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Messages - robmpreston
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1
Portfolios / Re: [Portfolio] Dorian Tokici
« on: March 26, 2014, 02:26:45 pm »
Blew up your email and facebook. :O

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General Discussion / Re: Pixel Art Jobs (and salary)
« on: March 25, 2014, 06:37:51 pm »
I feel like this also adds up to this thread here - imo one of the greatest and most truthful graphs:

y

Heh! Makes sense. I haven't contacted you because I doubt I can afford you :P Amazing work.

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General Discussion / Re: Pixel Art Jobs (and salary)
« on: March 25, 2014, 06:36:48 pm »
Artist #4: Very high profile / well known artist. Sent him an email asking if he had interest in my project. Received a reply after two weeks or so saying he was interested. Sent back specs, current tilesets, and suggested doing a few tiles so we could make sure we were on the same page. After that he disappeared and hasn't replied to me in nearly a month.

I just don't get the communication issues. How hard is it to send an email? Say you aren't interested, say you are busy, say something came up in life, just make sure to NEVER go MIA. A 10 second email is the best thing you can do to keep business in the future.

I'd try mailing them again, though one month with no word is a little strange.  Overaggressive junk filters have made me look the fool in the past, both with incoming and outgoing mail.  Also, a lengthy hospital stay had a couple of clients wondering about my status (I couldn't sit upright, let alone use a computer).  Emails with attachments seem to have a greater chance of vanishing into the ether, and if I don't receive a response with some sort of feedback in a week or so I'll usually send a follow-up via two separate addresses.

Yeah, I followed up with him several times and no response! So weird, could be a spam filter, could be real life. I'm huge on communication, so I always follow up and try to give the benefit of the doubt first but eh. People are weird! Haha.

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General Discussion / Re: Pixel Art Jobs (and salary)
« on: March 25, 2014, 04:26:16 pm »
    Excellent summation, Cyangmou!

    I just wanted to stress the importance of trying to negotiate a $/hr rate, versus a fixed fee or $/sprite.  This has a lot to do with communication and the potential for revisions.  If you have an excellent client who has a well defined asset list it might not be such a big deal, but I've found most of those who are offering a flat rate per asset are generally inexperienced  and not entirely certain what they want.  Each time you have to go back and edit or redo a sprite or tile that is money out of your pocket.  I learned this early on, when a client insisted on a flat quote for a project.  I estimated it would take me a month to deliver, and priced it accordingly.  Poor description and constant direction changes ended up drawing that contract out to three months, and as I had signed a contract to complete it I had a legal obligation to complete the job to the client's satisfaction.  At the end, I was essentially working for less than minimum wage, and that was the end of that type of contract for me.

    As a client, I would insist on at least weekly email updates.  Artists are flaky, and that one email can help keep them on track and motivated.

    I'm still pretty crap at insisting on contracts, though.  I'm far too trusting, even after having my fingers burned on a few occasions.  ::)

Yeah, I prefer an hourly rate as a client for several reasons.

1) I want an artist who I can have an ongoing relationship with, so I want them to feel fairly compensated for their work

2) I feel like it makes the billing simpler, assuming the artist is honest about the time invested.

3) I don't have to negotiate a rate every time I ask them to do something new, they just bill the hourly rate.

And I can't once again stress how important communication is. I want to expand further on my previous post by giving examples of the 4 artists I have dealt with or attempted to deal with:

Artist #1: Has worked for me on and off since August. Communicates very well, does great work and takes criticism / suggestions well and as a result delivers me something that is both true to his style and also makes me happy. Great guy to deal with and a credit to the entire community.

Artist #2: Bad communication, no money exchanged hands so no big loss, but took months to find out he couldn't/wouldn't do the work. Probably just a fluke and would try him again in the future.

Artist #3: Negotiated a flat rate for a sprite. Payed half as a deposit up front. Told me he had no work on his plate and I would get full priority. Proceeded to drag it out for a week beyond the timeframe he gave me. Asked for revisions. Got them, paid the other half of the deposit. Asked for a few fixes that he failed to put in place that we had discussed originally. Took nearly two weeks. Sent me the final frames, but forgot the idle frames. Took nearly 3 weeks and initiating a paypal dispute to get those 3 idle frames from him. Lied about where he was and why he hadn't responded in the process. I planned to use him for all of my sprites / sprite animations (thousands of dollars of work in the long run) and as a result of his failure to communicate I will never work with him again.

Artist #4: Very high profile / well known artist. Sent him an email asking if he had interest in my project. Received a reply after two weeks or so saying he was interested. Sent back specs, current tilesets, and suggested doing a few tiles so we could make sure we were on the same page. After that he disappeared and hasn't replied to me in nearly a month.

I just don't get the communication issues. How hard is it to send an email? Say you aren't interested, say you are busy, say something came up in life, just make sure to NEVER go MIA. A 10 second email is the best thing you can do to keep business in the future.

5
General Discussion / Re: Pixel Art Jobs (and salary)
« on: March 20, 2014, 03:08:00 pm »
I am paying between $15-25/hour for most of the work I have had done for my game so far.

The most important thing you can do is communicate with your employer.

I have hired (or attempted to) hire 4 different artists in the past 6 months. One of those is amazing, the other three all had consistent failure to communicate (i.e. going dark for a week or more at a time).

If you can't get something done on time, no big deal, just please send your employer an email letting them know whats going on! One of my artists did an amazing job on the animation for my player sprite but I will NEVER work with him again because of the fact that he couldn't seem to send an email, and lied about why he was delayed.

Communication and talent will get you work and get you paid in the long run. For my case, I have 200+ hours of work left to be done on my game, and nobody to give it to until I find another artist!

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If anyone has any questions or wants to talk figures, I'm open to negotiating, just jumping in kind of blind here.

7
Hello all,

I am looking for an artist to create 2 Tilesets and a few spritesheets for an upcoming cross platform 2D RPG I am working on.

A little about me
I have been out of the indie scene for a long time. My last contributions were in the GBA days. I created a pretty complex 2D RPG Engine in which we recreated the entirety of the Leene Square area from Chrono Trigger as a demo, along with working on a game called Western Lords for Blossomsoft. Since then, life has taken it's toll and I haven't had the time I wanted to invest in my side projects.

Professionally, I have a Computer Science degree and work in C#/.NET in my day job doing Automation of workflows for a large Health Care company.

The Game
I am now working on a brand new engine using C# and Monogame and I am preparing a several map demo before I put the project on Kickstarter to gauge interest and get some initial funding.

What I need:
SpriteSheet for the main character (highly detailed, Chrono Trigger style, 32x64)
SpriteSheets for several NPCs (can be fairly simple, along with a palette swap or similar to create variety)

Tileset (snowy mountain area, 32x32)
Tileset (semi-snowy town area)

NOTE: The size guidelines are just that... guidelines. For sprites especially, they can be any size that fits the scale of the game, as there is no limit to what the engine can handle.

As far as other assets, for the music I am attempting to go for a completely guitar driven soundtrack (friend is driving this) to set it apart from other games.

Storywise, the game will deal with time travel and be spiritually influenced by Chrono Trigger.

Obviously the town can reuse a lot of tiles from the mountain area, so they could almost be one tileset

I am unsure what fair wages are. I am quite poor but I'm happy to arrange some sort of flat fee, paid over several months, or a flat fee upfront along with a profit sharing system. Feel free to PM me or otherwise and let's talk about it.

I'd like to avoid the hourly pay route, just because I'm not sure how to honestly gauge someone's time spent on a project, but if there's a safeguard for this route we can go that way as well.

Thanks!

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