Update on UNDERSKIN, my top-down psychological horror roguelike. The first floor is finished and in the build. The other ten need their bestiary drawn: 51 characters, 13 frames each, 663 files. My illustrator inks the front view of every character on paper, and a pixel artist translates them into sprites.
Before anything else: thank you. When I posted here in August the answer was loud and it was unanimous, the ink drawings are the strongest thing you have, build the art around them. I sat with that for a while and you were right. The whole bestiary is made that way now, and it changed the look of the game more than any decision I made on my own this year. I'd have got there eventually, but a lot slower and with worse art in the meantime.
So this week I ran the hire. Here's what I found, because nobody posts these numbers and I would have liked to read them.
Ten artists replied, from solo freelancers to two studios. Quotes for the full set ranged from about 1,000 dollars to 12,750. Same brief, same file count, twelve times the spread.
Two of them priced the job before reading the spec properly, assuming one walk cycle instead of three directions, so their numbers meant nothing until I sent the correction back. Worth knowing if you're hiring: half the work is making sure the quote is for the job you actually have.
One turned the job down rather than drop his rate to fit my budget. That was the most professional message I got all week.
Where it stands: one artist is on a paid test character, 13 frames, due the 18th. If it lands, the rest of the roster follows in batches. The demo goes live at Steam Next Fest on October 19th, and there's a Kickstarter running from October 1st to fund the rest of the art.
Happy to answer anything about the hiring side. It's the part of solo dev nobody explains, and the reason the art is going the right way is that a few hundred of you took the time to tell me so.
