Looking to hire an artist

[Azrael]

So we've been trying for a while to get some help making a clan emblem. In the past we've had graphic artists try to make it for us, but it didn't really work. At this point I am out of options and patience, so I'm hoping to just hire an artist to draw what we want.

So here's what we want. Our clan is called Horrigan's Heroes. The name is a mashup of Hogan's Heroes (the old tv show) and Frank Horrigan (the boss from fallout 2). So our clan emblem should fit with that theme. Here's what we kind of came up with, but we are open to ideas if they are good.

We want Frank Horrigan:

Spoiler

Wearing Hogan's Hat (tipped back as seen here):

Spoiler

 

 

 

So here's the deal. We want this (or something similar that fits the theme) drawn by hand so we can use it as our emblem. We do not want something cobbled together using the above images in MS paint. We tried that and it didn't work. I will pay for this using paypal. Looking to spend 30$ to 40$, you can try asking for more but I'll be hesitant unless you have a good argument.

You do NOT have to provide me with a prelim sketch before we come to an agreement, but it would be nice. I will want to see samples of previous work in any case. Contact me via pm in the forums if you're interested. Thanks for your time!

 

*Edit: I removed the clan name from the emblem, after it was suggested that it wouldn't really fit.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Lord_Azrael

[Katchwi2]

They failed because nothing good from that can come up...

[Siraphine]

Hi, artist here.

The reason people are failing at your design is because you are trying to cram WAY TOO MUCH into too small a space.

You want a picture and text, and a picture alone is going to look like garbage. A clan emblem is 128px x 128px. So...really small. Text is going to look like trash no matter what on that size, because a font small enough to fit would be completely illegible because there's no room for pixel differentiation.

 

In short --- it's not the artists that are the problem. Its your expectations and fundamental misunderstanding of how graphics design works.

 

[Katchwi2]

9 minutes ago, Siraphine said:

Hi, artist here.

The reason people are failing at your design is because you are trying to cram WAY TOO MUCH into too small a space.

You want a picture and text, and a picture alone is going to look like garbage. A clan emblem is 128px x 128px. So...really small. Text is going to look like trash no matter what on that size, because a font small enough to fit would be completely illegible because there's no room for pixel differentiation.

 

In short --- it's not the artists that are the problem. Its your expectations and fundamental misunderstanding of how graphics design works.

 

Just be honest with him, the stuff he posted is old and awful.

Be direct so he doesnt "lose his patience" and doesnt make lose others time.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Katchwi2

[Azrael]

14 minutes ago, Siraphine said:

You want a picture and text, and a picture alone is going to look like garbage. A clan emblem is 128px x 128px. So...really small. Text is going to look like trash no matter what on that size, because a font small enough to fit would be completely illegible because there's no room for pixel differentiation.

I realize it's small, but I've seen plenty of emblems that included text or pictures that didn't look too bad. If you don't think it's possible, do you have any suggestions?

[Siraphine]

1 minute ago, Lord_Azrael said:

I realize it's small, but I've seen plenty of emblems that included text or pictures that didn't look too bad. If you don't think it's possible, do you have any suggestions?

1) Lower your expectations.

2) Simplify your design.

In most art, less is more. Excessive detail detracts from the overall piece. You could have a really loaded emblem that's way too loud and looks like crap, or you can have something simple and clean that looks nice. You can have a picture, or you can have text. For text to look good on a canvas that size, you would only be able to fit maybe a maximum of ~5 letters before you start suffering from quality loss.

[Azrael]

20 minutes ago, Siraphine said:

In short --- it's not the artists that are the problem.

Oh, and I never said that the artists were the problem. We've had two people try using existing art and it turned out not to be reasonable to do. I never said that anybody "failed" or that anybody was to blame.

 

2 minutes ago, Siraphine said:

For text to look good on a canvas that size, you would only be able to fit maybe a maximum of ~5 letters before you start suffering from quality loss.

That's really restrictive. Do you suppose removing the text would be enough? Just having a picture instead? We'd like it to at least be related to the theme...

[Siraphine]

This is an example of the size that clan emblems have to be. Bear in mind that while it looks big-ish here, it's not going to look this big in game. It's going to be small and squished down and isn't going to look nice if you have too much going on. You want something simple that looks nice up close AND far away. Too much detail from mid distance is going to look muddy. Another drawback is that files have to be uploaded in PNG format which is cancer for artists. It's a lossy format, and will lower the quality just by saving it in that format.

[Siraphine]

A picture alone could be done, yes.

[Azrael]

2 minutes ago, Siraphine said:

A picture alone could be done, yes.

Ok, I'll edit the OP. Hopefully somebody will be interested...

[Siraphine]

Good luck!

[Alcoholism]

What kind of features are you looking for?

• Frank Horrigan's face - basic facial shape, eyes, mouth?
• Anything from Frank Horrigan's body - Shoulders, chest, American flag?
• Hogan's hat - Basic shape of the hat, emblem on the hat?

Basically you're gonna need to point out some specific features from your references and tell the artist exactly what features you want to incorporate - obviously you can't use them all because it'll be too cluttered.

Imo I'd probably use the basic shape of Frank Horrigan's face, the eyes and mouth as the basis for the Emblem - You could add the hat but then you gotta think about the dimensions - the face is already quite rectangular so there's more "height" then there is "width" - adding a hat will just increase the height of the image and that just won't fit. You'll want something as square as possible.

[Azrael]

31 minutes ago, Alcoholism said:

What kind of features are you looking for?

• Frank Horrigan's face - basic facial shape, eyes, mouth?
• Anything from Frank Horrigan's body - Shoulders, chest, American flag?
• Hogan's hat - Basic shape of the hat, emblem on the hat?

Basically you're gonna need to point out some specific features from your references and tell the artist exactly what features you want to incorporate - obviously you can't use them all because it'll be too cluttered.

Imo I'd probably use the basic shape of Frank Horrigan's face, the eyes and mouth as the basis for the Emblem - You could add the hat but then you gotta think about the dimensions - the face is already quite rectangular so there's more "height" then there is "width" - adding a hat will just increase the height of the image and that just won't fit. You'll want something as square as possible.

Okay, so it should be obvious from the thread that I'm not much of an artist. It's a struggle for me just to color my frames...   :)

The main thing is there has to be a juxtaposition of elements from both hogan and horrigan, otherwise there isn't much point. Horrigans face is pretty recognizable, so I don't think his chest is needed. Obviously the basic shape of the hat is all that is possible, since any emblem on the hat would be too small to see (okay, I'm just guessing here, I don't really know what is and isn't possible).

So could something combining the face of horrigan with the hat be possible? I get that it has to be squarish,and the hat messes that up. but I'm not sure there's much point without it. Unless you have a different suggestion that fits the theme?

*Edit: the basic shape and position of the hat is what makes it recognizable, I don't think the emblem matters much anyway.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Lord_Azrael

[Alcoholism]

27 minutes ago, Lord_Azrael said:

Okay, so it should be obvious from the thread that I'm not much of an artist. It's a struggle for me just to color my frames...   :)

The main thing is there has to be a juxtaposition of elements from both hogan and horrigan, otherwise there isn't much point. Horrigans face is pretty recognizable, so I don't think his chest is needed. Obviously the basic shape of the hat is all that is possible, since any emblem on the hat would be too small to see (okay, I'm just guessing here, I don't really know what is and isn't possible).

So could something combining the face of horrigan with the hat be possible? I get that it has to be squarish,and the hat messes that up. but I'm not sure there's much point without it. Unless you have a different suggestion that fits the theme?

*Edit: the basic shape and position of the hat is what makes it recognizable, I don't think the emblem matters much anyway.

Here I did up a comparison really quickly so you can see what I mean:

http://imgur.com/a/hK4UU

The face on it's own is more centralized whereas the one with the hat is almost hitting the boundaries - not sure how well it will take that kind of size when applying it in-game. Basically you have a little bit of blank space on the left and right of the image. Tried to make it fit as much as possible without it looking too squished.

[Azrael]

49 minutes ago, Alcoholism said:

Here I did up a comparison really quickly so you can see what I mean:

http://imgur.com/a/hK4UU

The face on it's own is more centralized whereas the one with the hat is almost hitting the boundaries - not sure how well it will take that kind of size when applying it in-game. Basically you have a little bit of blank space on the left and right of the image. Tried to make it fit as much as possible without it looking too squished.

Yeah, I see your point. Still, just horrigans face wouldn't really fit the idea. The blank space could be annoying, but maybe the background could be made transparent?

[Alcoholism]

1 minute ago, Lord_Azrael said:

Yeah, I see your point. Still, just horrigans face wouldn't really fit the idea. The blank space could be annoying, but maybe the background could be made transparent?

Yup it is transparent in these examples - you'll need to keep it simple like this, so no actual fill in the large spaces but fill for the outlines or just thicker strokes. Just depends how you want it to look.

[Marshall]

 

[Azrael]

31 minutes ago, TRSS said:

 

I'm not gonna lie, it took me a few seconds to realize this was your thread and you weren't just referring me to a different thread...   :)

These look good! Do you think ours is something you could do? I can compensate via in-game plat if you want, I just didn't think people would prefer that...

[(PSN)sanemane213]

If we Were on the Same platform, i would Happily create you the Clan Emblem. It's honestly not hard to fit both into one pic, as I would only Need the head instead of the full body.