Artists who fit the style are hard to come by, so would you accept...

[BigThinker]

My main, perfectest ever artist has vanished off the planet. :-( I hope he is doing well, but he has caused an earthquake in my virtual pet world. His style was perfect and was very unique, and with his disappearance, it's been quite a hardship trying to find anyone who is remotely close to his level of talent, style, availability, and price!

With this in mind, would you accept a website that released items/pets/features/what have you with mock images, knowing that these crappy, quickly made images will be completely updated when an artist that can fit the style?

I really hate the idea of 'conforming' to the newer artist because as far as I'm concerned, no one else fits the theme of the website and with this stubbornness to not change my style, site additions would be at a complete halt. I'm about quality, not quantity, BUT I put consistency and interest above all of that.

I'm just bouncing ideas off the community right now. My site is at a complete halt. I am tempted, since I have stopped putting time limits and due dates on myself, to completely revamp my entire website and recode EVERYTHING now that I am much wiser than when I started.

Anyway, thoughts?

[kami]

I'm sorry to hear that you lost your artist. It always sucks when a good member of the team leaves/disappears. I hope you can find someone who can replace him!

As for your question, I'm a bit more accepting when it comes to the VP world so something like that would never bother me. Though I'm sure you'd find a fair amount of people on here who would say otherwise for themselves. (Lots of picky people in this community.)

If you can improve upon/fix whatever older codes you have, I say go for it. You're not in a rush so you might as well make it the best that you can.

[Lion]

@BigThinker, if you post 2 or 3 example of his style, maybe we can try to find you someone?
Im sure there is someone who can help you with his style and quality.!

[Onyx]

I probably wouldn't want to play on a site that had placeholder images, because who knows how long it might be before I'd ever see the actual items? And who knows if I'd like the items once they appeared? It would be annoying to invest time into a site only to discover that the art is just not my thing.

If you're having a hard time finding someone to match the style you want, you may be looking in the wrong place. As a general rule I don't look for site artists on VPL simply because most of them don't work in the kind of style that I need. There are lots of other places on the internet to look for artists though, like deviantart or conceptart.org If you're able to find the style of artist you wanted but but not as cheap as your previous artist, it may just be that you were getting a particularly good deal with that artist for whatever reason, and may have to accept that to get the same quality of art from another artist, you may need to pay more.

Also, you may want to consider that while you may really love this style, it may not be practical for a virtual pet site, due the difficulty of finding artists. I've run into that a bit myself. Particularly where HA clothing is concerned. I made the HAs on my site in a much more realistic style than is found on most other sites. However, it is MUCH harder to find artists who can work in this style and make it look good, and the art tends to be expensive when I do find someone. That means we can have a lot fewer clothing items on the site than what I would like. Then again, there's nothing I'd really change if I had the opportunity, because if I changed the style of the HAs they would not fit in with the rest of the site art anymore. But, it's something to consider carefully before you start, especially if you have a very limited budget. I know I spend in excess of $1000 a month (sometimes far in excess) for art for my sites due to my art pickiness

[Lion]

"I'm just bouncing ideas off the community right now. My site is at a complete halt. I am tempted, since I have stopped putting time limits and due dates on myself, to completely revamp my entire website and recode EVERYTHING now that I am much wiser than when I started."

@BigThinker, I think you should make improvements where needed, if you want any help, just ask and I can tell you area's i think may need improving on.

[vplspride]

Click this link - I have chosen to remove my comments related to this subject matter.

[Hituro]

I wouldn't be keen on a site with placeholder images, but I wouldn't mind a site with more than one art style for items