HELP WANTED: Seeking PIXEL ARTIST for a PAID REMOTE CONTRACT POSITION to help us build 8-10 boss sprites for WESTGUNNE
TEAM ZANRAI is a small but dedicated two man indie team, and we are currently looking for an amazing pixel artist to help us build approximately 8-10 large mecha bosses for our upcoming shoot ‘em up, WESTGUNNE. These boss sprites require no animation on the artist’s part (we’ll handle that on our end). It is vital that the artist’s artwork fit within WESTGUNNE’s established art style. Boss sprites will need to be designed in parts and delivered chopped up so they can work with our skeletal system. Bosses will generally be sized between 256×256 to 320×320.
Prospective artists will need to be comfortable working from rough, concept sketches and expanding them into polished pixel artwork that is cut into parts so we can animate them. Our most ideal artist would have the ability to develop original designs and be well-versed in designing robotic designs.
(More technical details are included below this region.)
All payments will be transferred via PayPal.
Interested? Shoot us an email to JOBS@ZANRAI.COM with the following information:
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- A quote for what you’d charge us per asset (or the rate and ballpark hours you’d expect per asset for this contract job)
- Estimated time of completion for a single asset
- A few links to samples of your work
- A list of previous projects you have worked on
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us.
About ZANRAI INTERACTIVE
Zanrai Interactive, LLC is an independent studio based out of Dallas, Texas, USA, but working remotely. We’re a very small team of two, passionate about creating action games. Our previous release was STARDUST VANGUARDS which was released for PC, Linux, and PlayStation 4. WESTGUNNE has been in development since mid 2016 and all core systems are currently completed. If you’re interested in learning more about the game, you can check out our website or for more recent progress shots jump over to Twitter.
Detailed Technical and Style Information
For those interested in exactly what we’re looking for, here’s a handy-dandy reference guide.
Asset Delivery and Resolution
We’d prefer receive completed assets in a layered PSD, though we can work with you on a delivery method if that’s a problem. Our game’s resolution is 640×360. Bosses generally should fit in the rightmost third of the screen while leaving enough clearance for the ground (approximately a 256×256 to 320×320 square), however this isn’t a hard maximum or minimum. Understandably, some boss designs could fluctuate more or less within this zone. You can see an example below that shows how our test boss was put together. All of these boss enemies will require being designed with pieces in mind so we can implement them in our skeletal animation system. Ensuring joint housings are adequately covered and that there’s enough clearance for limbs to move naturally is a must.
Boss Assets Will Need to be Cut Into Parts
You can see an example below that shows how our test boss was put together from a collection of parts (Left Arm, Right Arm, Wing, Leg, Gun, Head, And Torso). All of boss enemies will require being designed while keeping in mind that they’ll need to be cut apart so they can then be implemented in our skeletal animation system. Ensuring joint housings are adequately covered and that there’s enough clearance for limbs to move without looking weird is a must.
Colors and Palette Info
We’re using the Unity engine, and we are not using a strict color palette; however, we are faking the use of a color palette by intentionally limiting the number of colors we use while drawing sprites. We generally use four shades for each color represented. For example, the image below shows some of our smaller enemies where painted regions use 4 shades for lighting:
- a bright highlight
- a “default” base color
- a medium shadow
- a heavy shadow
Our art-style uses a clean, non-grainy aesthetic, influenced by traditional hand drawn cel-animation and clean cartoon-ish pixel-art. Broad lighting hits all objects from their front and slightly above. The design of vehicles and robots themselves are informed by the look of 80s/90s Japanese animation and the genre’s affinity for clean and bulky details.
All of our assets are slightly skewed toward the camera and are not perfect side-views. The front and sides of objects are visible, but not the top or bottom. Occasionally a pure side-view may emerge for particularly thin, small, or pointy designs (when it looks best).
If additional information is required, please feel free to contact us.