It would be great to fill this position with somebody who is a DROD fan and fantastically talented, but we'll settle for somebody who's only fantastically talented. If you know somebody in the Seattle/Ballard area that might be qualified and want to do it, (including yourself, I suppose) please let him or her know about this opening.
This position is for somebody to work on post-TCB projects. (Don't be prodding us about what comes after TCB. Only Mike and I know, and we aren't saying anything.) Also, to the pixel artists working on TCB, I am really happy with all the help we've had. This opening isn't a negative comment on your work. We have a lot of artwork to get done in the future, and I feel that best results will come with one supervised artist doing the bulk of it.
-Erik
* * * WANTED: PART-TIME 2D PIXEL ARTIST IN BALLARD, WASHINGTON * * *
We're looking for a talented entry-level 2D pixel artist to work in Ballard, Washington for 8 hours each week on new games that Caravel Games will be developing. The start date for the position is April, 2007. Caravel has developed and sold award-winning shareware games since 2005 including
DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon,
DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold, and the soon-to-be-released
DROD: The City Beneath. You can learn more about the company at our website:
http://caravelgames.com
The position will involve:
* Creating in-game art that has technical as well as aesthetic requirements. Much of this artwork will be very small in size and require pixel-level editing.
* Creating art used for website and game marketing materials.
Based on preferences and demonstrated abilities of the artist, the position may later be extended to include:
* Creating larger illustrations for print, including product packaging.
* Defining and documenting a production pipeline that may later be used for other artists.
* Designing prototype screens for games during early development.
Candidate requirements:
* A portfolio of work that includes examples of 2D pixel art.
* Proficiency in one or more of the following: Adobe Photoshop, Corel PhotoPaint, or The Gimp.
* High school graduate.
* Solid reading, writing, and verbal skills. You'll need to work from detailed requirements, written and verbal.
* Past history of employment or contract work, i.e. this shouldn't be your first job.
* Willing to work with supervision at our office in Ballard, Washington for one 8-hour shift each week. Sorry, but we won't consider off-site candidates.
* United States citizen or currently have legal status which allows employment in the United States.
Candidate preferences:
* Previous employment or contract work in graphic design or software industry.
* Work that has appeared in electronic games.
* Involvement in personal or volunteer creative projects, with an emphasis on seeing the project through to completion.
You would be paid $10/hour as an employee. The office is shared with a company that makes wedding stationery. This office is in a small building in the residential section of Ballard about half a mile from the downtown area. The atmosphere is really relaxed, although when clients are visiting, you have to be a little quiet. There's free drinks and snacks, and if there's a particular beverage you enjoy, we can probably stock it for you. Parking is ample. Free hosting on our web server is available. The room smells pretty nice. That's about all we can offer in the way of benefits.
What's it like to work for Caravel? Well, for starters you would be our first paid employee, so we're new at this. We don't have a lot of money, so you'll hear some demoralizing cheapness every now and then, i.e. "
We don't really have time for you to draw extra sparkly bits on the magic slippers. Let's just move on to the next batch of work. How long's that gonna take?"
And I keep saying "
we"
, but really you're just going to be talking to me, Erik, for the time being, although you'll meet my lovely wife and her employees (she runs the wedding stationery business that the office is shared with). The other people on the Caravel team are spread out over the face of the planet. Caravel has a history of being generous in giving credit to artists and other contributors to our games, and we will tell people that this artwork they are enjoying was made by you. If you've got some other art-related gigs that you want to promote, i.e. your work appearing in some new graphic novel or exhibition, you can probably get some attention from our enthusiastic player community. We want you to be a superstar, not a faceless drone--that's part of the indie aesthetic. You'll have a lot of freedom to come up with your own visual ideas, but at times, you'll find the technical requirements constricting, i.e. you may have to draw those sparkly magic slippers inside of a 22x22 pixel box. If you need to feel like you're working for a big company doing big things, this won't be the job for you. If you want to work with a few unglamorous people that love making games, and have a looser leash than you might have starting out at the bottom of the EA art department, then yeah... Caravel. Do it!
In you are interested in this position, please e-mail erikh@caravelgames.com with a resumé and a portfolio containing examples of your work. Preferably, we would like to see a portfolio hosted on a website, but attaching files to an e-mail or arranging to mail a CD-ROM to us is fine. If we arrange an interview with you, you'll be expected to perform some graphic design tasks at the interview for the purpose of verifying your skills.
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals |
twitch stream |
youtube archive (NSFW)