Help Wanted » Art Assets

We are software developers, not artists. We are looking for a few artists to work with long-term. Presently, we don't have any artwork, so there are no issues with matching your art style to existing assets.

As the game unfolds, we will want the artwork to lean into a solarpunk aesthetic: civilization and technology entwined harmoniously with the planet, the pets, and other players. A lot of solarpunk art is very bright and clean; we'd prefer a more practical representation, with players & creatures acting as makers, getting down and dirty. Items should show signs of skilled repair, and things can be made of repurposed items that were recycled after several rounds of repair.

Licensing

It's probably helpful to explain what we want to license & why, so artists can prepare an appropriate price quote.

We want an exclusive, perpetual, non-revocable license to use the assets in commercial video games, plus the same rights for promotional material meant for our video games.

For creatures (pets & monster monsters), we want perpetual, non-revocable license to create derivative works based on the character design. Or, to put that in plain English: we want to be able to have other artists illustrate the Project Zutto pet/enemy characters. This is meant as a fail-safe in case the original artist is unavailable; our preference would be to have one artist do all variants of a pet so they've all got the same Vibes, but life (and our budget) may get in the way.

Project Zutto is not intended to be monetized, but we want to keep our options open in case the game becomes wildly popular and the hosting costs exceed what we can personally cover.

We want the license to be transferable to a successor entity. This remains a hobby project, but if we ever take donations from players, it would make sense to incorporate, at which point we'd probably transfer all the IP/licenses to that.

Commission Process

We think the best way to structure the relationship is commissioning a few pieces of art every month, on a month-to-month basis. Ideally, we would continue working with you until the game is done, however many months that takes — but this leaves everybody open to abandoning the project at the end of the month if Life Happens™.

If there's another arrangement you'd prefer, we're all ears. This is the first time we're attempting to commission art commercially, and at this scale.

Beyond that, an artist's typical process for payment, approving sketches, revisions, etc should work fine for us.

Assets Needed

The general types of assets we need are listed below. Please contact owls if you're interested in working with us.