Isometric Projection Sprites

[Karawasa]

Hey guys I'm hoping to get a cost/time estimate from someone who has experience with sprites. We will be having two types of sprites. Creeps that move up, down, and left/right with walk and death animations. Towers that don't move and have attack animation. Level of quality would be slightly higher than WarCraft 2. See picture below;

 

[Accname]

I didnt ever commission artworks for video-games myself, but i am currently helping somebody out who paid for her artworks for her current project about $2400. All animated and 2D.
Of course, this depends on how many different sprites you will have and who you ask because i can imagine different artists charging amounts which differ drastically.

 

[Karawasa]

Three animation states for creep movement and three for death. One animation state for tower attack. So 18 images (3*3*2) per creep and 1 image per tower.

Probably the most useful metric would be time required per creep and per tower given a level of quality slightly higher than the picture above. Cost does depend on the artist.

PS: Is three animation states enough for creeps and one animation state enough for towers to make the animations look good?

 

[Accname]

3 animation frames for movement is okay, its about NES and SNES quality or slightly below.
For the towers, do you intend to have 1 for iddle and 1 for attacking?

Also you might not need to have a death animation for each direction the creep is looking. Just a generic death animation for all directions.
That would be 3*3 + 3 = 12. Its one third less work.

I dont really know about the time it takes, i can guess some artists need more and some need less for a work like this, but i guess if you dont have too many creeps and he is working hard it could be done in a month.

 

[Karawasa]

Thank you for the reference to NES/SNES quality. That helps me visualize it. Now I am thinking of 5 frames for movement and 3 frames for death. Towers could have 3 frames for attack/cast and 1 frame for idle.

How would a generic death animation work? I suppose if it was like an explosion or some sort of gib that would be ok. But what about something more complicated?

 

[Accname]

Depending on the style you could have the death animation always be played looking towards the "camera". This can look good, and sometimes not. This depends how good your artist is and how well the general style of the graphics allows for this.

 

[iPeez]

Brb wc2.