How much money would a graphic artist require to do artwork for an indie game? I'm thinking of sprite animation, backgrounds and titles, that kind of thing.

Does anyone here use an artist? Are you happy with their services?

I can't get away with using Ari Feldman's SpriteLib forever!

20thCB

It depends.. a professional artists may shock you when it comes to going rates while an enthusiast may gladly do it for a nominal rate.

You have two main options and some variants between then:

1) Pay fixed rate in advance. This requires you to have a detailed specification to identify your requirements and hence negotiate a fixed price e.g. based per asset created. This may require a substatial upfront investment so is not suitable for all contracting parties.

2) Offer a percentage of the profit. This eliminates the need of an upfront investment. The main disadvantage is that if the game sells well, the contractor will have to share the profits accordingly rather than deduct the agreed price from profits.

Now comes the variant part.. some possibilities:
a) offer (reduced) upfront payment and a percentage of sales
b) offer fixed payment but payable over a period of time after the game is released.. this gives you time to recoup
c) offer percentage of profit up to a specified fixed amout

20thCenturyBoy- you're in Perth? Where abouts? I don't drop by this forum a great deal, but if you're interested in having a chat with a fellow Perthite, just chuck me an email :)

hail@lostrealm.com

I think that makes four of us on these boards in Perth. Talk about disproportionate!

LOL

You're kidding! That is a shock ;)

So... (dare I say it) is a Perth indie meetup a crazy idea, or...? Either way, you just made my night.

Also, remember that rates vary depending on where the artist lives. Finding a good artist in the US (we can't all live in Perth, after all ;)) is hard when you can't afford to pay $25+ per hour, so I recently "outsourced" some work to an artist in South America. I was quite pleased with both the rate and the results, so I plan to do it again in the future.

I think that makes four of us on these boards in Perth. Talk about disproportionate!


Heh! I grew up in Perth and all of my extended family is there. Sadly I'm a Sydney boy now. :)

Traitor! :)

Ooh i'm from Perth too!

Sheesh there must be something in the water, it's not exactly a huge city :)

I switched to drinking (mostly) water 4 years ago. Within a few months, I was running an indie software business.

Yes, I'm from Perth too. Definitely something in the water.

This is freaky... I was considering starting a meetup for indies and free agents (http://www.freeagentnation.com/content.cfm?category=Find%20Other%20Free%20Agents&subCategory=10%20Suggestions%20for%20Starting%20a%20F.A.N.%20Club) in Perth, maybe now I don't have to :) I'm an ASP Member and a shareware indie. Haven't written any games yet, but if you'd like another Perthite at the meetup you can count me in. McDonalds in Barrack Street, or Fuel in James St. Northbridge are a couple of possible meeting places.

Hi to fellow Perthonians (what is the collective term? Perthites?)! Are we all game devs then? I have a small admission to make - I have only (almost) made one game, a Tetris clone available at http://www.cix.co.uk/~dogstar/mytetris.zip
It would have done well in 1991. Go on, give it a go, you know you want to!

Anyway, that's the first and last game I write in C/Win32. I'm still recovering from the trauma. From now on it's Java all the way. Just have to learn the bloody language! :D

20thCB

kerchen - interesting story. How did you find out about the South American guy? Did you have to pay some money up front?

20thCB

Heh, I'm not actually a game developer, just an indie shareware developer. Though I'm tempted to write a game so I can get more Dexterity credibility :) Oh, and I made a game on my Commodore 64 with Shoot Em Up Construction Kit, does that count?

PS All the Perthites (Perthians?) are talking over here (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3016) now... add your suburb to the list!

I found out about her from someone here on Dexterity. I don't know if she's interested in getting more work, so I don't want to give any details, but I'll ask her if it's okay to post her contact info here. Without divulging too many details about the contract, the way we structured the deal was like this:

First, we wrote up a contract with as much detail as possible about the project, including lots of nit-picky technical details. Then, the artist created a small representative sample to make sure we both were happy with the arrangement. After we both agreed we were happy, she went ahead and produced the full set of assets (ahead of schedule, too).

Now, I think if it weren't for the fact that I'm on good terms with someone she trusts and the job was relatively small, we probably would have had a more convoluted situation, with milestones and partial payments, etc. But, given the situation, we were mutually comfortable with one payment at the end of the contract.

Okay, I checked with all concerned parties and they're happy to get a little publicity: if anyone is interested in contracting some artwork from the artist I've been talking about in this thread (Florencia is her name), you can contact Gabriel Gambetta (Dexterity user name ggambett) and he'll help you out. Florencia is Mr.io Software's artist, so you can get a taste of her work by checking out any of their games.

The best thing to do is to outsource the art work at a place like
elance (http://www.elance.com) or Guru (http://www.guru.com) and let the artisits or designers bid for the work.

You have to be specific though in what you want, and its probably best to agree on a fixed price then an hourly rate.

well a normal game artist here in CA makes about $3000 a month.

But a lot depends on how well organised the client is, and whether they know what they want. In my experience a lot of clients havent a clue what they want.

Needles to say this is the scenario that the artist hates the most as they can't schedule their time and safely juggle their contract jobs easily, and prices start going up.

So if you have a good idea what you need, how you want it, what engine and what art path is expected, there's a good chance that you will get a better deal.

I charge less for some engines than others, because some engines avaliable to Indies are a complete nightmare to create art assets for, and often the client doesn't realise that not all art paths are the same, and something arent possible.

Allways nice when someone knows the limitations of their tools and those their contractors are supposed to work with.

a normal game artist here in CA makes about $3000 a month.


Oh my god. At those prices, surely it's only a matter of time before all this work is farmed out to Korea etc. Programmers, too.

Well $3000 is not much for California, i even wonder how you can live on that :/

pat.

The last real survey I read was from 2002 and put artists on a typical matured salary of around $60k - roughly the same as a programmer.

Cas :)

Well $3000 is not much for California, i even wonder how you can live on that


Well, exactly. Being that $3000 a month is a small fortune in so many countries, I have to wonder how long they will be able to continue to make big-budget games in California...

And $60k, well, that's nearly twice as much...

Yeah, kind of OT I know.

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
Well, exactly. Being that $3000 a month is a small fortune in so many countries, I have to wonder how long they will be able to continue to make big-budget games in California...

I've thought that too, but what will prevent that from happening (at least for the next several years) is the cultural difference between the US and those economically smaller countries. If an artist doesn't have a good understanding of US "culture" (and US game culture in particular), they will have a hard time producing work that doesn't seem odd in some way. As an example, look at the game "Anito," which was made by a team in the Phillipines. The production values are top-notch but, as an American, I look at the game and think there's something different about it. I remember having the same response to "Rage of Mages," which was made by an eastern European company (as I recall). Even "The Longest Journey" had some elements to it that hinted at it being developed outside the US. I think this is the same reason why "foreign" films and, to a lesser extent, music don't (usually) do well in the States, compelling artists to compromise their work if they want a share of the lucrative US market (eg., re-releasing "Mad Max" with American-sounding dialog--ironically enough, Mel Gibson is now a popular voice actor in animated films that call for an "American-sounding" voice). On the whole, I'd say that the US mass market for most forms of entertainment is fairly xenophobic and distrusting, so, until US "culture" smothers the rest of the world, I think there will be plenty of well-paid artists and game developers in California.

Yeah, kind of OT I know.

Well, the original thread was kind of quiet any way, so why not? :)

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
Oh my god. At those prices, surely it's only a matter of time before all this work is farmed out to Korea etc. Programmers, too. $3000 / month is only $36000 / year. That's not exactly high pay.

I was talking about a regular artist with about 2 years experience. Not that many people actually stay in the games industry for that long. After 2 years you can make $50k to $60k

but sallaries aren't increasing much with inflation or experience.

Intern's make about $38,000 if they are any good, $3000ish a month is pretty normal for a regular artist $48k to about $55k leads may get $60k and a art director doesn't usually make a lot more than the lead artist does but has a hell of a lot more responsibility and gets less time to live in :(

Not a lot of Artists stay in the games industry more than 5-8 years as its not a good thing to be doing once you get married and start a family.

Everyone I know in the industry has working partners and their combined sallaries exceed 100k which is more than enough to live in CA. and 50k is enough for a single person to live on over here considering that most people practically end up living at work and having an apartment as a convenient place to sleep at night. Allthough many people sleeep at work too during cruunch lol.

actually its really hard to compete for contract work and make it worth your while these days, particularly if you live in a wealthy western country like the US.

You often find yourself competing with companies in India, Romania etc, where they can charge a fraction of what you are willing to do the work for and for the same price you are charging they can get a team and produce the work with a faster turn around.

According to a article I read recently commercial developers have allready started outsourcing ontent to companies in Korea, so I wouldn't be surprised to see sallaries starting to come down as this becomes more common.

I do hear that there is a tendency in the US to not go for things that appear "foreign" in any way, which is a shame, and frankly quite baffling. But still, you can do stuff like have The Simpsons animated in Korea without it appearing "foreign" if it's overseen from the US... just as well because there's no way in hell they could afford to make The Simpsons in the US.

Not that I would endorse Americanising everthing... (well, I wouldn't, would I? Since I've never been there and couldn't possibly compete with Americans when it comes to being American...)

Still, to me, US$100k combined salary a year seems like unobtainably huge wealth, and I'm not even from the 3rd world... no wonder you guys buy so many doodads!

$100K seems pretty sweet to me, too, but I've come kinda-sorta close a couple of years. But the cost of living in the U.S. is increasing well beyond the increase in salaries. Inflation is measured in consumable items, which aren't going up too much. But the cost of insurance & housing has been skyrocketing over the last several years. It's starting to get pretty ugly.

In regards to people not buying imported goods, thats not entirely true, especially in California where a large percentage of people are actually ex pats from one place or another.

There's actually an english section in a coulpe of mainstream supermarkets here, where you can buy ambrosia Rice Pudding, ribena, lucozade and my local Rite Aid 'chemist' sells Lichoriche allsorts. And one of the most popular places to hang out is The Streets of London pub, which is doing very well indeed.

Currently French products are highly discounted around here, unless they are expensive luxury goods. A shame as if I could buy a diesel car here in CA I'd want a french one as my second econobox car, some of those do about 70mpg and are way better than the german ones.

Still, I doubt french cars will be selling here any time soon lol. Everyone is crazy about German, Japanese or homebrew cars. Hoping to replace my MX5 with a Lotus Elise within the next 18 months if I can get my Indie game business to make $1000 a month profit lol (still a bit of a way off)...

(ot but) annoyingly, when we lived in the states, there was a gourmet/import grocery just a few blocks away that carried a nice range of British foods for my other half.

What I wouldn't do for the equivalent around here! :)


... grumble grumble british food is crap let's move to canada grumble...

Originally posted by kerchen
I've thought that too, but what will prevent that from happening (at least for the next several years) is the cultural difference between the US and those economically smaller countries. If an artist doesn't have a good understanding of US "culture" (and US game culture in particular), they will have a hard time producing work that doesn't seem odd in some way. As an example, look at the game "Anito," which was made by a team in the Phillipines. The production values are top-notch but, as an American, I look at the game and think there's something different about it. I remember having the same response to "Rage of Mages," which was made by an eastern European company (as I recall).

Well, we, eastern europeans could muscle our way in after a while. Here in Latvia, cost of living good is relatively very low, while we possess quite western thinking, basic knowledge of western stereotypes etc. "Rage of Mages", btw, was one of the first releases of Russian company Nival - they have adapted to market nowadays and their Blitzkrieg and Silent Storm series are now basically mainstream products of the genre. Although Nival is pretty much exception in Russian dev scene. Its one of the rare russian companies which have exceptional management, good sense of market and good relations with publishers.

So, resuming it - you shouldnt be afraid so much from Korea as from hungry latvians/estonians/chezhs etc. :)

the US and european markets are very different, same goes for east/western europe. It has been quite hard to get european football games over here, as well as traditionaly european motorsports games like F1 are almost non existent. games like MotoGP on Xbox live seem to have helped a bit though.

But aside from sports, I prefer european strategy games, and speaking of eastern europe, one of my favourite games series is Hidden and Dangerous.

Can't think which games have glaringly different review scores when you cross continents, but there have been quite a few over the past year.

I'm kind of hoping that as engines become more and more advanced and expensive to develop, and publishers start producing fewer AAA titles due to the huge expense. Indie developers will have a better chance to break into a more commerial market, kind of like cable networs do over here with TV.

The tools are certainly there to make commercial quality titles, and so is the talent. Should probably have posted this in another topic heh....