How to Get Great Art on a Budget
No matter how much those TV commercials for diet pills may try to convince you otherwise: there's no magic way of losing weight.
It's sad, but it's true. Some things in life cannot be worked around and one of those things is the following:
"You get what you pay for"
Like diet + exercise, this article won't give you any magic solutions. Instead, it'll give you real and practical tips that will get you real and practical results.
You'd be surprise how much you can save on art for you game/book/promo/etc if only you knew how to ask the right questions or make the right compromises and decisions.
So grab some coffee, take a seat and let this artist take you behind the scenes and show you how the magic happens:
1. Style
A line drawing of a stickman probably takes a little less time to be done than, say, a colored illustration of aliens invading the earth and shooting lasers at an armored gender-bent version of the president wearing skates.
Sure, I'm exaggerating for effect, but the point still stands: some styles are faster and thus cheaper than others.
At the hands of the same artist, chances are you'll get a line drawing cheaper than a colored one; you'll get a stylized character cheaper than a more realistic one, you'll get a flat colored piece cheaper than a rendered ("shaded") one, and on the list goes.
You may have one particular style already in mind for your project, but if you find yourself in a position where you can't afford it, just consider these points:
Would another, more affordable, style still get your point across?
Let's use comic books as an example: Marvel is pretty successful, right? And the styles they carry are usually semi-realistic, all colored and shaded, full blown backgrounds and the works. But you know what another extremely successful comic is? Calvin and Hobbes. The style is much simpler, often times it goes without color, without shading, and still it is just as loved and appreciated by the fans.
Sure, they are two different types of projects, but the point is things aren't black and white and between those two styles there are infinite shades of grey, it's all about finding the shade that'll work for you.
Could you use your style-restriction as an asset?
You know those architects who've become specialized in designing rooms to fit ridiculously small apartments? They've made a thing out of their restriction (space), and you can make a thing out of your restriction too.
A great example of this? South Park. Part of the show's success is due to its poorly made graphics and animations. Because the genre here is humor, the simple graphics didn't detract from the show, they added to it, they became an asset. So much so that, later down the line when South Park introduced more high quality images (such as 3d models), some fans were very vocal about not liking those changes.
You are not your target audience
This, my friend, is one of the first things designers learn when they step into Marketing For Dummies 101.
Making a very long story short: forget your own personal tastes, what does your audience actually like? What do they want? What would they buy?
Are you sure the style-you-picked-that-you-can't-afford is actually better suited for your audience than this-other-style-here-that-fits-in-your-budget? What if they would like style 2 more? Or, at least, just as much?
Gather real data from real costumers/fans before you declare your cause lost. You might be surprised by the outcome.
If all of the above sounds like gibberish to you, let's get some real life practical suggestions:
-Book covers: have you ever googled 'minimalist posters'? No? There's your homework. Also: stylized line drawings, silhouettes, symbols (especially if you're writing a series), photos, photo-montages.
-Games: lower character complexity = lower animation complexity, lower realism = lower animation complexity, lower appendage count on characters (hey- this is a thing, trust me) = lower animation complexity. Are you seeing a pattern here?
-Comics: First you lose rendering (shading), then you lose color, then you lose hatching and all that stuff. And parallel to all this you go further and further away from realism and closer and closer to stylized and minimalistic.
This is the twin, slightly less attractive, brother of Style, and the runner up to Most Important Money-Saving Tool in a Project.
If you can't let go of the style you chose, you need to let go of the complexity of the image(s).
While style is often times subjective, requires loads of thinking and re-thinking, research and tears, complexity is ridiculously straight forward and it uses a method called "Get Rid of It".
Can't afford that extra character? Get rid of it.
Background too expensive? Get rid of it.
That custom cursor that shoots sparkles when the player clicks something? Get rid of it.
So maybe your book has three main characters, and you really liked Sir McArtist's style and you really want to work with him, but you can't afford a picture of the three. Well, lose two of them! I promise, Ron and Hermione won't be mad at you for not being on the cover. And I'm sure Sir McArtist will do an awesome job making your main character look like a champ!
Same thing goes for backgrounds: things can get crazy where backgrounds are concerned and, at the same time, there are so many awesome pictures that don't have backgrounds! Or pictures whose backgrounds aren't complex at all. Ask the artist you're working with about cheaper/simpler alternatives: 90% of the time, they'll have something for you.
And speaking of illustrations specifically, there's one other trick you can use: show less of a character. So many artists I know will charge less for a bust of a character than they would for a full body character, or less for a face portrait than they would for a bust, so on and so forth. Use this tool if you need to!
As the ancient saying goes "time is money"
And, while that's true, that's not what I'll be talking about here.
See, one of the things very few people know/think about is that freelance artists have idle time, or cycle breaks, or surprise vacations; whatever you want to call it, it means we have work days where we are not working.
And I'm not talking about a one-off thing, this is something you can rely on: it's gonna happen.
Why?
Because idle time is a result of:
-Currently being in negotiation for a project(s)
-Clients being tardy with their feedback (ie: the project can't move till it's looked at and approved)
-Last minute cancelation and/or postponement
-A project being dropped mid-production
As you can imagine, the points listed above aren't that uncommon, in fact they're part of every freelancer's life.
So how can you benefit from this?
Some artists will work on your small project/image for a discounted rate, if you are willing to fill in those downtime slots: They don't get unwanted days off and you get good art at cheap prices.
It'll require waiting for much longer than you normal would, but often times it's worth it.
Note that:
-This is more suitable for small projects
-Artists can be very picky about who they give their downtime days to (ie: older clients vs new ones).
-As you can imagine, not every artist does this.
I've seen people with budgets of a couple hundred dollars talk about building an MMORPG… yeah, that wasn't pretty.
But while that is an extreme (and a surprisingly recurrent) example, there are a lot of ways we can trim our project down to the minimum necessary.
Games get the spotlight in the scope-trimming department, simply because there is so much space for cutting back. If you're on a tight budget, and you've already picked your style, follow these suggestions and see where that gets you:
Strip your game naked. Ask yourself what are the bare minimum, the-game-won't-work-without-this features of your game.
You character had 2 attacks? Now they only have one. You wanted to re-skin the character 5 times? Not in this release, you're not. There were 5 different backgrounds for the levels? Let's focus on level 1 for now. And on and on and on the list goes.
Get that 1 level, 1 character, 1 enemy, 1 obstacle, 1 attack, 1 background beauty off the ground and working before you attempt the next part.
Chances are you'll be looking at an entirely different cost by the time you're done de-cluttering the game.
And you might even be able to afford adding some stuff back in, in which case you can make a priority list and try to stick to it.
Here's another way to cut back costs that people often times don't think about: look for existing images!
And I don't mean grab something off Google search and use it without asking (that's, ah, illegal in fact). I mean look for these type of things:
Licensing existing art: You like a specific artist's work, but can't afford them? Ask them if they have existing paintings/characters/props/assets/etc that they own the rights to and are willing to license. License fees are often much cheaper than commissioning new and exclusive work.
Stock images: You probably have come across it at some point, it might not be ideal, but it can useful some times.
Pre-made assets: this is kind of like stock, but specifically for games. There are sites that sell bundles of assets (characters, obstacles, backgrounds, icons,etc) you can use on your game.
It may not be a terribly exciting idea to use art that's already been used before or that other projects will use again, but this is a very valid method of getting good art, and it can also be used for pitching crowdfunding campaigns (see 7) to then commission unique art.
This is such a specific case of "Existing Work" that it needed its own section!
Because here, we'll be talking about how you can reuse art within your own project:
Have an existing character done? Add a background and BOOM: Promotional Illustration!
Have an existing illustration that has a cool background? Reuse it with different characters: Multiple illustrations at a fraction of the cost.
Your sprite is done and animated? Change colors: there's your enemy; Change colors: there's your re-skin!
Selection screen missing images? Chop the head off your sprite/promo illustration, done!
Need an ammo icon? Well it's your lucky day, silhouette your character's weapon, there you have it!
I could go on and on and on and on for hours.
The possibilities for re-use are endless: it's up to you to see and seize the potential.
Every project is so different and specific that you can only evaluate the reuse case-by-case, but if you look hard enough, you'll see various places that could use some work.
Some things to keep in mind:
-If you let your artist know in advance about your intention to reuse an asset/image, they can make your life easier: leave things on different layers, change the naming system of files, optimize your structures.
-Assets made for re-use may cost a bit more than normal assets. Why? Let's use the illustration example: if you have a character standing in front of a ship and then you come and remove the character, what happens? There's a hole on the canvas now! A hole which the artist will need to paint back in. Simply, they might charge you separately for those two images: a background + a character instead of one image: the illustration. Depending on the person, the difference in cost might not be that great, and in the end you'll still be saving a lot when you re-use them.
Now, crowdfunding is not easy: it takes a lot of planning and hard work, but if you have a good idea, a good pitch, and a handful of art assets to get you started you'll have a good shot at securing funds for hiring good art for your project.
It might seem scary and overwhelming, but put your toe in the water, research and check it out. Who knows, it might be the difference between having to compromise a lot of what you wanted and getting exactly the art style, artist, scope and timeline you wish for your project.
Finally, we've reached our last point. And it is, perhaps, the single most important one, simply because here's where the magic can happen.
Try to keep the following notes in mind, and they might take you a long way:
Artists are people; people are different.
No one artist is like another: one artist may think realism is easier to work with than stylized art, and that artist's price will reflect that.
There may be an artist who thinks black and white is more expensive than color (??).
Some artists may offer you bulk discounts, others will not.
Some artists won't care if you want them to draw a hand or an entire human: they'll charge you the same thing.
Some artists will charge you so specifically "if you're character is sitting down then the cost is this, if they're standing up, then it's this instead, if the character is a girl, then-" that it'll drive you crazy.
If you like an artist's work, just talk and explain your ideas, see how they tick, how they price things.
No matter what logic your artist uses: they will still be able to tell you what makes their artwork cheaper or more expensive. Once you know this, you can make decisions and compromises.
There's no shame in inexperience or in not knowing something; you're hiring an artist because you aren't one yourself.
If you aren't sure of what a style means, or if you're using the right words, or if- just ask. Use pictures as examples, ask them to correct you, ask them to explain things.
As long as you're professional and open to discussion, you'll be fine!
Don't be afraid to state your budget and ask what that'll get you.
Now, I know a lot of people hesitate about stating their budgets, and while I understand the sentiment, it might hurt your art-searching process.
You don't need to write you budget on your ad and scream it to the seven winds, but magic things have happened when people simply say "Hey, I need these five images done, and I have x to spend on each, can you tell me what my options would be?" Talk to them in private about it.
You might get a straight forward "I can't work for that budget" from some artists, just thank them politely and move on. But you might also get several artists giving you options to "maybe use style Y and Z here" or "If we lose the props, we could make this" or a bunch of other helpful scenarios you could choose from.
There are so many resources out there today, you can definitely make your project happen if you are persistent, honest, and don't give up!
So good luck, and keep going =)
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