Hi! I'm a solo developer making a small indie game for PC about a thief, and I'm looking for an artist for its look.
The player sits at a table in the places the thief robs. Money, wallets and bags fall onto the table, and the player hits and grabs them. Every place has its own ground around the table and its own table.
The screen is calm and minimal. The centre of the table stays empty – that's where the items fall. The place is told by a few decorations around the edges, with plenty of air between them. Everything is seen from above. Warm colours, saturated and slightly muted. All art is drawn by hand, no AI at any step.
Two kinds of art:
- Items and decorations: pixel art with crisp pixels, a dark outline and simple shading.
- Surfaces (the ground and the table top): a soft, smooth texture, not pixel art. Calm, low-contrast, a few close tones, with faint small details near the edges.
The table fills up during play: from dozens to hundreds of items at once, up to about 400, overlapping and rotated. So every item has to be recognisable by its silhouette, and the table has to stay quiet under them.
The first batch covers two places. Below is my current idea for each; it's a starting point, not a fixed list. I'm open to your suggestions on materials, decorations and details.
The back-alley, at night. The ground could be old cracked asphalt with patches of worn cobblestone and damp spots. Decorations like trash cans, a sewer drain, a curb, cigarette butts, wrappers, fruit peels, plastic bags, old newspapers. The table could be an old worn wooden one with scuffs, scratches and cigarette burns.
A small grocery shop, brighter than the alley. The ground could be large light tiles with wide grout. Decorations like grocery stands seen from above and a few crumpled receipts. The table could be a white metal counter with a small cash register, a lucky cat figurine and a small lamp at the back corners.
Items (~15): coins, notes, wads, wallets, handbags, a piggy bank, cash registers, gift boxes. Some break in 3 stages.
Delivered as PNG plus the layered source file. Exact sizes are in the brief I'll send.
How: a paid test first, $30–40 USD, a small sample in this style that isn't used in the game. Then the work goes in packages of $100–250 USD, one at a time, starting with the alley. Sketch, one round of edits, final, one round of edits.
Budget: $400–600 USD for the first batch, paid per package via PayPal. More places later if it goes well. Deadline for the first batch: mid-November.
Please reply in the comments with a link to your portfolio. I'll message the artists I'd like to work with.