Would you hire an External Art team?

With the rise of indie games development, more and more games art jobs have begun to pop up all over the place. Also, the projects are getting larger and larger too. So it would make sense that those studios with medium-sized projects would need more than one artist right?

While the standards obviously remaining high - if not, they continue to rise, I find it hard to believe that the required manpower remains the same. That is, one or a few freelancers to fill in for - obviously - a lack of human resources in a studio's art department. Even if a studio was to bring together a few talented artists to form their own in-house team (whether temporary or permanent), unless they knew each other prior to starting, it would be hard to co-ordinate efforts and get the job done. Or rather, get the job done to a high standard that looks unified and works well together.

What I do know is that there are contractors out there. Massive Black is one of the more popular ones (I actually have two of their books on my shelf), but I was wondering; there has to be more if projects are getting larger and larger.

Scrolling through the jobs section in Polycount the other day I came across two projects that specifically stated that they needed a team and not just one artist. Mainly because the scope was so large, but if anything, it demonstrates that there is something of a need here.

So that got me thinking about it for a while. I'm lucky enough to have a well-organized team (it's a small team but we're tight) and we figured that, if there really is a (rising) need here, perhaps we could send our artists out to work with other studios while the prototype team focuses on the programming and basic building blocks of the game.

I am aware that it would be a project management nightmare, but (and I say this with utter confidence) a talented team that works as a single, well-oiled machine can work much more efficiently than a team of talented artists that don't really know each other. And another thing, every job will differ based on the studio's requirements - like financial budgets, and the project scope - but on the plus side, if they knew at least a little bit about the other members of the team, then wouldn't it make sense that the studio wouldn't have to look too far for an alternative?

But perhaps, I should let you decide:

Here is a little survey about this somewhat intriguing topic. Feel free to fill it in and share it with your fellow developer.

Until next time, I'll see you later.