Please Share Your Experience In Hiring Out For Graphics Manager / Facilitator

Hey folks me again.

First... this is not an ad seeking help and that is why it is posted here in General Discussion.

I've hired many pixel artists over the years to work on various things. I've reached the point where I want to offload the graphics work once again.

So I started digging through my contacts for the artists I hired previously and then started writing emails and thought "man I hate this. Just too much time spent on stuff like this. If only I had someone who could handle all of the outsourcing admin work for me!"

And then I thought... hey that is not a bad idea. A sort of Graphics Manager or Artist Manager.

Someone who can handle all of the communication with the artists, find out who is available and interested in the latest work, make sure they are on the right track, find out if they are running into any obstacles and help them get past them, check the submitted art pieces, send payment to them, etc. Basically all of the things I have to do when contracting out graphics work.

Well okay, I will still pay the artists directly and probably check the finished work as well. But the rest of the stuff... seems that can be hired out. I guess a better title for the role would be Graphics Facilitator or Art Facilitator.

Basically at this point, I am burned out on even dealing with all of the admin work that is involved in contracting out art work. I just want to spend cash.... receive art. Plain & simple. But of course directly contracting with people I need to get a discussion going, explain what I want (requesting specific pieces), provide references (which means either knocking out prototype graphics myself or researching to find existing examples), explain / show the overall goal for the visuals, as well as do all of the things I mentioned above.

Basically there is a lot of work involved in successfully contracting out work. Sure I could do it half-ass but to get it done right and make it a good experience for both myself and the artists I need to handle a lot of details.

Just wondering has anyone else added this "middleman" layer between yourself and the artists you previously contracted work out to? How did that work out for you and how much expense did it add to what you normally paid?

Sure I can go down the path of "just do it" but I just wanted to see if anyone else is using this approach and how that is working out for them.

Thanks!

 

You still going to come down to a list of artists that you think do acceptable work and query them if they are willing to freelance for you at that particular point and time and for that money. The job placement / headhunter middleman firms still don't do the hiring and really don't reduce the amount of work it takes to hire or the number of interviews of prospects. What they do do, is allow a hired prospect to work for the headhunting firm with the headhunter firm's benefits rather than the hired contractor's receiving benefits from the big hiring corporation to outsourced to the headhunting firm.

 

Well I am not talking about going through a headhunter / temp agency. I am talking about contracting out the work to someone for the Art Facilitator directly just as I have been doing with the artists themselves.

I probably should have explained that better in my post. Still I appreciate you weighing in on it!

 

It could be that the term you are looking for is "outsourcing manager", but I'm not well versed in AAA production terms.

The question is what do you really want and what is it worth to you? An extra person will always cost extra money. In that case it's money that's not going towards better assets.

I know two art studios that I'd trust to get basically everything done and that you could give a whole lot of freedom to. I know many of the people personally. They'll divide the workload among their available artists and handle most of what you talk about internally as far as I know. But they normally work on games like Halo, Overwatch, Ori, Killzone, Call of Duty etc.. You get the picture. If you think that's within your budget send me a PM. ^^

 

I understood but to hire a middle man to hire the artists and pay them both and have the middleman inspect the artists work and determine if it meets the specifications you gave the middleman before they show you the finished product? That's a lot of money, but if you got that sort of money so much the better for you.

 

I didn't do it, it is a good idea BUT it is a dangerous one.

For something like this I would be looking for someone I know really well and can meet in person quickly. Meaning an old friend, good acquiantance, and the like, preferably living in the same town as me.

Finding a right guy/girl for this job will be much harder than finding a good artist yourself.

I think some freelancing resources had "managers", but I've never seen it work in practice (and never heard of anyone who said it worked for them).

Also... the need for "middleman" might indicate that you have a need for a company with employees.

 

Yeah that is the thing. I am not shooting for anything near the scope of Halo or Ori, etc.

Think small Indie games or Hobbyist games.

Basically, I started work on a new game a week ago. This is one I actually want to finish. Ya know you (or at least I) work on many different things and eventually the point comes where it's time to finish a game again.

It's a low res pixel art game with a variety of stages.

I started out thinking okay I will just remove the constraints (using retro palettes from the 80s, no more than 2 or 3 colors per sprite/tile and knocking every image out in 2 to 3 minutes) I normally place on myself for graphics and just do them myself. They'll still be retro as far as resolution and overall limited colors (both of these scenes below have no more than 22 colors).

And it was working well. I ended up spending 3 hours knocking out some simple graphics that meet the quality and style I was going for:




The first one is nearly complete as far as having the player and enemy animations done. I'll need some player and enemy projectiles, pickups, status bar, score, etc but I can knock them out easily enough.

The second is just getting started. The environment is done but I only have two alien enemies completed as you can see in the scene. So that needs some collectibles, at least one more enemy, some environmental hazard such as poison, the player for this view (basically little dude in a space suit with weapon), projectiles, etc.

And then I just got burnout on it. Thinking why am I doing this when I could hire out the work? There are more stages than these and each stage is a different sort of mini game in a sense in a different area. So although some things can be reused most graphics will be distinct from one stage to the next. Not just in color palette and images but even the viewpoint (like reaching the end of the platformer stage shown above the player will enter the next stage which is a top down view sort of roguelike stage).

Anyway, so the thing is I could do them all myself. But I'd much prefer to just hire out the rest of the graphics. I will probably need to finished these first two stages myself but I could basically hire out the art for each of the remaining stages to a different artist.

However, starting to do so reminded me of the overhead work involved just in hiring out the artwork. And that is what led me to thinking of hiring an Outsourcing Manager as @Martin_H called it. I agree too this is what I am actually looking for although they'd be focused on art so maybe 2D Pixel Art Outsourcing Manager to be specific.

I suppose I could just take a day off and think about it.

 

No matter how you twist and turn it, when other people come into play, communication is important, and that will be work for you. If you get an artist he'll have a lot of questions for you regarding needed specs, intended stile etc.. If you get a middleman to talk to the artist, that person will still need to get your input on all of those questions, because he can't know all these things magically. What I'd do in your situation is make quick programmer art for every asset yourself, to the technical specifications that you need and finish the game first. Then decide how much it is worth it to you to have the assets improved, select a few reference screenshots from other games, bundle everything with your assets as a briefing kit and start asking artists if they can get the assets to the style of the reference screenshots on the budget that you have. I'd just seek a single artist that does the whole game including some promo artwork. I see absolutely no point in hiring out different stages to different artists. Of course that would be a pain to manage and direct into a cohesive whole. But why would you want to do that? Just pick one capable artist and s/he can do the whole thing. It'll be a better deal for everyone.

Getting your mind into a new project, talking to the client, doing research etc. are all things that go into the time budget of an artist. You don't pay them just to paint, you pay them for their time. The ratio of "overhead" to actual productive time get's better when you commission a bigger chunk of work to a single artist. That's better for the artist and better for you.

The more you work with a single artist the less time you'll have to spend on communication on your end too. Understanding each other will get easier over time, and also all the negotiating stuff will be a lot quicker on future projects.

 

@Martin_H Right I get that. I definitely would need to spend time up front communicating with the Manager. My thinking was that I could make it so my communication was with a single point instead of being spread out across multiple artists.

I have a lot of experience contracting out work to artists and have a short list of contacts for the ones I use time and again. The reason I check with multiple artists initially is because some will be available and some will already be booked solid. Some will be interested in the work and some will not (this is less likely). That kind of thing is how it goes in the beginning.

Anyway, the next reason for working with multiple artists is simply because I like to get this stuff done as fast as possible. The artists I work with are very good and fast at what they do. I am sure they could have knocked out the same amount of content that took me 3 hours and have it done in 2 hours or even 1 hour. Of course, it will be easier for them because they get the specs just as you mentioned. The iteration is almost always done by the time they get the request. So that saves time as well.

However, everyone seems to start out working quickly and then slow down as a project drags on. Knocking out the graphics for one stage will be fast. A second stage will be slower. A third stage slower still. So, I spread the work out between multiple artists so I can get it as fast as possible.

I'm sure everyone has their own experience with this kind of thing. When you contract out art or programming work you may not have had that same experience. But for me it has been that way time and again so I started looking for a bunch of artists last year to get around it. I have 3 main artists I contract out work to and 6 more artists "available" that I can contract out art to as well.

I tell you man this "graphics stuff" just burns me out whether it is people always thinking about graphics, me spending time doing graphics or me spending time managing contracted out graphics work. lol

Think I will just relax and enjoy this sundae and think about it some more later tonight.

Anyway, thanks guys for giving your input. I appreciate it.

 

Hey, you know, that looks quite good. Reminds me of snes metroid.

Well, mostly because you have perfect image in your mind, and the artist that works with you won't be a telepath, so there will be a lot of explaining and iterations.

I think the reasonable idea would be to keep doing stuff yourself (slowly, so you won't burnout again) while being on lookout for pixel artist or "manager".

I wouldn't place too much hope into finding a manager, and try to find a long-term pixel artist to work with.
Basically, an artist is much more likely to happen.

 

@neginfinity that is very interesting. You are the second person to tell me the platformer game reminds them of Metroid. Having only ever played the NES Metroid to me it looks nothing like it.

Yeah you are right... I was thinking about that idea of having the image in my mind. I won't say it is perfect but at least I know what I want the environments to be like and what I want things to look like in general.

Maybe I will just do all of the graphics. I guess there is no rush and in some ways I suppose it would be cool to have a game that I can say yeah I made everything. I've made a lot of sounds and music over the years as well so I can do everything to a certain level at least. I just don't like the time it takes. But then what is my hurry? I don't know. There really is no need to hurry I guess. I just like getting things done I suppose. lol

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Pick your best artist from historical work. Ask them if they are interested in taking on the role of manager. That gives you:

• Someone you know and trust
• Someone who trusts you
• Someone you can communicate a clear vision with
• Someone with the artistic chops to make sure that vision happens

This 'promotion from within' is essentially the same strategy most large businesses use.

 

Hey man when I was reading @neginfinity's post above I had that same thought. I do think perhaps one of the artists themselves would be the ideal manager because yes I already have a working relationship with them, trust them and they know their stuff.

At this point I am considering just continuing on making the rest of the graphics .lol

I used to enjoy creating graphics and spent a lot of time doing it. Somewhere over the last several years I got it in my head that making graphics is just a waste of my time. I think that was because graphics are only a small part of [the scope of work for] a game. There is a huge amount of other work required for a game. Can't spend all your time just doing graphics (or I can't at least).

I suppose though I could see how long it will take to knock everything out. Really wish I had simplified even more.

When I started thinking about making this game my original target for graphics was the level of these Indie games:



But as usual once I got into working on it and not having any major constraints (I normally force myself "have to use only these colors" and "have to do everything in 15 to 20 minutes") it just scaled up. So now I have more work ahead of me to keep everything matching the current two levels. I've really got to get better at managing this kind of scope creep.

I suppose another option is to redo everything at a simpler scope of work and then go forward from there. Like maybe drop down on resolution. Cut it down to a quarter of where it is now. That'd speed up graphics dev by quite a bit I think.

It's very interesting to me that I have seen so many discussions around on here on graphics always on improving the graphics. And never seen a discussion on best way to limit the graphics. I think limiting them is most important. I mean the graphics can always be made better and better and better. I don't know how other folks / real artists do graphics but I do everything in layers building up more and more detail. And you can always do another pass another layer. Like I could go over both scenes I posted earlier and add another layer of detail. And then another layer. And another. I just cannot see why though? I have a lot of other work to do besides just graphics.

Does anyone else ever think about things like this? Limiting instead of constantly trying to improve the visuals and get the absolute best visuals?

Anyway, thanks again for all of the feedback. I've got some decision making ahead of me. Good time for a beer.

 

Id stick with 1 artist, Im not sure why your in such a hurry. Id try proxy-ing the art and making it look as close to your desired style to fit the gameplay (whiteboxing?), as possible and just give it to the artist and say make this look good (and do a plug and play where he replaces it with the good looking art).

 

I've always been a "get it done!" kind of person in general. Graphics are basically something I need to make the game but not the real meat... not the game. I can justify spending loads of time on design, implementing mechanics and refining the feel, controls and so forth. The graphics however are kind of just a means to an end. Probably can't really explain it well for other people to relate to because it is just my view.

Anyway, although I talk about this stuff on here I don't sit around the house here moaning about graphics. lol Instead I am always trying to figure out ways to reduce the workload because I just think the workload for graphics in games is ridiculous.

For example, today I decided to start on the graphics for the player character in the platformer stage. I started drawing a little dude in a sort of space suit battle armor. Then just thinking about drawing all of the images for walking, jumping, ducking, etc animations tired me out just thinking about it. I was immediately reminded of the countless times I had done that before and I knew it will take a good chunk of time.

So... I stopped and thought how can I decrease this workload?

First thing that popped in my head was "the player doesn't need to be represented in a space suit battle armor type of thing. Just draw a simple exploration craft and the player would be inside that. Can do some animation for jumping and damaged and have it basically feel like controlling a character in a platformer yet the workload will be greatly reduced"

Second idea was "check out the asset store and see if a good 2D pixel art spacesuit dude with a weapon is available". So I did that and found nothing usable.

Third idea was "I suppose I could just get hold of one of the artists and have them knock it out".

And that is where I left it. Mainly because company is over and we're hanging out watching the WWE Money In The Bank PPV.

It is this kind of process I am going through continually in regard to graphics. It kind of just tires me out. lol

Anyway, no biggie. I will figure out something tomorrow.

 

This might be surprising, since I've been working as a freelance artist for years, but it isn't different for me either. Bottom line I most likely value the artwork higher and am willing to put more time into it, but it's still hard and tedious work more often than not.

I put a lot of thought into streamlining workflows in general. And on my own game I'm experimenting with using auto-unwrapped low poly meshes with tiling substance textures and a heavy post fx stack with a pixelation filter on the camera. Who knows, maybe I'll even do away with "textures" for vehicles and buildings alltogether, and just use a pallet of flat colors and PBR properties, spread out over a single texture atlas. With heavy SSAO, all objects being very small on screen, and dithering in the pixelation filter, it should give enough detail even on flat colored objects.

 

@Martin_H hey thanks for sharing that stuff. I've always thought it was odd that I don't see anyone around here talking about streamlining, making changes in the visual representation (like my example earlier of just doing away with a humanoid character) and so forth for the sake of reducing the workload. Odd because for solo hobbyists and Indies this kind of thing is very important unless a person just has a huge amount of free time and / or plans to spend a year on something about the scope of the average non-dots mobile game. Actually @Billy4184 focuses on this kind of thing.

I do like graphics and appreciate the graphics. It is more that it is something that needs to be solved so in a way it's like an obstacle to being able to get on with the actual game dev. I see no real solution to it other than changing things so the graphics requirements are reduced, just accepting it and spending the time doing it or hiring someone else to do it. Of course there may be something out there for sale at a different asset store that would work perfectly.

I may just knock out a super simple character with limited animation and call it good. Anyway I'll figure out something. Making decisions like this is kind of the heart of solo game dev. I was just curious if anyone else actually wrestles with these kind of decisions.

 

It kind of sounds to me like you want to outsource to a studio rather than a bunch of individuals. Then it's up to the studio's lead to to decide what individuals at their disposal to put onto each task.

As @neginfinity says, any which way you cut it there's still going to be communications overhead. If you outsource to a studio then you're at least communicating with just one person, the lead, and it's their job to make sure that the rest of the team build art that fits the lead's understanding of your vision. So you're still going to have to do a bunch of the stuff that you listed as wanting to avoid, because if you don't then there's no way for the artists to know what you want them to build.

I'm pretty sure there are businesses who do that. The place I used to work for even did a bunch of it, though it wasn't our focus.

 

I don't think it will really help tbh to add another layer, it will simply make communication more indirect (the more people in the chain the more quality is lost in the information before it reaches the other end), it will add cost and now you have another person who will potentially be a source of conflict/trouble. It seems to me that if you design well and have clear specs it shouldn't be hard to work directly with an artist.

I've done a little bit of freelance work as an artist and the client has sometimes given really open specs, as a freelancer this is a sign that they want me to use my artistic common sense to make something that fits well, and it usually turns out well because it relieves them of the frustration of having to try to understand what they want (which they usually don't). Also when you make something that they specify, and you know it's not going to work, the blame normally ends up falling on you a little. So if you can find that kind of artist who is interested in 'running the show' a bit then I think it can work out very well. For me, as an artist I actually like to control the whole picture graphically, because I know that then I can succeed in making the game look good as far as my skills allow me.

If you don't really want to be involved in the game, and you're outsourcing everything and just want to be the Big Boss who profits, then it makes sense, but if you're looking for a creative experience of your own without the tedium of making a lot of graphics assets, then adding another person will likely make things more complicated and difficult imo and potentially take up more of your time. For example it will be hard to set out clearly what they're supposed to do and that's always a source of trouble.

 

Good stuff guys. Thanks.

Yeah that is the catch-22. I don't want to be bogged down in the details of the graphics work having to do it all myself and at the same time I don't want to just farm it out open-ended with someone else deciding how things will look and so forth. Because I do have a "look" in mind for things. Basically along the lines of the work I've already done. Like I said, I do value the graphics. Just trying to find the best solution for the workload. It's the workload and time required I am focused on.

I think I'll just approach it as usual (other than focusing on graphics first). That is either do it myself, find an asset already available that I can either use or easily alter to get what I want or just hire it out directly to artists as usual.

And yeah I guess I should think about that part of "what is the hurry" a bit more. Other than wanting to just have the graphics done so I can focus on the game. This is the first time in ages I have taken this approach of doing graphics first. Normally I'd be using ultra simple prototyping graphics for everything using my "quick & dirty" approach. This may be a big part of it. Need to switch my mindset because it is a quite different way to work to make the graphics so important from the very beginning instead of swapping in real art later to replace prototyping visuals. Might be sort of like "culture shock" in a sense. lol

I could always use a colored rectangle for player for now. But that kind of defeats the point of switching things around and doing all of the graphics first. Yeah thinking about it more... I am sure that is the thing I am wrestling with. Just not used to doing it this way in recent years. I suppose I should just accept it may take this week just to get the player character drawn and animated and if that is what it takes then it is what it takes. I can always keep the goal in mind of "hey when you get all of this graphics work done then you can focus on the game implementing and bringing it all to life." Gives me something to work toward.

 

So just to bring this to closure. I contacted one of my artists and started discussing with him. In the end it just made the most sense to keep doing things as usual. I do think the idea of an outsourcing manager could work but as @neginfinity mentioned it'd make more sense if I had a sort of real company bigger team in general. I may still explore it at some time.

An added benefit of this project and visiting the asset store and other sites selling pixel art is that I am seriously considering hiring artists to create some content for the asset store. I'm really tired of going there to get stuff I need and not being able to find anything. Had that thought before with a dedicated site but that is just too much overhead work.

Doing it on the asset store however I think may work well. So yeah... I may just do that. Certainly something worth considering more at least. But maybe not til I get this game done.