Overview

My name is Sri Kankanahalli, and I'm working on a game tentatively titled Steel Assault. It's a 2D side-scrolling action game focused on close combat and a variety of weapons. The game is being programmed in C++, using SFML as its main multimedia library. I'm currently at the point where most of the base engine is complete:


...and I want to find an artist for the project before going further and working on level designs.

Style

The aesthetic I'm going for is a late-NES style, inspired by games such as Shatterhand and Batman which utilized heavy dithering and details in negative space to create a dark atmosphere within the system's limitations. (Here's another awesome reference.) However, I'm not adhering to any memory limitations, or the onscreen sprite limit.


Attached above is some of the level art I've been able to create myself for this project (for the first level). I think it looks fairly decent, but a lot of it is actually cobbled together from different games; for example, the clouds are from Contra Force and the car is an edit of something from Megaman 7. And everything else is mostly combinations of simple geometric patterns or dithering (the text is all exported from Inkscape and downconverted using IrfanView lmao). Also, I don't have any sprites because I can't sprite for shit (the sprites in the above GIF are from Shatterhand). So what I'm basically saying is that as someone who's only capable of glorified "programmer art", I need an actual spriter and artist who can work in a late-NES style.

In addition to handling programming, I'm also composing the music for this project using Famitracker (a NES music creation tool). Here are a few sample tracks: [title] [docks] [streets]

Compensation

If you choose to accept the offer, I can pay an advance of $250 once we've established a workflow and a few sprites/tiles have been finished. From that point, we can negotiate further payments and/or revenue sharing.

About Me

I'm currently a sophomore at the University of Maryland (College Park), studying Computer Science. I've been programming for a long time; you can view my portfolio here. I've also worked on a number of game projects prior to this, but none "professional" enough to put on a resume (mostly fangames and ROM hacks). Perhaps the most impressive is this "total conversion" ROM hack of Sonic 1 I made a few years back, which turned the game into a Megaman clone and implemented streaming ADPCM sound.

You can reply in this thread or by PM if you're interested. Alternatively, you can contact me by email at sriharik _AT_ terpmail _DOT_ umd _DOT_ edu.

Thanks for your time,
Sri