Hi guys, We have been studying BB for a long tim. We know what we want to do with. We have all the concepts in place. Now we need to hire a graphic designer that will be part of the team and his job will be (with us of course) - 1. Design the art style of the game, the characters etc 2. Build the levels. Few questions - 1. What is considered a small game and what is large when it comes to number of levels, characters etc 2. How much should we pay for it If you have experienced that before. If you are part of the BB team and you hired designers etc I believe you can answer that. Thank you
I don't think that a graphic designer is capable of designing levels. Also, the honoraries mostly depend of in which country you are living. The idea of Buildbox is that you can do everything by yourself. But if you need someone to design your game, then he/she will make original art which cost a lot of money. This person not only will work for you but give you the rights for commercial exploitation... If you don't swim in money, I suggest you include someone in your team as an additional associate. Divide the work in shares, something like: 15% the game idea, 20% the graphics, 15% the sound design, 30% the level design, 20% for the production. That's at least what I do. I try to measure the work (in hours) and divide the shares.
You can go to https://www.fiverr.com/ to get some cheap work done. But yeah designing levels isn't what graphic artists do; that's what game developers do. You can study game design by past games.
Thank you @Machine Rises and @Christoph for your replays. I guess the issue is this - I know what I want when it comes to game mechanics I don't know about the style I don't know if my level design is good enough, meaning interesting enough If I take a designer for the artwork, how does it work with the level design ? Should I put placeholders and then ask for the designer for the artwork to replace it with ? Fiveer is out of the question because it's cheap work. No problem getting a designer but the problem is how to implement the work.
You basically should come up with a plan that works for you. I've found it's usually a good idea to break up the payment plan into milestones. Once they create an agreed upon amount of work then they get a certain amount of their payment. If they create something and it's not to your liking then give them notes so they can make adjustments. If you have to give them notes on something many times, either you aren't being clear enough to them or they may not be very good. Usually I like to have them make a small item for me so I can see something they create for me. Like I said study famous games levels. Take notes on them and learn. There are websites such as spriters resource that have some old NES maps as png files that you can study. If you have an idea in your mind you can sketch it out for the artist even if it's just a doodle. Ultimately you shouldn't expect them to design levels that's your job. If they do design levels that may cost more because that's a lot of extra work. Usually you take small tiles and build the level that way anyway. This is def something you learn by doing. I'm not a master level designer myself so that's something I still learn as well. So study some games that are the type you want to make. Make notes on their levels and anything in them. What do you like or dislike about those levels and how would you change them. Research, study, and ask questions. Eventually you will start to realize what you like and go from there.
Thank your for that @Machine Rises . Then the process will be to create the level my self and then ask the designer for specific things like bg's, objects etc ?
Yup make a list of what you need. You need to think on this a lot. Maybe make a list and then come back to it the next day to see if you forgot anything. When you have your list you can also look for graphics that are close to what you want and include those in your notes to your graphic artist so he has a great understanding of what to make you. You can also request he just sketch things out first so you can make sure it's what you want.
