pros".
ummm, you said his work was impressive, so I quoted the types of prices that talented teens I knew used to charge when they were doing work out of high school... Really cheap ass work.
As far as your reaction... wow, you actually think that your project is so fucking magical that exposure to your genius ideas will benefit him? grow up. You think any artist out there doesn't have his own personal projects that they want to do? And you think the fullfillment of working with you with offset the countless hours he'd put into it? Before I thought you were naive, but you are clearly a dick.
I don't think a CCG game made by a pair of teenagers is ever going to warrant high quality artwork, that's just a simple fact.
i know this is not what you want, but since you are severely limited in funding, this is probably the best way to acquire quality art for your game.
This is a terrible reaction to the truth about what artists are worth. Or rather, what competent artists are worth.
You also want advice on a working relationship with your artist? Stop acting like you are in your post above.
The artist will set his own price, based upon a few things:
- How excited am I by the work? If they're not that interested, the price will probably go up, because it's more work than it is fun. That's how a lot of freelancers work, anyway.
- How much other work do I have on at the time? How much pressure will this put on my time? If they're busy but you want them, expect to pay more.
- How long will the project take? How many hours per card? Some will charge a flat fee per card, others will charge you an hourly rate, others may charge a bulk fee for the whole project. A good way for you to rein in costs/manage risks is to pay an illustrator for conceptual work first. Basically ask for, maybe, 10 of your cards to be sketched up, conceptualised, and say you're willing to pay $X for it to be done. Then, if you like the results, you can negotiate a per-card/hourly/project cost. Checking out an artists portfolio will help you pick a suitable artist.
You would also have the right/obligation to sign off at various project points.
Concepts - sign off
Line work - sign off
Colour - sign off
Signing off on the work means you're happy with it, and that the artist isn't obligated to make any further changes without being paid more money for it. If you're not happy, you'd have to negotiate with the artist to either pay them for work completed and say goodbye, or ask them to make certain adjustments before signing off.
But aside from all that, if you think hiring an artist who will give over control of inking/colouring/scanning etc to his bosses is a good idea, you won't be finding any decent artist and the results of all their paid drawings will probably wind up looking shitty. If you hire an artist, hire them for the full benefit of their experience and talent. It would be like going to a restaurant and ordering a good meal, and then jumping into the kitchen after the chef's prepared the ingredients and telling him you're fine to take over from there.
Bad idea.
As far as having full creative control, I don't know if it's fair to expect that with an artist. If you yourself are not artistically gifted, as your artist seems to be, I'd advise that you tell him your ideas and show him the type of work you want, and let him go on his own from there. As someone who's done commissioned works, it's much harder to do when someone says "I want x, y, a, b-f, and q, but nothing at all like r". Putting tons of constraints on your artist, at least from my perspective, just puts undue strain on the artist.
Then again, some artists can deal with that. I can personally deal with writing restraints, but heavy/restrictive expectations in design seem to stunt my abilities -- unless I put those restraints on myself.
Whatever you guys work out, you are definitely giving him fodder for his portfolio, so you can list that as a plus.
Each one of these drawings is probably going to take at least 2 to 3 hours minimum.
If you want someone to do something for you then in the real world you pay them.
Satans..... hints.....
I think it is a bad idea to present your project to an artist as an opportunity to improve. It's just setting your bar too low. And a young illustrator might have all the enthusiasm in the world, but if they're being ask to stick to deadlines, produce a lot of work, and deal with shenanigans (all of this sounds likely), the at least I'm honing my talents! motivation will very quickly evaporate. 99.9% of the time, without money on the line, they'll start to think 'why should I work when I can go party, it's not like I'm being paid for this shit'.
Or you might get lucky and find an amazing artist who places no value on his time or talents. Who knows.
I'm a games programmer, and a project I'm doing for fun at the moment is a tennis game. The characters are all pretty bizarre and the umpire is a donkey, because thats what the artist felt like making. In my experience, if I had told them what to make I would have no characters whatsoever and a long boring job of realizing some bullshit "vision" myself.
That said you can find people to do cardwork for ~$30 a card. I would say that is pretty much the starting point.
I would say if you really want this thing to succeed it would be worth the investment to pay your artists. You need to setup contracts, deadlines and ways for them to submit their work. You have to stay on top of them and be realistic about the calibre of work you can expect from even mediocre artists at that price point.
I disagree. A 17-year-old may have talent, but they most likely don't have tons of work experience, as the OP pointed out. Even if the work experience is working on a CCG with a few HS buddies, it's work experience. I do freelance editing in addition to a bit of graphic design and sewing, and I will gladly help friends out with their projects that need editing/logos that need designing/things that need sewing. It's not that I don't value my own time as an artist/worker, it's that I value the experience.
I agree that this is en extended project, so the artist may want some sort of compensation. By the OP's admission, he can't really provide it. I don't see the harm in proposing it as a resume builder. I would have jumped at the opportunity at 17.
Plus, no matter the amount of talent the friend has, he probably won't get paid $120539501 to make art just yet. He's got to have a portfolio and show people what he can do before they want to pay him for what he can do.
:^: I agree.
Yeah, this should be a learning experience for them. The card game will probably not sell well or get much distribution, but what they learn from it might set them up to do a proper job later. Spending a lot of money on art would be a waste of money, unless they are loaded.
The easiest thing to do, is give each card a default little graphical template, with a small rectangle area for a hand drawn illustration. Make some shit in photoshop, look at tutorials on the internet. It is not hard to build a decent looking thing in photoshop.
Then have an artist draw a bunch of those illustrations and paste them in your damn self and organize the cards accordingly.
This is the cheapest way to do it.
And it will still cost you upwards of thousands of dollars to do 100 pieces of artwork.
Shit, even if he does each illustration for 100 dollars that's going to be 10,000 dollars for all these cards.
A decent price.
And if you want true creative freedom, I suggest picking up a pencil and learning how to draw quick. It's not that hard anyway.
what dollar figure, total, are you willing to spend on this?
If you're looking to hire someone to do work for you, please, let us know what you have budgeted for this project.
The point is not that a young artist would jump at the opportunity, that's pretty much a given, but that his enthusiasm for a project this big is very likely to wane if he's being paid a pittance -- I'm speaking from experience, unfortunately. And the value of experience is not fixed; it's going to be greatly valued if, say, a budding artist can be mentored by an artist he admires, or work at a firm he's interesting in joining.
This doesn't sound like one of those experiences. If the OP doesn't want to deal with delays and missed deadlines, a portfolio building project might not be the best pitch. But like I said, if the OP can find someone who wants to work for free (maybe they really dig the idea and want to be involved) then that's great.
This was the justification I used for doing a lot of cheap work for people. Turns out the best work I did was for clients who paid me well, and that's the stuff that wound up in my portfolio. It's not that my heart wasn't in it for the low-paying clients, but the extra dollars can be the motivation to push further and generate really excellent results -- or offset the awfulness of dealing with bullshit from clients.
Since they mostly want attention/exposure anyways, I'm sure if you made their names a little larger on the cards [either the frame of the drawing or something] and offered them something 'reasonable' you would probably get some bites.
Magic the gathering and games like that have hundreds of artists. Thousands even.
You don't have hundreds of artists but you DO have the Internet.
To hopefully clear a few things up:
I thought bringing in a friend whose only focus is art, not game design, could give us an edge while also bringing in a 3rd friend which could make our work days a little more fun.
I have been doing illustration myself for just as long as this person and am far from artistically crippled, all of our character design and a lot of art is already finished, and since we are very capable of handling everything post-sketch on our own, I planned to do that. When I say keep creative control, I guess I figured that was reasonable because I have a lot of confidence in our themes/background for each group of cards, and wanted to maintain that we already have that set. If that is unreasonable, which I hope it isn't, then I'll just have to change that.
This is not something I'm springing on him halfway through, moreso I'm offering him the job with those conditions and hoping he's interested because it's what we're looking for. If not, I would still love to hire him when we can afford to do him better.
If he would prefer to just have fun and do his own thing and it wouldn't take way more of his time up, I would have no problem letting him do that, so I will definitely let him know that that is fine.
Also, if I didn't clarify in the OP, we do already have a template and everything else done, we're only looking for the actual... card-art? Specifically the drawing on the card.
As far as the exposure issue goes, although I can see both points of the argument, I do think it's a positive experience for any young person aspiring to a creative field to get in some practical application. This idea permeates from the advice that I've been given (musically) hundreds of times, that while learning you should get out and play with as many people as you can. He's a friend. It's a really fun project. We play Street Fighter talk about Avatar. I'm not trying to enforce slave labor, here.
I don't think my ideas are "so fucking magical" that merely seeing them would benefit any artist and they should work for free. If you really got that impression, then there was a failure on the internet.
He has no portfolio and no work experience, and spends most of his time doodling idly anyhow, so to me it seemed as though any compensation for the work would be something awesome to him, because that's how I guess I would take it.
At the first suggested rate, I would be paying him $15,000 for the project, and that would actually be low-balling him. We just can't hope to accomplish that.
A partnership would be something I wouldn't mind talking to him about, but I don't really know what that means specifically. If that meant that he wanted to come back and do our next cards/project, and we agreed to go to him, then I would love that, and also hopefully would have more money to pay him with after actually having sold something. If it meant a percentile, I think that could be managed as well, but I don't know what would be fair. In my head something small because we've poured so many countless days and hours into the project, but if it ends up taking him months as well and he does all of the art, then maybe something higher up would be fair.
As far as good work coming from teenagers is concerned, I don't think there's much ground to be won in that battle. I have a lot of confidence in what we're doing, I think our play mechanics are original and strong, and I think that our design is well thought out and professional. I don't believe there would be any distinguishing our game from something 2 adults had made once we're finished, and that's just something I have to stick to, if only to protect my own feelings and drive about the project.
I think that a price point we could possibly manage, which has gone up somewhat after reading this, would be something like $2-300 up front, and maybe pay him out of the first $1-200 of profit. That might sound really low, but hopefully ending somewhere are $500 will be fair to him, and as I said before, I'm willing to offer him whatever else I can, whatever that might be.
This is only for the base set of cards (2 decks) for us to get around and start with, which I realized after posting and looking at out to do board is more like 30-40 original pieces.
I remember that the game "The spoils" was actually already touring with their game and doing all sorts of public play before they had most of their art done at all. They just had cards with pictures on them ranging from rough sketches to nothing at all, and they were at PAX for something like 2-3 years in a row. That was a tangent, sorry.
When we are ready to bring in the rest of what we see as the initial set, that would be a different project, and I would hopefully be able to pay him more at that point.
I hope that covers everything, it seems like I irked a few creative types out there, so I'm sorry if that's the case. I'm not trying to fuck my friend over at all, just hoping that we could find a deal with what we had that would be good for both of us.
If necessary, we'll handle everything in-house, and I'll approach him later when we have a little more money to put towards a future project.
Thanks so much everyone.
As far as giving the artistic control to the artist, the reason is... the more you demand from an artist, the more you have to pay them. Essentially the more you look over their shoulder saying "change this, do this, not that, make it look like this, etc" the more frustrated they will be with working with you. I can understand you having some conceptual control over it.. IE: you ask for a samurai badger in a dramatic pose... they shouldn't be giving you a pirate aardvark sleeping on a couch... but pretty much everything else in the image should be up to the artist unless you pay them for being a pain in the ass.
In general, if you are going to be asking for a lot of edits to the work in progress, I would be up front about that and get a certain number of edits covered in the price if he/she is generally not cool with that kind of thing.
I'm talking from experience here, also. I consider my self a fairly decent artist, and I'm even iffy on doing an unpaid internship, and so are a lot of my peers who are also artists. I have a decent knowledge in this area, and 150 per card sounds about right.
You mentioned that you wanted to pay him around 500 bucks all together for this (50-100 cards)? I may have read this wrong, but if that's correct, that would be......5-10 bucks a card. That.... is definitely not enough. I know 500 bucks sounds like a good deal for the artist, but you have to understand how much work even one card would take. There's penciling, inking, coloring, concept design, layout, composition. That's a whole lot of work, dude x 100. A good piece of work takes at LEAST several hours, and getting 5-10 bucks a card when one has put forth 7 hours on a project......is SO not worth it for the hired artist.
let me put it this way. Lets say, on average, one card takes 6 hours to do. Multiply that by 100. That's 600 man hours all together for this project. Divide that by 500. That comes out to $1.20 an hour. He could work at burgerking for well over that :P
I know this is harsh, but I'm telling it how it is, and putting things into perspective. Hopefully your friend is a saint.
Check out my art! Buy some prints!
Perhaps you can have a few of your key cards illustrated, pay a set rate for them, and when you go to pitch this thing to a company (I'm assuming you are doing this instead of producing it yourself), you can always use stand in art until you secure the needed funding to get it properly done.
Look at Magic the Gathering Alpha and Beta cards. The difference of the quality of artwork between Alpha/Beta and the first official editions is staggering.
Perhaps, even more simply, you can tag team the production of the artwork. Have him do basic sketches, and you can finish them off, or vice versa.
an extremely conservative estimate of 3 hours per card at federal minimum wage would be $2250.
Unless you have some capital set aside to get this off the ground, your only hope for this project is to bring in another partner for the art department. You may have the math and the templates down, but you can't disregard the artistic component without diminishing product quality.
So your options are
1. Hire a freelancer to do only a few of the cards-- you will probably have to pay this person rates that you think are "retarded" or more if you want anything resembling decent quality work.
2. Do the artwork yourself, since you apparently think that your team's combined artistic prowess is at the very least "far from crippled" and are confident enough to design, ink and color the work in the first place.
3. Coerce this 17 year old illustrator into joining your team so that he thinks he is somehow an equal partner in the project and is excited enough about ideas he had no part in helping with to work on them for free. Good luck with this.
A partnership basically grants the three of you an ownership stake in the business. Everyone eats steak together or everyone starves and you can chalk it all up to a fun learning excercise or 'exposure' if you will.
Basically you have to assess what each party is bringing to the table and set it accordingly. If you screw the artist by lowballing him on some imaginary future profit, you'll be screwing the group. Right now it doesn't sound like you have all that much to offer as an Employer (money).
You are still missing the point.
3 hours a card (which is actually pretty low) would mean 300 hours of work. That's nearly forty straight days of work. Not the countless hours that you and your friend have poured in cause you were chillin and talking about Naruto whenever you felt like it.
That and it's skilled work. It's something that not everyone can physically accomplish by themselves. This is something very big that this dude is bringing to the table. It's not just "pictures". If I were you I would offer 20 percentile with an idea of finishing up around the 25 to 30% mark at least.
Satans..... hints.....
But the reality is like I said....$30 a card (I have seen $20 a card as well) is very possible to find people to work on your card game. These would probably have to be single figure no background designs though, with a lot of artistic freedom and prompt payment.
However it sounds like you cannot afford to do this so you are talking about getting some random friend from school to help you for little to no pay. Thats fine if you can get him to do that...but chances are your project will fail. Because you will be asking him to put more time into it than you have. Somehow I doubt you have spent more than even 15-20 hours talking and planning this thing out, and that will likely be 6 or 7 cards for him, out of the 150 you are expecting. He will burn out, probably before he makes it to the second card.
If you really want to do this thing you need to start acting like a professional and get your shit together. Spend some money and get some sample cards done, enough to make the game playable and then take that game and shop it around to possible publishers or investors. Yes I am serious. Even your parents might be willing to help if you show that you are doing the job right. But have you even considered how you are going to get these things printed, packaged, marketed, or distributed yet? Somewhere down the line you are going to have to put up some money, and if you can't do that yourself you are going to have to use someone else's. I say go back to the drawing board and create a more specific and professional business plan and then decide how to go about hiring artists.
Right now it sounds like your best bet would be to give the artist (any artist) a decent ($150) amount of money for a number of the cards that you think really express how cool and great your game is. Use these when you're making your presentations to potential stakeholders/buyers. For the rest, either use mockup/sketch art or just put in a written description. I'm not sure what your plans are for marketing this game, but it seems much more likely that you'd succeed selling this to someone like WotC rather than selling them yourselves. I have absolutely no experience in CCG sales and marketing though, so if you've done your own research you probably know better than I do.
Another thing you might want to consider: is this a good time for a new CCG economically? I know businesses like electronics shift funding during recessions to R&D, but I'm not sure if luxury industries like CCGs do the same. On the other hand, this could be an excellent time to go to college. If you think the math in your game is good now, with another 2-4 years under your belt think how much better it will be. You'll also probably have a good store of new mechanics saved up to pitch companies as potential room for expansion. And if you get a business degree, for example, you'll have a much better footing for starting your business/getting hired by another business.
You might be surprised at how far away from the 15-20 hour figure I would say we are. We were working a few hours a day everyday for the month or so, with pretty minimal distraction.
I definitely will have a different approach to the hiring process after getting a better idea of what is commonly expected for that.
The premium card idea is really great, thank you. I think there are definitely some of the less important cards that we could take care of our selves, while leaving more money to pay per drawing elsewhere.
Thank you.
Satans..... hints.....
I remember being 17 and being really excited about projects that I got to do for free. Oh, I also remember being into those projects when I was 21. I think I got maybe 15% through the project and then quit.
In all instances.
Everything I've ever tried to commit to do for free, I've just given up on without finishing.
I find most artists are this way.
What? Humans are motivated to do things that keep them fed and happy? No way!
For simple illos to put on cards, 20-40 bucks a card isn't unreasonable. However, multiply that by 150 cards and you're looking at a bottom line of a few grand. We pay our artists flat fees, usually with some of it in an up front advance. You might, maybe, possibly, maybe could get an artist to work for a slice of the profit rather than a flat fee. Maybe. But it's unlikely, and unusual for the industry.
The only conceivable way I can think that you might be able to swing "want to do this for exposure?" is if you get a lot of different artists to work on the project. One person will not illustrate 150 cards pro bono. 20 different dudes just might. Will your game's art suffer a bit from lack of cohesion? Perhaps. But beggers, choosers, and all that.
As someone who works in the industry, both on the publishing side and the retail side, I can definitively say that no, now is not a good time for CCGs. Nevermind the state of the economy, the market for CCGs bottomed out at the turn of the century. Unless your game is called Magic or Yu Gi Oh, don't expect the game to do well. Hell, don't expect to turn a profit on it. From a business standpoint, CCGs have been poison for years. And not only have they been out of fashion (so to speak) for the better part of a decade now, but the entire industry is trending away from collectibles of all sorts. Clickies, for example, aren't doing well either.
Right now, what people are buying (and what companies that want to say in the black are making) are high-quality card and board games. Premium board games are big dog right now, with stuff like Battlestar Galactica being king. Indeed, Fantasy Flight Games is easily an industry leader and trendsetter in the current environment. We've been doing okay because we have Munchkin, which despite all good sense still sells like mad.
I can not stress enough that you do not want to make a collectible card game right now. However! This isn't a bad time to try and break in with a non-collectible card game. They aren't doing as well as board games, but they are head and shoulders above everything else in the industry. If you can retool the game to be non-collectible, I guarantee your chance of success will increase exponentially. Keep in mind, too that, non-collectible doesn't mean non-expandable. Munchkin, for example, has a whole assload of expansions that can be added to the game. People don't seem to mind buying more of a game. It's item rarity that pisses people* off.
(*"People," as in, "the larger money-spending population of the gaming industry." Or "the people that actually fucking matter to the bottom line." I know there are people out there who get off on collecting stuff, and yeah, they're served by that kind of product. They do no pay the bills.)
Finally, I'd like to tie this back into your artist problem by asking this: have you considered submitting this game to an established game company? While some of us develop things internally, there are companies that accept submissions. I admit, SJG isn't looking for card games at the moment, but that's only because we have a backlog of our own ideas. I would highly recommend shopping your game around to established names in the biz to see if they're interested. Why? Because then all you need to do is put together a nice looking prototype. Prototypes do not need good art. (Or, in some cases, ANY art)
If someone buys the game, you sit back while they soak up the all the development and distribution costs. No, you won't see as big a slice of the pie as if you made it yourself. You also won't be like a friend of mine who is now $30,000 in debt because he self-published a board game.
Christ, I wrote a lot. tl;dr? Cheap art is doable, but the volume will kill ya. If you want a hope of hell in selling this, make it non-collectible. If possible, shop this around to names in the biz.
And yeah. 500 bucks? For 150 cards?
Bwahahahaha. I mean, I can't draw and I know that's a huge lowball
Unless you want stick figures, I can do that