What do artist require from programmers to make their time working with us awesome?

edited in Questions and Answers
Hello all,

As a programmer who isn't very artistic eventually I'll require some additional help from artists / designers.

The purpose of this thread is to primarily kick off discussions around developer and artists working together to maximise productivity.

Are their artists on this forum? Have you yourself worked with one before? If you have then these questions are directed at your experience on this subject.

- You have an idea and need to communicate this effectively to an artist. Do you prepare a full requirements spec all deliveries required or give a brief overview and leave the artist to provide some sample mock-ups before committing to a final design? How much detail? What about NDA's in the case of a freelance artist who isn't solely working on your project?

- Where do responsibilities begin and end. Does the artist provide design ideas based on the original requirement or is this my responsibility to provide.

- How do you work with a freelance artist effectively to avoid wasted effort / miscommunication and plausible time lines for deliveries.

- Exclusivity. Has anyone drawn up contracts with their artist (assuming freelance) to ensure that work produced for the project stay in the project.

- How do you know what artist to ask for / request help from. For example - can an artist do it all or are their specific types of artists. How did you find the right one?

- What if you aren't happy with the quality of work produced versus what they misrepresented in their portfolios?. Did you build this into the original contract? What sort of clause as to make it fair for both parties?

- Did you specify exact sizing / formats / colour scales for everything upfront? Or was it an iterative process?

- Did you storyboard the entire requirement prior to asking an artist for assistance

- How best did you cope in the early days of design in terms of place holder art? Or did you use art online perhaps not open source and hand the development version over to the artist as explanation of what you wanted?

- What about 3D art / modelling? Assume this is not a role of an artist - but a role of a modeller? If that's the case - who does the model texturing?

As you can see above these questions are relevant to artists and developers alike. Please share your own experience on the subject and share industry contacts you could recommend, what type of art they do, what engines they've worked with and contact details. A bonus would be if you were to introduce them to the forum and they themselves could post back.

Thanks in advance

Comments

  • CuCl3 said:
    Are their artists on this forum? Have you yourself worked with one before? If you have then these questions are directed at your experience on this subject.
    Yes there* are artists on this forum, many. Yes, I've worked with many artists (both on and off this forums). Generally I take a producer/designer/coder role on projects.
    CuCl3 said:
    - You have an idea and need to communicate this effectively to an artist. Do you prepare a full requirements spec all deliveries required or give a brief overview and leave the artist to provide some sample mock-ups before committing to a final design? How much detail? What about NDA's in the case of a freelance artist who isn't solely working on your project?
    This is several questions. What you communicate depends on the artist, your relationship with them and what you want them to do. Some artists I've worked with I can just give the barest outline of an idea to and I know they'll turn it into something amazing that I couldn't have imagined in a million years, other times I've needed to specify exactly what is needed down to pixel sizes and colours (this can easily happen on the same project, so it's not an indictment of anyone). The thing to note is that this all comes down to how precise the implementation needs to be: Concept art is relatively freeform and conversations can be about emotional goals or art style or conveyed tone, etc; More detailed things like icon specifications require 100% knowledge of what is required, so things have to get exhaustive.

    I spent a lot of time learning to communicate with artists, including taking several art courses at university. I'm not saying I'm any good at it, it's just that good communication is your job, so practice it. If something isn't clear or work is not matching what you're looking for (and what you're looking for is within the skill-space of the person you're talking to) then you need to communicate better. It could be that the project isn't understood the way it needs to be, or you're not being precise enough in your feedback, or any of a hundred other things. But good communication is the single most important thing when working together.

    NDAs hardly matter. If you want one, cool, but I've only ever bothered with them when the project touches some secret marketing or business information, not the art or game itself.
    CuCl3 said:
    - Where do responsibilities begin and end. Does the artist provide design ideas based on the original requirement or is this my responsibility to provide.
    This is entirely up to you and your relationship. Although if you're the one paying, that's where the power and responsibility comes from. If you're paying peanuts and demanding design input on top of loads of rote work art late in a project, you're not going to get it. If you're not taking responsibility for decisions and saying 'yes, this is great, let's go with this style' when things get hard, then you're not going to get coherent art over time either.
    CuCl3 said:
    - How do you work with a freelance artist effectively to avoid wasted effort / miscommunication and plausible time lines for deliveries.
    Face to face is the best. Log all communication, learn what types of feedback they need, communicate more rather than less, be precise about your needs, use reference images ALL THE TIME.
    CuCl3 said:
    - Exclusivity. Has anyone drawn up contracts with their artist (assuming freelance) to ensure that work produced for the project stay in the project.
    If this is something you want, then it impacts costs. If you want the rights to what an artist is producing and they can't use that elsewhere, that costs more. Some projects or artwork simply can't be used elsewhere anyway, like if you're getting concept work done for characters that you own it doesn't make sense for anyone else to want that art. Things like general space models and stuff can be re-used easily though, so take that into account when costing.
    CuCl3 said:
    - How do you know what artist to ask for / request help from. For example - can an artist do it all or are their specific types of artists. How did you find the right one?
    Reach out to as many artists as possible. At this point your job is finding the right skillset, not coding. If you don't know what skills your project needs, ask around from more experienced producers/artists until you do know.
    CuCl3 said:
    - What if you aren't happy with the quality of work produced versus what they misrepresented in their portfolios?. Did you build this into the original contract? What sort of clause as to make it fair for both parties?
    People should get paid for the work they do and the time they spend working for you. If you don't like their work, even after loads of feedback and communication improvement, end the contract. Pay for what's been delivered to spec, then work with someone else. Note that there are differences between time contracts and spec contracts: Time you should always pay because the outcomes are dependent on your relationship; Specifications contracts have detailed stuff that deliverables need to be held to, if that's not delivered then that's an issue. Note that specifications usually require more negotiation and half-up-front payment systems are the norm.
    CuCl3 said:
    - Did you specify exact sizing / formats / colour scales for everything upfront? Or was it an iterative process?
    Depends on where you are in the project. Early on, not so much. Late in a project, yes you better have all those things and more in a document that can be referred back to by everyone on your team whenever they have any questions/uncertainty.
    CuCl3 said:
    - Did you storyboard the entire requirement prior to asking an artist for assistance
    No. In some cases artists have storyboarded very specific things on projects to aid in communication around a deliverable, but not all art work needs this sort of thing.
    CuCl3 said:
    - How best did you cope in the early days of design in terms of place holder art? Or did you use art online perhaps not open source and hand the development version over to the artist as explanation of what you wanted?
    If it takes longer than 5 minutes then it's not placeholder art. I'm a firm believer that offending your artists' sensibilities with shitty placeholder artwork is a good idea.
    CuCl3 said:
    - What about 3D art / modelling? Assume this is not a role of an artist - but a role of a modeller? If that's the case - who does the model texturing?
    Depends on individual skills and the skills you require for a project and the time/budget you have to do something in. Chances are that if you need a great modeler but only need like 3 models, then someone can fill things in here and there. But if you need a massive set of models AND a detailed UI, it helps to split those tasks up between artists that enjoy their respective fields and are going to push each other to produce amazing stuff. This is all about project management at this point.

    P.S. I'm probably not very good at project management.
  • @dislekcia - Man I wish the companies I work for had they same sentiments on NDAs as you do. I've had to sign one every damn time. The biggest studio I've worked for even had the most hectic one ever. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even allowed to say their name out loud in my own house. Although I was working on an unannounced feature.

    As a freelancer I have to promote myself all the time so without an NDA I would post the work online asap. If you don't want artists posting your artwork online, I would suggest one. You can't really enforce one and I'm not even sure about the legal applications (which I really should as I've signed a bunch) but no artist wants to be known as the person who leaked stuff online or broke the NDA. Not a great way to get new clients or keep existing ones.

    Having your artist post their work online however can help as a bit of free marketing and interest generation.

    And for the contract part, most of my clients retain all copyrights and usage of artwork. I've only ever heard of some companies allowing for certain copyrights to be kept and that was in the form of re-printing illustrations to sell.
    But as dislekcia said the chances of art being re-used is very low as most stuff is very specific to a game.


    Thanked by 2MCA CuCl3
  • edited
    @dislekcia

    What an excellent reply! Thank you and sorry for so many loaded questions - have taken a way a few key points:

    - Communication, communication, communication
    - Provide examples of what you're after / reference images
    - Exclusivity / rights contracts where it makes sense
    - Time vs. Spec contracts, for most of what I will require, will lean towards delivery to spec only.
    - Story boarding the lot most likely not a good use of my development time. Will avoid.
    - Noted on placeholder art :)

    Some more questions:

    - How late into the development process should we be looking for artists, how early is too early (apart from budget constraints
    - Can you recommend any artist s for UI / 2D artwork ranging from icon design through to menu's?

  • edited
    @kidult

    Thank you for posting, yay! an artist!

    I hear both of you on NDA's - I hate the idea too however, when it comes to marketing, building the hype prematurely will hurt reputation and customer expectations should there be delays / features omitted later / incorrectly published.

    I'd definitely want a hold on artwork being posted online with direct reference to a project - definitely have no issue with it being posted as artwork being developed for a game they're working on. Publicity is great for all parties in this respect - especially if the artist has a lot of game playing followers too.

    What sort of art do you do kidult? Where are you based and are you open to assisting me perhaps should my requirements be clear and something you can do?

    Right now the very best I can hope to achieve from this thread is learning the industry and it's requirements. Great start!!
  • Just want to chip in: the same goes for working with Sound Designers/Composers! ;-)
    Thanked by 1CuCl3
  • Totally, definitely takes on the same form.
  • @CuCl3 - I'm a freelance concept artist / illustrator. I also do some 2D in game art assets but not pixel art. And I'm generally available for work but my rates are geared towards the overseas market so I may seem on the pricey side.
    My portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jeanroux

    There is a portfolio section here on the forum: makegamessa.com/categories/portfolios you're sure to find someone to fit your project.

  • edited
    @Kidult: Well, like I said, NDAs make sense if you need to protect something inherently valuable that's secret - or something that will be damaging to the project/earnings if it becomes public knowledge too soon. In your case, working for large overseas companies with well planned deadlines and marketing machines behind them, yes there's actual value there that needs to be released in a controlled manner.

    My issue with NDAs is that most people who obsess over them don't actually have anything of real value to protect, they just think that an idea holds value automatically. Protecting a set-in-stone marketing plan from early leaks is actually important. You're completely right that as a small studio, releasing in-progress art is a good way to grow interest when you don't have a guaranteed audience literally combing the internet to find out anything they can about your game (and then moan about it).
    CuCl3 said:
    - How late into the development process should we be looking for artists, how early is too early (apart from budget constraints
    Depends entirely on the project and your relationship with whoever you want to work with. If a project is fully laid out and scoped (like client work often is) then finding an artist ASAP is both important and a lot easier - you should know exactly what you need them to do, after all. If a project is in a creative "finding itself" phase, then maybe you need an artist's help to realise it, maybe you need that art to even see the project correctly, maybe you don't need it at all and fixating on art is just going to sidetrack you and waste your time... There's probably very little way to tell which is which, unless you're actively playtesting regularly.
    MCA said:
    Just want to chip in: the same goes for working with Sound Designers/Composers! ;-)
    Most definitely! Reference material here is different, but it helps a lot. Sometimes I'd communicate almost entirely in youtube clips with specific times marked... Also, making stupid mouth sounds into Skype is like 90% of having sound help :)
  • Great posts, and advice taken!

    @Kidult - Nice portfolio you have there. I'll definitely consider you when the time is right. I hear you on the international rates and will cross that bridge later.

    @MCA - Out of interest, do you have a rate card at all or do you work purely on commissioned work? Are you positioned for sound fx assets or compositions?

    @dislekcia - lol @ mouth sounds - however, most of the time when you can't find exactly what you're looking for - the only thing left. Just hope it sounds as good as it does in our minds :P

    Thanks again!
  • @CuCl3 I don't have a rates card, partly because I'm still getting into doing sound effects and music for games, and partly because the requirements can vary a lot from project to project - e.g. a simple singular bleep, compared to a multi-component gunshot sound effect with variations of each sound component will be charged for differently.

    Similarly for music, it'll depend on the specific requirements of the game and the style of music, but usually "a per minute" rate or a flat rate of spending x amount of time doing a,b and c for R; + licensing.

    I do both sound effects and music, you can have a listen to some stuff here.
  • Nice site! and thanks for the info
    Thanked by 1MCA
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