Hanako Games

#1 by lill_sweetty - Mar 31 2008

I have a question about these text games......

Programming is something that I stink at, but it's not impossible for me to learn. The thing that shall never ever be learned is art. XD

How did you make the graphics that you used in your games? Did you find the artists, ect?

On a similar note, if someone wants to make a visual novel type of game like Fatal Hearts, but without the puzzles, and hires someone to make the music and art and stuff like that, how much would it roughly cost?

#2 by hanako - Mar 31 2008

(splitting this, because the other topic was talking about text-only games)

I mostly hire people and do a little bit myself. In the earliest games I did everything myself, you can see the difference. There are a lot of places where people advertise either their art skills asking for work or their art jobs asking for artists.

Some places to look:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=11
http://conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=11
http://forum.deviantart.com/jobs/

How much it costs depends on a lot of things - what kind of art you want, how big, how skilled, how fast you need it, how much of it you need, and what you intend to do with it. If you're making a free game and your needs are small enough (or your project is cool enough) you may be able to find volunteers.

There are some graphics sets you can buy ready-made and some graphics sets that are given away free. http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=820
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3086
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3100
http://eng.dlsite.com/work/=/product_id/RE034040.html (DLsite contains a lot of porn and will give you a warning, but THIS page is not porn)

#3 by hanako - Mar 31 2008

Musicwise, it's easier to find people who are new at making music and willing to do it for free/credit than it is to find free artists. Otherwise, a websearch for 'buyout' or 'royalty-free' music will let you pay for a piece of music that's already made that you can put into your works, each individual piece will probably cost from $10 to $50. If you hire a decent musician to make you custom music, you can expect to spend more like $10-100 per minute. It varies a lot.

So, how much it costs depends on a lot of things!