One of the hurdles we've had to face most recently is getting a good concept artist. We have a slight dilemma - we aren't making any money from our games yet and aren't independently wealthy. This means that we can't pay other people money.
Now, in the art world, the kind of people that do concept work for free come in two basic categories:
1. People who do concept art for free because they're not good enough at it to make money doing it.
2. People who do concept art for free because they're still in school or haven't made a name for themselves / built up a good portfolio yet.
Unfortunately, we've been getting a lot of the former category and not many in the latter category. I think that for future projects, if we recruit any people to do concept art for us, one of the first requirements they'll have to meet is being able to be better than me at it.
This is what I can do in a quick sketch. Personally, I don't think it's that great. But if it's better than anything a concept artist that's trying to get a position with us can do?
I'm a jack of all trades and a master of very few. Art isn't one of them at this point. So anyone who is good at art should be able to outdo me at it. And if they can't? Then they're not worth working with.
NB: This post was regarding one of the old concept artist we were working with, not the one we have now. He rocks, btw.
