Journey to Launch #2 - Art, artists, & how to bring your game to life
The rough draft of the first card we ever commissioned for Fish N Ships
Finding the right artist for your game can
be an intimidating task.
But perseverance brings reward!
TL;DR Bullet Points
The best way to find artists is to post on an artists job forum (like Deviantart or Reddit)
Pay your artists (either case-by-case or through a contractual percentage of royalties)
Make sure you have a contract in place dictating who owns the publishing copyrights.
Be open to new interpretations of your vision (and if you need to make notes, be clear).
Understand what you want before going to an artist for a commission.
We recently e-mailed the artist who makes all the art for Fish N Ships. “We need some splash art to make an ad for Fish N Ships…something that captures the spirit of the game and the characters and wraps it all up into one big package.”
If this had been our first e-mail to Mitchell Mayorga he may have had more questions for us related to what the style and substance of the game was. As it stands, the only question he had was “how big do you want it to be?”.
We’ve had a professional relationship with Mitchell for the past two years and in that time, we’ve learned so much about what we need from an artist and how best to give them what they need in order to help them deliver.
An example of a typical rough draft you might expect to get from your artist to make sure they’re on the right track.
The three main pointers we would give to anyone who is just dipping their toes into the world of game art are: Be Perseverant , Be Honest, and Be Flexible. I’ll explain.
1) Be Perseverant. We had been searching for an artist for quite a while before we found Mitchell. When the game was still just a concept, we made a call to artists on facebook to see if any of our friends would be interested in getting in on the ground floor of the project.
Some friends responded! But we could only offer them potential royalties in a project that might never get anywhere so they, understandably, couldn’t devote that much time to drafting up a card draft. We quickly learned that our plan of attack wouldn’t work very well if we were really serious. Royalties might work for an established game company but, on our first game, art needed to be paid for up front.
The next step was to expand our search beyond our friends (and friends of friends). If you don’t have a social media following already (we didn’t), getting the word out that you need art can be quite difficult.
We decided to use the DeviantArt Job Forum which allows you to post the specifics of your commission request to a surprisingly wide audience of artists! (If you’d like to see our original post with all it’s responses, take a look here).
After sorting through and responding to dozens of artists (around 65 in all), we established a dialogue with Mitchell and quickly discovered that he was the obvious choice. His rates were very reasonable & his art samples were breathtaking.
The whole process from initial facebook status to commissioning our first card took 7 months. So if you don’t get any nibbles at first, keep trying. You’ll find someone eventually! Especially if you pay them what their talent demands!
The original (royalty free) placeholder art we had for our “Harpoon” Tide-Turner Card
2) Be Honest
One of the biggest concerns we had going in to the process was the (unlikely) issue of copyright disputes with our artist.
What if we had a falling out? What if another client wanted to use the Fish N Ships art in their game project? What if someone plagiarized the artwork? We decided that having a copyright contract drafted was the best way to make sure our business relationship started off on the right foot.
Mitchell was honest too. He expressed concerns about some clauses that may have restricted his ability to profit from his hard work in the future (could he sell prints? Could he include the work in a book version of his portfolio? Could he use the work on his website? Could he use it if he were featured in a magazine?), and we changed the clauses to accommodate those concerns. The goal of the contract was to clarify our business relationship, not lock either party into terms they didn’t like.
The important thing, we found, was to be honest about all of our concerns from the get-go. Don’t be afraid to communicate with your artist and don’t ignore elephants in the room. Even if you’re friends with your artist, it’s always best to make sure you have a contract in place (even a simple one), that establishes who owns what types of copyright on the work produced.
The average cost of a contract to be drafted up by a lawyer (in our area of Florida) was about $1,500.
In the end, your level of caution may differ from ours & that’s totally fine! Just remember that it won’t (or at least shouldn’t) offend a professional artist if you ask important questions regarding copyright.
3) Be Flexible
The final draft of the “Harpoon” Tide-Turner card.
When we first started out on Fish N Ships, the concept was very different from the finished product. This applied especially to artwork.
Our original vision for the style was a lot like Scrimshaw artwork or traditional wood-burning prints. A VERY different vibe than the one we ended up with.
But, as we continued on with the process of finding an artist, we discovered that our idea for the art style was limiting us. Mitchell’s art had color and flare, and the more room we gave him to express himself on a commission, the better the result was!
That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t give some guidelines, but if you feel as though you’re running into a brick wall trying to explain your exact vision for a card or a feature, try stepping back and giving more of a general idea to your artist. Allow them a chance to interpret your idea. After all, they’re the pro!
Try to be flexible, also, on price point. After a few cards, Mitchell e-mailed us to ask (very graciously) if we would be fine with paying him more per card, as he found himself spending a bit more time than originally anticipated. We said “absolutely yes!’ for a couple of reasons.
If your artist isn’t happy with their commission price (and you stick to it stubbornly) the quality of artwork may suffer or the time per commission may increase.
Only your artist knows the true value of their time. If they say their hourly is x, you should probably not haggle for less than x.
Establishing a positive and ongoing professional relationship with an artist for your game can be an incredibly rewarding milestone in the journey to make your game a reality. It can also be one of the biggest make-or-break elements of your media hype leading up to the launch of your crowdfunding campaign! We continue to be excited by every piece of work that Mitchell creates for us, and we hope that you can find that same level of excitement with your artist too!
Feel free to e-mail us if you have any questions! We’re happy to share!