Thread by @delaneykingrox

1) I'm just helping an indie #gamedev plan out their arts budget so they can get everything done.

Here are some tips (I have 20 years experience btw)

2) using your design doc as the basis start by making an asset list spreadsheet.

This can be vague, such as "street level art" to begin with, but sorry, we are gonna break it down.

3) the more you can isolate the art you need into specific definable, catalogued items, the better your budget will be.

Your goal is no surprises, and knowing where your money needs to go.

4) breaking down your doc into defined specific assets avoids you being vague.

Vague is not money saving.

5) example: main dude.

No.

Main dude mesh
Main dude LODS
Main dude 1st person arms
Main dude skin 1 (shaders and textures)
Main dude skin 2
Main dude multiplayer skin
Main dude's optional shades
Main dude's grenades (1st person)
Main dude's grenades (3rd person lod)
Etc

6) An animation list needs to be nutted out as well. These are assets too.

Hot tip: give yourself fat here for a bunch of anims you didn't expect, (weird shit such as quarter turns, IK specific compensation, shite like that)

7) giving the assets a code will force you to think of each one as a THING.

Things are real to you. Things cost money.

8) if your game designer is crying at this point, then remind them that their game design doc is how they control this.

Feature creep is expensive.

(Secretly budget in X number of extra items to give your designer some freedom)

9) okay, let's allocate funds.

Two ways of doing this- either find out quotes for everything from your artists, or allocate funds and ask them to work as best they can within that budget.

With the latter, this means setting your expectation to what they...

10) ...can do in that time, which will not be as good as something they get to spend their time on.

Never crunch artists.

11) my way is to allocate priorities to the art. What are my hero assets?

By that, I mean the moneymakers. The ones that will appear in marketing, will go on greenlight, will sell the idea to publishers. Think about things that REALLY matter.

12) allocate good funds to your concept art team.

Why? Because good design saves you money. The more you spend on concepts, the more concepts you get, the more solutions to problems become apparent.

13) your top priority is getting your project *to* the money well so it may drink.

Once funded, your top priority is having art for generating word of mouth excitement- your characters, main enemies, promo stuff... all are art what make people talk about and buy your game.

14) this stuff is your beating heart. Get this right, and lesser standards on the other stuff is acceptable.

Make sure to fund your heart

15) preproduction saves you money. It gives you confidence. Gives your team clear communication.

Too many projects are driven into the production stage early by shortsighted arseholes who wonder why we have to redo stuff months down the track.

Yes, you know who you are.

16) sub categories in your asset list are a handy way to allocate funds.

Okay so we assign X for the ice level.
From the concept art I can see fifty assets needed.
I list them as sub categories. Find where I can reuse assets.

I prioritize. I then calculate costs of each...

17) again, don't say "rocks".

3x Large rocks
4x Medium rocks
5x Small rocks
1x Destructable ice wall
4x Destructable ice wall gibs
1x Throwable Ice Rock (inventory item icon)

18) prioritising allows you to CUT STUFF quickly using your spreadsheet. Useful when you suddenly need funds for that one feature your team realizes it MUST HAVE midway through.

It also lets you project several budgets to include just priority 1-3 or priorities 1-6.

19) Asset lists feel crushing and limiting.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE FOR.

You want it to give tou constraints. Constraints can be budgeted for and entered into a task list.

20) Each asset on your list needs a brief. Hyperlinks to the brief and the task are a good idea.

21) remember, assets need to be...
Breifed, designed, modelled, uv mapped, textured, shaded, rigged, skinned, animated, imported, material set up and wired up.

Those are seperate tasks.

Yes, that's a lot to keep track of. That's why you need a tracking system.

22) Remember GUI. Remember front end menus. Remember marketing captures, promo materials, posters for cons, art for press packs, remember to check dates for when events are so you can have it ready by then.

23) Always add a little fat when you can. Because humans are human. Freelancers may get sick and not deliver. Hardware can die and files can get corrupted or lost (mainly an indy problem)

Always factor in some stuff will need to be redone. Set some dosh aside for this.

24) remember the asset store is your friend. You can fill in low priority assets and even use redressed asset store purchases.

For example, the monsters are not your style, but they are rigged and animated FBXs. Whack your models on those.

25) keep your asset list LIVE and readily accessible.

26) if you are using unpaid workers (please don't, but as noobs you probably will) keep a total of what you WOULD have spent hiring them so you can budget your next project correctly. Also keep an "actual cost" on assets that ran over budget.

Please feel guilty.

27) on that note, a pro artist or animator may seem expensive, but they will save you money and make you more money- because they will get it done right, get it done well and you can get great advice from them.

If your budget is super tight, hire pros for your hero assets early

28) because your team can analyze them, be inspired by them and it sets your quality bar.

29) asking how long a design will take is like asking how long string is. Think of it as fishing.

The more time spent, the more fish you get, (you can throw back those that don't measure up) and the greater your chance of hitting jackpot with an amazing catch.

But...

30) you can't fish forever, you gotta go cook dinner.

So fish while you can afford it and spend the most time on the most important lakes.

31) when budgeting and asking for prices, make sure your brief is super clear with lots of examples. The more you communicate what you want, the more accurate the artist can bid.

32) Beware of bargains.

Ask yourself if the artist is being reasonable with their bid, not just cutting their own throat.

If they are rushing to make enough to pay their rent, you aint getting good stuff.

Ethics aside, a healthy artist means a healthier profit from their work

33) Also sustainability is a concern. Your freelancer rushing off to a better paid gig midway through can stuff you up big time.

34) Okay, you got a design doc, an asset list, an art bible and briefs.
Now you need the cash.

Consider setting up an account just for your art, link a card to it for asset store purchases. This keeps a clean account of how much you have left.

Yes. It should make you sweat.

35) one cost you probably didn't think of.

Legals.

You need:
A non disclosure agreement
A freelancer agreement contract

You need to make sure the transfer of rights to the art belong to you and this is clear in your legals. Your lawyer will give you legal advice. I CAN'T

36) so, recap.

👉Turn loose ideas into numbered items.

👉 Prioritize items.

👉 Add fat.

👉 Money on design saves money.

👉 Look after your art team.

37) thank you for reading this free book. I hope that helps.

Support me posting by spending a teensy bit of your budget here:

Ko-fi.com/dellak

Patreon.com/darkling

38) and I will be talking at #NZGDC this year, covering art asset optimisation tricks, learning how to learn and... I dunno... gay stuff, probably.

39) questions welcome.

40) you can find my work at delaneyking.com

I am available for indy games as well, and offer indy flying art direction packages (I plan out and create your art bible, then stop by at intervals to give advice).

41) speaking of budgeting, my spine is costing me way to much at the moment so it won't suck if you chuck a few bucks to unfuck my back.

ko-fi.com/dellak

42) some money saving tips:

Understand animation retargeting, worst case scenario you can transfer anims to a skeleton to get a large way towards "in but not great" with a few "fuck it, that looks great as is"

43) Smart use of substance or shaders and modular design can make assets versatile.

A rock becomes ice or crystals if you sharpen it with vertex shaders.

Moss, dirt, blood, damage, rivets, rust, dust, windows, runes... all can be tuned in substance to generate cheap content

44) you can generate vastly different looking levels from the same assets with a bit of planning.
Get a substance artist and your concept artist together to plot.

45) you can create heavy human models with the same skeleton as light ones, but scaling in game and tweaking some anims to give a heavy feel. Animations can be layered to add hunches, for example.

46) design your creatures over shared sketelons.

Cerberus uses same skeleton and animation as a dog- just with extra heads skinned on.

Same applies for wolf, skeltal hound, fire hyena and scorpion mutant hound.

47) Modular meshes allow variants cheaper than whole new models.

It's amazing what a different hand rail and texture can give the same staircase peices.

48) sell some of your assets to the asset store to recoup costs.

49) if you are normal mapping stuff, isolate details you can pre model and bake to make texture stamps or reusable parts.

Say, chaos symbols, vents, chains etc.
A library of these can save money down the track.

50) proxy models are worth making as they throw up problems ahead of time.

Oh shit, the gun cannot point to the player. Oh shit, she won't fit in the car. Oh shit, the armour clips the camera in first person.

51) front load your risks. If there are things noone has done before that need prototyping, budget to do that as early as possible..

Better to pull the plug before money is spent on everything else.

52) get source files (and pay for them) as part of the deal, so you can fix things if they have to move onto other projects.

Uncollapsed PSDs
Zbrush file
Bake files (low, high mesh, cage)
Max and Maya files

You will need to pay extra for these unless it is in your breif

53) private pinterest boards are a great way to communicate to your artists. Budget time to set these up as part of your breifing tasks

54) design characters mostly symmetrical to speed up creation, or make the asymmetrical parts seperate.

Do characters really need different shoes?

55) breaking art tasks into "good enough" and "time to polish" will encourage your artists to get stuff in knowing they may be able to improve it later.

Art is never finished, it is abandoned.

56) if you are going for FAT funding, consider adding in human things into your budget.

Things like life drawing classes, subsidizing software licenses for home use, training video access, workshops.

These thinks impact quality, morale and ultimately improve your game.

57) thanks everyone, hope you make some fantastic games.

♡

56) ooh, paid for a third of my back session today already! Nice ♡

Also buy these. Because you want them. Yes, you do.

https://twitter.com/delaneykingrox/status/1146348746696826881?s=09

You may also like this thread on optimizing tricks.

https://twitter.com/delaneykingrox/status/920576005844099073?s=09