Essay: Artists For Your VN

...AKA "How to Efficiently Make Somebody Else Produce the Visuals You Want."

I've been working as a colorist and "second unit artist" for a Visual Novel project since 2005, and I've realized how difficult is for the authors/writers/people in charge of a project to get their ideas turned into pretty character sprites or event CGS, especially when they have either a specific mental image of what they want or when they're dealing with more than one artist.

So I thought writing an article about it could help people having trouble with this or thinking about hiring or asking help from one or more artists for their project.

Of course all this is written from my own experience and from my POV as an artist here.

Looking for an Artist
You have this great idea and you can even write it and/or code it, but your drawings are not good enough for it... So you decide to find somebody else to draw everything for you! This should solve your problem, right? If you take in mind some considerations, it would!

Selection Process
First you need to find somebody! You can post in a recruitment forum or contact several artists via e-mail or something similar.

Now don't get all dazzled with their skills! Even if they draw pretty, they might not be what you're looking for. You'll want to have an interview with them to get to know them better (after all, they'll be drawing your ideas, dreams, visions, etc) and give them a test: to design two or three characters and make a finished CG of one of them, letting you know how much time it took them to do the whole process. Making them draw a mock-up Event CG would also determine if they can handle things more complicated than just a standing character for a sprite.

With all your interview results in your hands, you'll need to find the most balanced artist that
 * a) has the most suited style (in your opinion)
 * b) has better anatomical/composition skills
 * c) works faster
 * d) is willing to commit to the project until the end.

Getting Your Idea Drawn
There are roughly three kinds of "commissioners", or people that ask to get drawn what they've envisioned:


 * a) The one that wants in paper/screen EXACTLY what they have in their minds (composition, camera angle and light sources included)
 * b) The one that has an idea of what they want and will try to get something as close as possible, but won't mind some artistic liberty from the artist.
 * c) The one that gives the artist complete freedom.

The one artists tend to like the most is c, and the most painful to deal with is a, for obvious reasons. No matter what kind of commissioner you are, most artists haven't developed their mental reading skill yet, so you need to make sure they understand your idea the best possible way before producing anything. This will save you both time and stress, avoiding numerous revisions that are an unavoidable consequence of bad communication.

So the things you need to do so are:


 * Give a proper description of the characters, covering physical and psychological aspects. Avoid walls of texts and be specific!
 * Give a description of the environment/situation (if applicable)
 * Give a piece of dialogue for the character or a piece of script for the scene.
 * Find as many good references as possible that could help the artist know how you want things to look like.
 * If you have something really specific in mind and you have a little artistic talent, draw a simple sketch with side notes and arrows explaining things.

Making a Schedule
At this point you should know how does you artist work, how much time it takes them to finish things, and you should have a rough idea of what they do during their normal lives unrelated to your project and/or how much free time they do have to work on it.

It's time to make a schedule and assign weekly tasks.

Make sure you artist commits to a certain amount of hours per week to your project and/or to complete certain tasks each week (one character sprite each week, one CG every two weeks, etc.). It'd be nice if you could have one or two meetings each week to review what the artist has done and make sure they're doing what you expect them to do.

Now at this point, you might find that all the work (character sprites, backgrounds and Event CGs) are too much for one artist to handle, so you might consider getting more artists.

Getting more Artists
First you need to know what do you need more artists for and how many do you need, according to how many art assets you need to get done and how complex they are.

Depending on what they're required to do, you'll have to make different tests for them.

If you need a Background Artist, make them draw a background that goes well with a character done by your Lead Artist. If you need a Digital Inker, make them lineart a sketch your Lead Artist did. If you need a Colorist, make them color something your Lead Artist drew.

You'll have to go through the selection process all over again, interviews and all, but don't worry! You have your Lead Artist to help you choose now.

Forming a Team and Assigning Tasks
Now you have a team of artists that'll have to work together making the art assets for your project.

You need to form a mass production chain with them, to make sure everything will be finished in time and that it'll be worthy having as many artists as you have now.

The chain production could be something like this: Rough Design(s) - Sketch - Revised Sketch - Lineart/Digital inking - Base Coloring - Shading and Effects

In case of Event CGs, you can add a separated background production chain, in case you have a separate background artist.

Keep in mind you and your art team need to revise every step of this process together, as one artist could bypass mistakes other could notice, and it's better you get it fixed in early steps than when it's almost finished! Now... what does every member of the team do?

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The L.A. can design, sketch, do linearts and color, but he/she MUST participate in the Revised Sketch step, to make sure everything belongs to the same style. You need only ONE lead Artist.
 * Lead Artist: is in charge of designing characters and giving the overall "style" to everything done.

The BG.A. can design, sketch, do linearts and color, but he/she MUST participate in the Revised Sketch step, to make sure everything belongs to the same style, background-wise. It's better to have only one of them, but two could do as well, as long as they keep a similar style.
 * Background Artist: is in charge of drawing the background image and drawing/fixing the backgrounds for Event CGs.

The Colorist MUST do the Shading and Effects of every piece, to keep consistency on coloring style. The best: keep only ONE colorist for everything, or one for characters (in sprites and Event CGs) and one for Backgrounds (in Bgs and Event CGs).
 * Colorist: is in charge of coloring the art assets after the lineart has been done.

You'll want to have only one of them in your team (or one for Characters and one for Backgrounds). If you have more, make sure they use the same tools of the same software and the same linearting method. For two or more digital inkers to be a successful part of a team, you should be unable to tell a lineart made by one them from one made by another.
 * Digital Inker: is in charge of doing the linearts from the Revised Sketches.

This can be done by a separate member of the team or by a member of the team that does other tasks. Pretty much every member on the team can participate in this position, as long as they have anatomical knowledge and composition sense.
 * Designer: is in charge of designing and sketching things, like poses for the sprites, composition for an Event CG, etc.

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Now an example of how this works from my own experience.

In our team we have a Writer, a Manager (who gets sure everybody does what they're supposed to do), one Lead Artist that's also the Background Artist, a Digital Inker and a Colorist (me).

A certain Event CG is needed, where two characters are interacting against a certain background.

The Writer has a mental image and he does some rough sketches and finds some references for us to use. The Manager helps here too.

The Manager assigns the design task to any of us artists... Let's say it's assigned to the Digital Inker (since everybody can design and sketch in our team).

In the weekly meeting we discuss the design. If anybody else has a better idea or a way to improve the design/sketch, the design is re-sketched or red-lined and fixed. After it's approved, a cleaner sketch is done.

Once the cleaner sketch is approved, the Lead Artist redraws whatever that doesn't belong to her style to keep the consistency: it should look like she drew it from the beginning.

After that, the sketch goes to the Digital Inker.

Finally, it goes to the Colorist and any coloring problems are fixed before declaring the asset Finished.

Tips
A few recommendations to summarize:
 * Give your Artist(s) all the means to know what you want.
 * Make sure you and your Artist(s) work as a team.
 * Make a schedule and give specific weekly tasks. Assign specific tasks to each member of your team.
 * Keep a consistency between all your art assets by not giving the same important task to more than one person: if you can easily tell that two character sprites or Event CGs were drawn/colored/linearted by different people, there's something wrong with what you're doing!

The original article was written by Deji.