Elance and oDesk

We searched for artists in November 2013 on Elance.com and oDesk.com. It took a lot of time, emails, and artwork critiques until we finalized our artist. Here's one of the job posting descriptions that we used.

Job Posting

oDesk - Game Artwork for Bomb Dodge

Human? Post answer to equation at top of response: 4000 x 2317 = ?



About: Bomb Dodge is a multi-touch gesture based game where you are trying to avoid explosions and fireballs. The main character is a bomb, and is dangerously explosive. The game is about survival, points, and features in-app purchases.



Art: I need quotes on completing artwork listed in the PDF document. Here's the priority of work.



1. Title Logo/Icon

2. UI for Home(menu), Play, Pause, Store, and Game Over screens

3. Item icons

4. Characters

5. Background

6. App Store Screens (5)

7. Character animations



Style: Cartoonish and simple. No fancy 3d graphics. The menus float above the game in the background.



Website and videos: http://BombDodge.com

Sorting Through the Noise

I had 25 applicants on Odesk and 33 from Elance to sort through. It was a lot, but there were ways to quickly eliminate many of the applicants.

We had a math equation, and if someone didn't answer it, they were removed from the potential list (One of our top artists missed the math equation, was rejected, and re-submitted a proposal with the answer). I removed anyone who's didn't have a nice looking portfolio. I removed anyone who didn't have a good website/youtube/vimeo. Some artists had artwork that was decent, but not excellent. They were removed. Others would have unpolished or amateur work on their portfolio site. We skipped them, since attention to detail is really important to us.

Skype Interviews and Paid Test Projects

To pick our final artist we did a Skype interview with 4 artists and then sent test projects to 3 of the artists (One backed out due to other commitments). I don't believe in free work, so the projects were paid (1-2 hours) at the artist's hourly rate. We spent $164.99 on the test art projects. The test was to design the main character or game theme. Our target cost was between $500 - $1,000 on art.

We had two questions that we wanted to be answered.

Can we communicate? i.e. do we enjoy talking with the artist, and is it easy to express ideas. How does the artist's style apply to the game? A polished portfolio needs to be tested to our game concepts.

At the end of the tests, we had the following designs from three artists.