We're a small indie game company looking to have a pixel artist join us for a project.

We are willing to pay for a pixel artist but we aren't sure how much it would cost us,
and we don't want to throw a horrible number out there to lowball him/her.

Anyway! On to the art/requirements:

The following is some of the art style that we would need
http://timsoret.itch.io/the-last-night
http://www.gameguyz.com/sites/default/files/pictures_images/03.09.2012/1346644199.jpg

 - We're looking for around 20-30 times the amount of art to "The last night", will also have to do some simple 3-4 frame animations for characters.
- We will probably do most of the character design if it cost us more, if not we're hoping to give as much artistic freedom as possible with general guidlines
- Backgrounds will probably be the combined of the entire game that was posted, and some backgrounds will be stitched.

So given these, what would be a fair pay for a pixel artist creating such artwork?