[Bliss Stage] Looking for an artist

[Ben Lehman]

Hello

Bliss Stage: Love, Sex, and Giant Robots, which is one of my forthcoming games, needs an artist.  I'm pretty picky about the requirements for this, just so you're warned before you read further.

The game is about a group of teenagers struggling for survival and resistance after an alien invasion of the Earth.  The focus of the game is on their personal relationships, giant robot combat against aliens, and the connection between the two.

The tone I'm looking for is definitively boy's manga, secondarily with a decidedly tripped-out creepy and nightmarish vibe.  I want to keep a consistent tone throughout the book, and so I am looking for a single artist to do illustrations for the whole shebang.

Skills:

You should be able to draw decidedly in Manga style.  In my head right now the style I'm thinking of is Ken Akamatsu's work (Love Hina), but I'm pretty open to some flexibility, here, particularly American-Manga fusion styles.

You should be able to depict sexy and cute girls that actually look different from each other.  (Also: cute and sexy boys, but people seem to have less trouble with differentiating male characters.)

Likewise, I'm really going to need a wide range of emotions from the human characters.

You should be able to draw a variety of piloted humanoid and non-humanoid robots.  I'm not too deeply tied to a particular style, here, so there's a lot more flexibility.

You should be able to draw non-white people consistently and well.

You should have the time to be able to complete a fairly large number of illustrations by this summer.


Terms:  I will pay you, and I will try to pay you as fair a rate as I can manage.  As per the usual Forge illustrator agreements, you keep all rights to your own work -- I'm just commissioning it for use with my role-playing game.  Since I want your vision to be integrated completely with the work, I'm going to give you large, prominent credit on the cover and spine of the book.

Please contact me by e-mail at taogames@gmail.com if you're interested.

Thanks.

yrs--
--Ben

[TonyLB]

You should have the time to be able to complete a fairly large number of illustrations by this summer.

I recommend being more specific than this.  Each artist has his own idea of what "a fairly large number" means.  How many full page, how many half-page, how many quarter-page?  How many portraits, sans background, how many fully backgrounded single-character, how many multiple-character shots?  How many full character designs, how many reuses of existing characters and mecha?

Yeah, it's a good chunk of effort on your part, Ben, to specify all of this.  But it's really part and parcel of getting good communications with your prospective artists, right?

And, for the record, unless "a fairly large number" means, like ... eight ... then I will regretfully have to pass.  Not that it's globally impossible for me, but it's impossible with what I've got on my plate right now.

[Ben Lehman]

Tony --

You have an excellent point.  Sadly, I'm really unsure how long the book is going to be at this point.

yrs--
--Ben