Recruiting Artist for Eldritch Academy [Closed]

[Jackkel Dragon]

With the departure of my previous artist for Eldritch Academy, I'm now in need of a new artist to help me finish the game. The full script of the game is complete and has gone through several revisions already, and I've nearly finished the first draft of a standalone expansion/fandisc's script. Parts of the script can be provided for reference for certain scenes, as necessary.

As can be seen from the promotional image and concept materials (which will be available for the new artist to view), I'm going for an anime-like style for the art direction, but not to the extent of chibi/super-deformed. I'd strongly prefer to have the same person work on the character portraits and CGs (even if said person did nothing else) and work on both the main game's assets and the fandisc's assets: I want the look for the characters to be as unified as possible. Note that, as a Girls Love game, the artist will need to be comfortable drawing teenage girls that perform romantic acts (hugging, kissing, etc.) together. There is no "H-content" (such as graphically depicted sex) planned for either the main game or the fandisc. The character/CG artist will also need to be comfortable drawing weapons (particularly different types of swords, knives, a naginata, and a kusarigama) and have some confidence in drawing at least stylized plants. (As a final note, I have the permission of the previous artist to use the old character designs, so most of the characters already have a set appearance.)

The details of how the character portraits are drawn may need to change based on the artist that is selected, but the current specifications are based around a layered approach to displaying the final image. Each character has an underwear "base" portrait upon which the clothing, expressions, and what I call "addons" (things like a blush, glasses, or a sweat drop) are added. The plan was to have the base character pose relatively static with "arm poses" to provide the visual variety of having multiple poses, but this may be altered to full alternate poses based on the artist chosen (if it's easier to do than arm poses, more expressive with no extra effort, etc.).

The monster art is similar to the character portraits in that it must be done in an anime style, but since it might be more detailed/complex I don't expect a character artist to be able to do them and will count them as a separate asset type. Monster art is planned to be a static image for each monster, with one or two variants.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The new artist(s) in any of the art roles will need to agree on the specific work being done, who has the rights to use it where, what happens if they quit or disappear, at least part of the intended payment, and deadlines for sketches/lineart/finished assets before work really begins (aside from maybe a sketch to see if their style fits the project). This is for the benefit of both sides: the artist needs to have a legal agreement to fall back on to make me pay, and I need a legal agreement on what I can do if the artist drops the project. Also note that for the "rights" part of the agreement, the artist maintains copyright of the work, but I'll need to be given the legal right to replicate/reproduce/modify the work for my own purposes (basically, a license to use the artist's work in my project and related efforts).

As for payment, that will have to be worked out between me and whoever is interested in working on the project. I don't want to underpay anyone, and I realize that my standards of quality are a bit high for a project like this. However, I don't have a whole lot of money that I can throw around, so I need to budget myself. To that end, I feel that, until I have more money from my day job, my maximum budget is probably around 4000 USD. Of this, probably 2500 would be my character/CG art budget, and the other 1500 would be my budget for everything else. I'd prefer to go lower, but I'm not sure that's possible without lowering my expectations of quality or underpaying someone.

A slightly more detailed breakdown of my current reckoning of the art needs for the project can be seen below:
(spoilers are hidden by default, for those who don't want to be spoiled by accident)

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GUI
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Drawn for a 800x600 screen.

Game Icon
Title Screen
Save/Load Screen
Config Screen
Ending List
BGM Player
CG Viewer
Scene Replay
Pause Menu
Textbox/Namebox
Choice Menu

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Character Portraits
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Drawn as full body portraits at 800x2400, displayed in-game as 400x600 half-body portraits.

Eldritch Academy
Yue Ishikami (4 poses, 6-7 outfits, 8 addons, 14 expressions)
Kagami Nakayama (4 poses, 4-5 outfits, 7 addons, 10 expressions)
Akomi Miyazaki (5 poses, 4-5 outfits, 6 addons, 21 expressions)
Cho Fukuda (4 poses, 5-6 outfits, 6 addons, 16 expressions)
Kasumi Kawamura (3 poses, 4-5 outfits, 4 addons, 8 expressions)
Misaki Asahara (2 poses, 5-6 outfits, 4 addons, 11 expressions)
Junka Fujikawa (2 poses, 4 outfits, 4 addons, 10 expressions)
Machi Hirata (3 poses, 4 outfits, 4 addons, 10 expressions)
??? [spoiler]Chitose Tanaka[/spoiler] (3 poses, 2 outfits, 2 addons, 4 expressions)

Eldritch Academy: Aftermath
[spoiler]Miyuki Kouki
Aoi Matsumoto
Juro Ishii
Kaoru Asahara
Tsukiko Wakahisa
Mei Miyahara
Miho Muranaka
Honoka Nakayama
Machi Hirata (Young)
Fuyu Hirata
Hideo Ikeda
Reiko Shinozaki
Aina Shimizu[/spoiler]

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Monster Portraits
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Drawn as full body portraits at 1200x2400, displayed in-game as 600x600 half-body portraits.

[spoiler]Toothy (Ayame Rin)
Wolfy (Sana Kaneko)
Flappy (Sakura Maeda)
Spidey (Mio Goto) (1 variant)[/spoiler]

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Backgrounds
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Drawn to be viewed in a 800x600 screen.

Eldritch Academy: ~17 backgrounds + time variants (some may be used from royalty-free sources, with filters to match style)

Eldritch Academy: Aftermath: ~8 new backgrounds (+ time variants?)

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CGs
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Drawn to be viewed in a 800x600 screen. Preferred to be drawn at 1600x1200.

Eldritch Academy: ~24 Illustrations + ~10 variants, ~6 cut-in Illustrations

Eldritch Academy: Aftermath: 1 known Illustration, up to ~3 may be added

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Animations
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Drawn to be quickly shown on the screen with a sound effect. (May be cut and replaced with screen flashes, etc.)

Weapon Cut
Monster Swipe
Ice Attack
Fire Attack
Lightning Attack
Sonic Attack

[LoiLoi]

Sent you a message!

[Harusea]

PM Sent! :3

[Jackkel Dragon]

Thanks for the offers so far! I'll try to answer as many people as I can, even if I don't plan on taking the offer, but it might take a bit of time to get to everyone.

[Jackkel Dragon]

I went ahead and listed the thread title as "Closed" for now, since I ended up getting more offers than I expected. I appreciate having so much interest in the project, but since I also want to make sure to get back to everyone, I can't have any more offers right now. Hopefully I'll find who I need among those who already responded, but if not I'll re-open the recruitment.