An idea for crowdfunding new building artwork for user-created MODs

[jondonnis]

Does a person need to like a game? If you hire any artist to do your art work in a game its not a requirement that they need to like your game. As he can put it towards his uni portfolio there is reason enough for him to do it properly.

We look at Cliff from Positech Games. He hires an artist to do his art work but it's not a requirement they like his game. He just gives them a brief and they draw what is required.

Just seems an odd way to go about it. An odd way of getting artists to help "You can only help if you like our game". I just feel that's a real blinkered view to take. The person would be helping the community and you'd be gaining free art work.

[David]

Hi jondonnis,

Let's do it the way you suggested. I was thinking that it was hard to get a person to make free art for a game in which he is not interested. Most modders and artists who made art for a mod are vivid players of the game in the first place. But you are right, this situation is different. The motivation for creating art for his portfolio in school may justify that.

Maybe you could ask him to join this forum and reply to this thread, so that we can start the communication.

Thanks.

We look at Cliff from Positech Games. He hires an artist to do his art work but it's not a requirement they like his game. He just gives them a brief and they draw what is required.

Do you know which artist he used? Maybe I could contact the artist. If the price is reasonable, there is a chance that we would commission the artist to make some professional game art in the foreseeable future. By the way, when hiring someone to make game art, the artist will receive payments for his works, justifying the efforts, so that liking the game is not a condition to make such an arrangement work.

It seems to me that you are following the game dev industry fairly closely from what you mentioned about Positech Games. We have been looking for ways to help modders by supplying them with more resources. As mentioned before, one idea is to find freelance artists who could make new building graphics at reasonable prices. The potential help from your nephew sounds great but we probably need to complement it with additional sources of artwork as the amount of new artwork needed for the mods is quite a lot. We are looking for someone who is willing to contribute and organize all these efforts.

The work may involve looking for freelance artists and communicate with the community and modders. Enlight and CapLab fans who are willing to donate will supply the financial resources. We will set up a web page on the official CapLab web site and on this forum to give credits to all the contributors. If you or someone who is reading this post is interested, please let me know. All in all, the aim is to help the modders and the new artwork will be incorporated into mods and made available to the community for free.

[jondonnis]

Cliff from Positech has said for the main UI he uses FullyIllustrated but that he is quite expensive. He uses various artists for different parts of his game. I know in Production Line, during development he said he was waiting of the art for the cars, just trying to find out who that artist was, unless its the same guy.

[qaway]

Hi David! If the topic is relevant and you do not have the right person to create new building models. Let me know and I will email you how we can try to do this.

[David]

Hi David! If the topic is relevant and you do not have the right person to create new building models. Let me know and I will email you how we can try to do this.

Sounds good. Please email me at info@enlight.com.

[Pietro]

I read the topic because I was interested about building artwork for user-created MODs.

I'm not so sure about the crowdfunding model because i think the question of timing is important. There is a timespan that need to be quite short during which the campaign is launched. Where i think capitalism2 is more susceptible to attract people over a long time period. Trying to interact/mobilize with all the players in that limited amount of time-span for the campain to be effective may proove costly/difficult.

I have looked at the ressources provided in the Mod_kit and the tutorials explaining how to add new buildings and tested a few example.

It would help if:

1) Making the M S and Icon version of the image from the L.png was automated.

It's a tedious process to rename all pictures and resize them, change the format, place them in their folder. Ideally i'd want to have the L.png only as my content, and the rest being made by script from that single image. ( even better if 1 image is several frame for animated building, instead of L.png, it would be L.gif ). This way adding building is as simple as adding products=> 1 image to make/find and some .dbf edits.


2) There was more informations about the process used to create the 3D model from which the L.png is made.

In this case i personnaly have more ideas than what i can do and i try to learn to do more things. I wanted to make a greenhouse to have crops all year long instead of farms. I have used greenhouses in many games as it's something quite iconic so i'm pretty sure i can find a 3D model of a greenhouse. ( the licensing regarding its use in the game would be different than just me making my own mod for personnal use ). Now I would like to know more about the specifications format pixels colors and things that are required to create the L.png file that the game will use as the buidling from a 3D model.

For now i have made a greenhouse using pieces of the drug store and pieces of a factory and the result has very low visual quality rating

Overall i was pleased to read about this subject, new building artwork, and their icons for modders to use would be a great addition to the game.