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[Tom Quinn]

Hello my beautiful artists,

Some friends and I have spent the last couple weeks working on a reimagining of one of my favorite indie games of all time: Siege. We've added a lot to the gameplay, like combos and units that break your opponent's tiles. It's not really playable yet, especially after reworking the input code, but it's come a long way.

Our placeholder art isn't bad, but we're looking for someone with real pixel skills to add real charm and appeal to the game. I'll post a couple of screenshots to give you an idea of what the game will be like, but those unfamiliar with Siege can get a better idea of the gameplay by checking it out here.





I'll try to give an idea of the amount of art we require. The final game is going to run at 640x480 resolution. For each of our ~20 units, we're going to need around 4 frames of animation. The units will range from 10x15 pixels up to 50x35. We'll also need art for puzzle tiles, the user interface, and the landscape, plus one piece of art I'm particularly excited about.

As you can see from the screenshots, we have a day/night cycle, represented by a large rotating sprite with the sun and bright sky on one side, and the moon and stars on the other. If this were done by someone with considerable art talent, I think it would look really great in motion. This disc would probably be about 1000x1000 pixels in size, although not all of it would actually be seen. It would basically be a giant ring with clouds, birds, evening fog, stars, and the sun and moon on it.



If you're interested, just post a reply with a sample of your pixel art. I'm here to answer any questions about the art, gameplay, myself... anything you need to know. I could even send you a pre-alpha build of the game, if you're thinking about doing art and you'd like to test it out. Thanks for reading!

Tom

P.S: In terms of release, we're looking at anywhere from 2 weeks from now to 1 month. Every week we work for dozens of hours on the game, and we're definitely not stopping.

P.P.S: Beau, if you're reading, we love you! We owe everything to you!

[Cagey]

This is how you look for people to work on your project. None of that jForce business. Unfortunately I can't help out on the art, but if you this was a paid position you would get more interest.

Is this going to be in flash? It looks like a great game, post a link when it's finished!

[astrospoon]

I'm a bit busy right now, but I totally dug the original. I even thought about updating it myself at one point. Best of luck to you on a cool project!

[Tom Quinn]

Thanks for the well-wishes! Unfortunately this isn't a paid position; we're just a few CS majors making an indie game. We're doing it in C#, using .NET and AgateLib. When we're a little bit farther along, I'll make a thread in the Feedback or Announcements forum to show it off.

[Bree]

I would love to help, but I'm not very experienced in pixel art (I do work in Photoshop, though) and I'm unsure whether school would interfere or not. If I can make sure I have the time, and you're interested in my work of course, I'd be more than happy to offer my assistance. This looks like a really awesome project, though, so I wish you and your team the best of luck!

[Plasticware]

This looks interesting enough. I'd be willing to lend a hand, if you think my pixel work's up to par.

[Tom Quinn]

Looking at your posts on TIGSource, we'd love to have you! I think it would be best for the game to have a consistent style, which probably means that one person would do all the art. It's a pretty big commitment and I don't know if that's what you meant. If you're still interested, let me know!

[Plasticware]

Thanks!

I'd be more than willing to give it a shot, but yeah, it does seem like a pretty big undertaking. I'll see.

[Tom Quinn]

Great, we're looking forward to hearing back from you. Not to make it sound like a contest or a race, but if anyone else is interested we'd love to see your stuff.

[Kevin]

*originally, this post was lies*

Sorry, sorry and sorry. I got over excited, I offered, but I can't take anything else on at the moment.
I just really like Siege. Forgive me?

[Tom Quinn]

You are forgiven.  We're excited about Siege too, which is why we're also excited about finding an artist. Right now, we should be adding units into the game and balancing it, but it's hard to justify creating placeholder art that you're just going to ditch as soon as you find an artist. Instead, we're building the menus and putting achievements in place.

Unfortunately, we can't release it until all the art is done. Anyone?

[William Broom]

Good luck with this! I love Siege so I hope this version turns out great. Unfortunately my art skills are pretty mediocre - I'd be lucky to produce anything that looks better than your placeholders. I'll be watching, though.

[Tom Quinn]

Well, the creek's run dry as far as TIGSource goes for finding an artist. Can anyone suggest a more pixel art-centric forum where I might have better luck?

Not that I'm leaving TIGS, of course. The announcement thread'll be up as soon as we secure some art!

[Farbs]

Have you tried Pixelation?
I think some of the pixellier TIGers hang out there.

[battlerager]

Maybe also try http://www.pixeljoint.com/ 

[Lazer]

If you guys are willing to wait until May 8th, I'd be down to do some pixelan.

Sorry I didn't look at this thread earlier. If you want me to throw together like a mini portfolio or whatever I can.

[Tom Quinn]

A mini-portfolio sounds about right. Ideally, we'd like to get the game done before May 8, but it's looking like finding an artist is going to take a lot longer than we thought. If you could take a look at the original Siege and start brainstorming ways to revamp the art style, that would be ideal. We're moving from a 320x200 window (in Faind's Siege) to a 640x480 window, so there's some stylistic choices to be made.

[Lazer]

Right, well I can work off and on until then, but not reliably until after.

also mini portfolio sent via pm.

[Tom Quinn]

Not bad, it's mostly stuff I saw when browsing through your older posts. I'll give you a shout early May if nobody else volunteers.