My art bidding process has narrowed down to 3 companies. I’m really not sure who to go with.
The first one is in the Slovak Republic. They want $30,000 for 4 artists for 4 months. This sounds like a great deal and I was going to move forward with it. But they sent me some sketches that show they totally ignored what my asset list specified, which is that I’m going for a believable military look. The reason this is such a major problem is that if they are making such fundamental mistakes that even I can see it, what kind of mistakes will they make for things I can’t see, and will just get a bad looking game? For example, maybe a poor choice of a color scheme, or bad contrast between the background and the ships. If I was already an artist it would be OK but I have to really entrust that the company I go with knows what they are doing and I didn’t see that here.
The second is the guy who was on World of Warcraft. This is $30,000 for 1 1/2 artists for 4 months, plus himself directing. From talking to him I can tell he understands the requirements and isn’t going to screw up direction, the way the first company might. Plus he wants to work for me after my game ships, and it would be great to have the same guy doing both pre and post release art direction. My major concern is that I only get 1 1/2 artists to do the work that other art companies have been estimating between 2 to 4 artists. This kind of estimate cuts no slack at all – if it turned out halfway through he thought it was an undoable amount of work, I’d be stuck high and dry, where with a bigger company, where I had slack to begin with, they could assign more people. Even if he refunded my money, which I doubt would happen, I’d be behind schedule and it would kill me in other ways.
The third is a company in Brazil. They’ve quoted $30,000 for 8 man months of work, done over a period of 4 months. That’s actually not a very good deal. Even a top-notch artists in Brazil makes about $2000 US a month, and I’m being charged double that. On the other hand, they are very professional and they’ve clearly done high quality work for major companies. If their estimate is accurate (2 guys for 4 months) then I could just as well go with the company in the US and avoid the time zone and communication problems. I’m also concerned that they are taking a literal interpretation of my asset list. While it covers most of what my game needs, it’s obviously impossible to think in advance of every possible effect my game might have, especially since I don’t plan to do the art direction myself.
I wrote back to the third company clarifying what I need. If they are taking a literal interpretation of my asset list, or they misunderstood the amount of content I wanted, I will go with the second company. If everything was clear I’ll probably just go with them.