Calling 3D Artists

OK... Serious request here:

I need a bunch of animated characters. Not entirely sure of the quantity yet but a good 10 or so.

These all need to be animated (boned). Most pretty basic, run, neutral, jump, shoot. Many could use the same animation and mesh probably, just need to be altered enough to look different, ie, Big muscle bloke to fat thug.

The main character needs to have a lot of animation, run, jump, hop over fence (left and right handed), shoot, crouch, crouching shoot, get gun out, shimmy with gun... I'm sure there's a few more.

These want to be of a decent standard, ie, better than I could do. Style, not sure yet, either bright coloured cartoon or serious... although am seriously considering maybe heavily stylised like sin city... but this needs more thought.

Generally low triangle count (around 1000-1500) is plenty enough as this is going to be 3rd person and about 1/3 of the screen tall.

Anyway... Bearing all that in mind, and apologies for the very basic spec... How much would this set me back for one of you guys to do this for me?

OK... This either means I'm the best modeller here or no-one is interested! I'm thinking it's the latter!

You're asking for:
- Skills
- Time
- Motivation

I'd suggest you find some 3D modelling boards across the net. That's what I would do. And try to make requests there.

There aren't many artists here with the ability to produce what you're requesting and those that do are probably either busy or don't like quoting in public.

In my experience, any time you want animations, you're looking at a high price.

You could probably expect to pay $400-500 for a textured character model, your mileage can and will vary, but if you shop around you'll find a good artist prepared to work at that sort of price. Possibly a bit less even, and you might well get a few stock animations with that.

Adding specific animations will bump it up considerably though, and I wouldn't like to hazard a guess on that.

As for additional characters which are kinda similar, most artists I've worked with don't like to work like that. Animations, yes, they'll give you the animations and share between all models, but it's programming-think ( and I say that with the greatest of respect, because I think it too if I'm not careful ) to think that additional characters are just "tweaked a bit". That may have contributed to the lack of replies too.

In all honesty, if you want a definite price, just ask someone for a quote. Tiler was doing freelance work not so long ago, and he was producing nice, well animated, well textured characters because he was doing that game with RossC ( where is Ross, BTW? Haven't seen him around much. ) and that looked great. I think Tiler changed his name a few times since then, so I'm not sure what his nick is now.

There are some artist portfolios over on IndieGamer too, so you could email a couple of those for a quote. It's probably better that way, I wouldn't want to quote a programming job on a forum so I can't blame them for not really wanting to quote an art job on a forum. Don't be embarrassed to ask for a quote just because you might not go ahead with it. I've been asked to quote for things any number of times and more often than not, it never amounts to anything, but I don't blame them for asking.

My advice is to only work with an artist who has previously produced content very similar to what you want. You don't want to pay for someone else's learning experience.

There are some artist portfolios over on IndieGamer too

Where can I find a list of 3d low poly artists ?

Thanks in advance