Hi there.

I'm Serkai, an indie game developer trying to produce his first game. I'm currently looking for an artist to produce the art for it. I'll put in some details below - If you feel up to it, let me know.

The Game: First of all, let me inform you that the full game is a fairly large project. For now, though, I'm only looking for the art needed to produce a working demo. On to the actual game, then. Adventures of Shianne (http://i.imgur.com/nXI1UeQ.png, http://i.imgur.com/4MzWeQc.jpg) is a dark fantasy themed 2D platformer inspired by megaman. The game starts in an earthen tunnel/cave and your first goal is simply to make it back to the wooden cavern where you live. Once there, some dialogue takes place and you are them presented with a screen where you can pick which of the six bosses you wish to attempt to clear. Of course, some of them are (next to) impossible unless you have the right special powers, which are obtained by defeating bosses. Once all six stages has been defeated, the last stage appears. The demo covers the escape from the earthen tunnel/cave as well as the dialogue in the wooden cottage.

Art-style: Well, the basic style I'm looking for is kinda like these (http://i.imgur.com/FUtE202.gif, http://i.imgur.com/eAdqALB.png) but dark and fantasy themed. Oh, it's pixel-art, in case that wasn't obvious from the links. I'm looking to have a single map tile be 64 x 64 pixels (or maybe 128 by 128) and my goal is to have Shiannes sprite be 2x1 tiles (so 128h x 64w or 256h x 128w depending on which size is picked). As for the other sprites, in the demo there are slimes (1x1 tile), giant wasps (1x2 tiles) and wolves (also 1x2 tiles). Other than these guidelines, I haven't really decided on all that much yet and am considdering giving the artist quite a lot of freedom in this project.

Open-Source: I do not really know what this means, but I am assuming it's something along the lines of "others may use the art for their own projects". My three original characters (Shianne, Elle and Rouw) are not open-source, but I am fine with everything else being used by others. I also plan to reuse the art aquired here for future games.

Intellectual Property: Mm, well, this is an original game, with my own original characters, so the IP should not be any issue.

Game-play: Mm, well, I do have a working alpha of the game, but it is mainly used by me to check so that code I put in actually work as I expect it to do. I would not say that I have any kind of playable demo just yet. I am working on it though, using brightly colored cubes to represent everything in the game.

Payment: I do not have all that much money, but if you are interested in this and feel it might be too much work for a volunteer mission, let me know and maybe we can figure something out. I am open to hiring, but my budget is extremely limited at this moment.

So what do I actually need? For the demo, I mean?

Well, first of all, I will need four concept arts done in pixel-art style. The main-menu for the game (http://i.imgur.com/RpG5StR.png), the inside of Shiannes cottage (http://i.imgur.com/d8QfNIO.png), as wel as the backgrounds to use for the earthen tunnel/cave and the magical forest (I have no reference for the backgrounds, sadly). Note that the links in the parentheses are placeholders and guidelines, nothing else. They're there to give inspiration to the artist, not to be followed line for line.

Other than these I will need the earthen tunnel/cave (regular tile set plus spikes, roots, stones/boulders and vines) and the magical forest it exits into (regular tile set plus water, beehives, mushrooms and trees/bushes). I will also be needing a pair of crystals (one small and one big) that are to be used as collectable items (kinda like Mario's coins or Sonic's rings).

Lastly, I will be needing sprites for the player character and the enemies. Shianne will be needing 6 animations (idle, walking/running, jumping, taking damage/falling over, getting back up from having taken damage/fallen over, and dying) while the three monsters will need 3 animations each (idle, walking/running, and attacking).

I believe that is all, but in case something more comes up, I will post details about it here. As a final note, I will inform you that this game was originally intended to be released as both a SFW project and as a NSFW project. As things stand right now, I do not know if I will release the NSFW version or not, and regardless, the demo itself will be fully SFW. Thank you for your time, and forgive me for the long post.