Your question #1 involves a legal question. You must not use any art that belongs to other parties, when those other parties have not explicitly placed the art in the public domain or offered it for use freely without restriction. If you want to obtain clarity on this matter, start a new discussion in the Business/Law forum.

And upon closer examination, your question #2 incorporates business questions as well (payment, hiring). So the mod of this forum might decide that the whole thread more properly belongs in Business/Law rather than Visual Arts. (In any case, it certainly isn't a Game Design question.)

You can recruit artists using the Classifieds.

When you have multiple questions of different categories, best to post individual questions, separately, in the appropriate forums.

Your question #1 involves a legal question. You must not use any art that belongs to other parties, when those other parties have not explicitly placed the art in the public domain or offered it for use freely without restriction. If you want to obtain clarity on this matter, start a new discussion in the Business/Law forum.

And upon closer examination, your question #2 incorporates business questions as well (payment, hiring). So the mod of this forum might decide that the whole thread more properly belongs in Business/Law rather than Visual Arts. (In any case, it certainly isn't a Game Design question.)

You can recruit artists using the Classifieds.