How can I help my unpaid 2D and 3D artists improve their portfolio?

Question

I'm part of a 20 people team working on a game for free but we've got intentions of starting a company soon.

At the moment, not even the prototype is finished, but we've got 6 artists, half 2D and half 3D producing assets for us, what's happening is that the artists give feedback that it's hard to stick around since they're not paid (fair) and they can't really use the stuff they produce for their portfolio.

• The 2D artists seem to be bothered by the fact that sketch work isn't good enough for their portfolio, and most concept art they're doing isn't fully explored because as soon as the directors are happy with it they're asked to move to another piece.
• The 3D artists seem to be bothered by the fact that their 3d models can't be published on any store or market, as it would potentially harm the game in the long run.

Not having a lot of experience with artists, how can we go about and help them in this regard?

Answer 1

Given that artists need time to improve the quality of their assets. And given that they cannot publish assets related to game, then they need time to work on assets that are not for the game. Which suggests that to actively help them improve their portfolio you could:

• Give them random prompts on what to work on, so they are not linked to the game.
• Set apart some limited time from the project for this.

For the prompts you could pick nouns at random. Or if you want to get them involved, you could have them submit possible prompts, and at the start of the allotted time pick prompts at random.

Whatever they do, let them add to their portfolios on their own discretion. Be aware that this might also result in new ideas, either for your game or other projects. Yet, in the spirit of helping them improve their portfolio, resist taking any of the resulting assets for the game (instead you can task them to use them as reference for something for the game, but it would be a different asset).

Answer 2

You got to find a way to pay your artists.

Currently they don't really get anything out of the work on your project. Even if your project would demand artwork on a level of polishing that's good enough to use as a portfolio piece, the 2d artists could just create those on their own without being connected to your project. Even if your project would allow 3d artists to sell their work on asset stores and keep the money, they could probably make more money if they created assets that are in demand for a general audience rather than creating the assets your project needs.

So there is really no good, objective reason why an artist would stay connected to your project at all.

So how could you pay them?

If you don't have any funds yet, then you can only pay them with the promise of funds in the future. For example:

• By making a contract that you owe them $x per hour/artwork, but to be paid at a later date when funds are available.
• By giving them equity in the soon-to-be founded company in exchange for their work.

Both of these arrangements are still a gamble for the artists, because there is a high chance that they won't ever get paid for their work. You might never be able to secure a source of funding that covers your outstanding artist fees. The company might be bankrupt before it made a dime. You might succumb to evil and run away with all the money you promised to pay to the artists. Not to mention that artists require food and housing, so future promises might be useless when it comes to covering their immediate financial needs. So if I would be one of your artists, I would ditch you as soon as I get an opportunity from someone who is able to pay me now instead of "maybe some time in the future". But at least it's better than nothing.

Answer 3

I'll skip the mandatory part talking about payment. I get it. I've worked on a game for free for years because it's a passion. I assume the same is true for these people as well, to an extent, but they want to have something to show for it, right?

With that said, there's three steps in my recommended approach here.

1. Convince the directors to ease off of the concept artists. It sounds like the workflow instituted by the directors is not standard to the concept art industry, and fixing the first issue is simple enough. Just let the 2D artists explore their concepts in a way that's suitable for their portfolio. This will (maybe) reduce their output and maybe upset the directors, but it's better than losing the artists entirely. Plus, the explored concepts might be better than the directors even expected.

2. Meet with the whole team and write up a basic agreement for how pay will be distributed once you have a company and have released the game. This is to cover the blue sky, flowers and butterflies ideal scenario. This should include minimum payment values for each contributor, like a usual agreement of this sort would. It's never fun to be 'that guy', but it would be important in this step to emphasize the highly likely possibility of the game never seeing the light of day or only ever making a couple bucks. It's very unlikely for any game made in this sort of environment (or almost any environment, really) to become a 'hit', if it is ever finished in the first place. This is important because it leads into Step 3.

3. Now, down to the stuff you probably don't want to hear, but will solve your problem. In that agreement you just made, establish a deadline. It could be two years, or maybe even five years. The terms are simple: when the deadline expires, if the game is not released or not profitable enough to pay your artists, they're free to publish their assets to stores or marketplaces to cover their losses.

Hopefully it should be relatively easy to see how these three actions allow your artists to have some guaranteed amount of value gained by working on your project despite the lack of payment.

Answer 4

It sounds like your root problem is wanting to keep your team members on board.

As with all volunteer-based projects, it's important to be mindful of the fact that volunteers come and go. This is something that should be expected and planned around. It can be affected to some degree, but at the end of the day, volunteers are going to drop out whenever the push from external factors (e.g. other projects in their lives) exceed the pull from their interest in the project.

The goal therefore isn't necessarily to make the work better for your artists' portfolios, but rather to make the project more appealing to them. Play into their passion for the project. They will still leave eventually, but a hobby project will still around longer if it's fun than if it's work.

Making the project more appealing to your volunteers could be done in many ways:

• Make the project less work-like by allowing artists to focus on the aspects they have passion for, instead of deciding their tasks for them. The artists are there because they want to, and if they are forced to do tasks they don't enjoy, - or end tasks before they reach the enjoyable parts - then they have little incentive to stick around.

• Encourage your volunteers to explore their skillset. The tasks a project needs to progress often center around the same things - e.g. drawing in the same style, or modelling the same type of characters - and quickly become chores. If you can encourage varied tasks, either by changing the direction of the game or by giving your volunteers time, space and encouragement to play around, it will take far longer for your volunteers to grow tired of them.

• Build a following, for example by developing in the open, having a noteworthy product and playing into social media. This can give volunteers motivation to continue working on the project, and can also provide a reasonable source of new volunteers when existing ones inevitably drop out.

• As mentioned in other comments, pay your artists. Convert the project from a volunteer-based project to an employee-based project, and it'll no longer be competing with other free-time activities. Employees still come and go, but at a far slower rate than volunteers.

Regardless of how you approach it however, it is important to be mindful of the fact that people leaving is a fact of life for passion projects.