$12256 / $11500
Dear OGA users,
I am working on a project, Golden Harvest, and I am wondering how much it would costs if someone would make more interesting graphics. The graphics as of now are 10*10 and rather dull (they are made by me) The goal for the graphics would maybe be 16 * 16 or 32 * 32 pixels, top-down orthographic. I can provide some screenshots, and the gist of amount of graphics that needs to be done.
~90 tiles
~10 characters (including player/animals/enemies)
Depending on price I want to concider animations as well, for each character:
-Walk cycle.
-Attack cycle.
-Death animation.
-Eating animation.
For player:
-Axe animation.
-Pickaxe animation.
Animation for each weapon:
-Sword.
-Battleaxe.
-Bow.
-Warhammer.
And maybe more to come.
As of now I have no idea what this may cost... I just would like to have an idea what to expect.
Here is a link with the graphics I've done myself.
http://opengameart.org/content/everything-from-golden-harvest
Thanks in advance,
~Vivid.
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Hi!
I'm decent at guesstimating this stuff. My answer won't be perfect, in fact it could be off by a factor of 2 or 3, but it'll give you a decent ballpark idea about what to expect.
First off, to minimize your costs, I'd recommend sticking with 16x16. In my experience, 32x32 doesn't actually *quadruple* the costs, but it does make them a lot higher. You can also lower your costs somewhat by using flat colors rather than dithering or being overly complicated. Check out the stuff in the LPC Style Guide; I think we found a very good balance there, where we managed to come up with an attractive, high resolution style that's relatively quick and easy to add on to.
So, costs:
You can probably get 90 tiles for somewhere beteween $150 and $300. Just as a suggestion, I'd recommend asking the artist to use the Dawnbringer 32 color palette, which a) looks nice, and b) is becoming fairly widely used, which means you'll be able to mix in other assets and have them look good. All told, for animating 10 characters worth, you may be looking at $500 on the low end all the way up to a couple thousand. The up side of this is that you don't have to round up all the money at once, since it'll take a bit of time to complete them. With large commissions like this, I tend to go by week or month and pay a bit at a time.
On to sprites. It depends on what exactly you're going for, but if you stick with the 16x16 tilesize and make the sprites that size (or just a bit bigger), you can keep things pretty cheap. A cute, simple 16x16 sprite sheet with the things you want would probably be around $75-$150. If you keep your sprites small like that, you can use a 3 frame walk cycle and a single attack frame. If you decide to make your sprites larger (64x32, for instance), you'll need more frames to animate them convincingly, and your costs will spike pretty fast, to probably $400+.
Either way, I would strongly recommend doing a single base (in the case of 16x16) or a male and female base (in the case of a larger sprite) and then having the clothes, hair, and accessories added on to it. This will cost less than doing 10 completely different ones, and then you can make more characters by mixing and matching and changing colors around.
With respect to weapons, most of the ones you mentioned can be done with a single overhand swing animation. The bow is obviously an exception, but that is an easy corner to cut.
So, my final answer:
If you keep costs to an absolute bare minimum, you *might* be able to sneak by for a little over $500.
If you want to splurge a bit, you could probably spend a couple thousand over the course of several months.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. Take this response with a grain of salt, and don't get your hopes up too much about doing it for $500. It will probably be a bit more.
If you keep the "no transition between ground types" style, just the ground tiles should be a lot cheaper.
Bart, thank you for your descriptive answer.
Now my problem is, that I have never ever sold a game, so I don't even know if the investment would be worth it. Lets say I make thousands of dollars, it would. But lets say I make tens, it would be a steep error. But then again, graphics may be key here regarding the amount and/or if I am going to make any money with this project at all.
I'll have to think long and hard, but your answer sure helps with the process.
Sharm, thanks for your advice too. I can see how the lack of transitions would decrease the amount of work that is needed drastically.
With regards,
~Vivid.
How many different tile types do you have, out of curiosity?
If you decide to go without transitions, there are still some cool things you can do to make your tiles look nice, like going with a slightly more abstract look and giving each tile a defined edge. I'm not sure if that makes sense, so take a look at these sets by Buch and Surt and maybe you'll see what I mean:
Notice how they completely avoid the need for transitions by making the blocky look part of the art style.
You might also want to look at these items here, particularly the characters:
http://opengameart.org/content/oga-16x16-jrpg-sprites-tiles
Most or all of them are licensed CC-BY, which is well suited to commercial use if you decide to sell your game, as it has no share-alike requirement. I'm not sure about the speciifcs of your requirements, but if you can use these assets (and bear in mind, you can modify them, or pay someone else to modify them, which is a huge shortcut and would cut a lot of cost).
If you're willing to make some concessions here and there (weapon animations, tile transitions, etc), you might be able to keep your total costs under $100 if you use OGA's existing sprite art, and at that point it's no longer really much of financial risk.
Then, once you start making some sales, you can use that revenue to make graphical improvements and release those in later versions of the game.