Evaluating Artists – One Approach

For the past few months I have been coding a new game for the Android platform. Like most Indie Game Developers I’ve been using placeholder art (programmer art, borrowed art, call it what you will) but I’m at the point where I need to start adding real, licensed, and highly polished professional artwork. Trolling free/low cost art websites and trying to kludge together different art from different artists with different styles would simply make the game look like Frankenstein; not exactly the look I want to achieve. It was clear that I needed to find an artist to produce the art with the look and style I envisioned for the game, but how?

Finding A Freelance Artist

Finding a freelance artist turned out to be quite difficult. For a month I broadcast requests on Twitter while one of my partners queried facebook friends. One or two artists showed interest but later declined due to other obligations or we simply never heard from them again.

So I decided to do some old-school face-to-face networking with people in my local community. I joined MeetUp groups and started talking to friends and acquaintances; I used my mouth instead of my keyboard. Before long I found two artists in my community and both were very interested in the project.

How To Pick Just One

"Chef" - Character in Flowerpot Games' upcoming Android game "Pancakes!!!"