Working with an Artist (part 1)

This past week has been a busy one, but things are beginning to fall into place. My extensive search for a background artist is hopefully at an end, as I've sent a contract for the first part of the project to an artist I found online. He's already signed my NDA, so once the contract is in, we can begin the design process! We are going to start with the starship interior designs, since that is where much of the Solar Echoes Visual Novel will take place. I'm not going to give away too many story clues, but I will say that your time aboard the starship, interacting with the other aliens, is a very important part of the plot. The artist I'll be working with for the starship interiors has a style that is very compatible with my character artist, John Fell, whose work you've seen a lot of in other Solar Echoes products and social media. John Fell's character art is also featured in the Video Comic I released last spring on Youtube, under “Solar Echoes RPG Video Comic.” If you notice in the video, the backgrounds I used were a bit of a contrast in style, with more of a realistic look than the comic style that John uses. I designed all those backgrounds myself, compositing different photos together and then adding some details, lighting, coloration changes, etc. with Photoshop. I decided to avoid using that method again for the Visual Novel, because I'd much rather see the work of a professional artist for the many hours it will take to complete the game.