hi, im working on a top down 2d cyberpunk style action / RPG and was thinking about art lately. ive been working on the code for a while and i wanted to start putting some real art into the game. im still not sure on which art to go with and why. basically, i have 2 choices : pixel art or 3d art. by 3d art i mean taking screen-shots of a 3d model, and by pixel art i mean sprites made like in MS Paint pixel by pixel. i personally feel that pixel art is much nicer and has more character then 3d art. but theres a big problem, i dont know if i'll be able to find an artist, and even if i do, he will most likely bail on me a month into giving art, and ill have to find another. the main concern i have is each artist's work will be differnt looking and have a different feel. im not sure if that will definetly happen, but it seems like a good posibility. which makes me think, does that mean i should NOT go with pixel art, considering ill (probably) never find a dedicated pixel artist to make a bunch of art for a long time ? my other choice is 3d art. im not sure if this will be easier / harder to find an artist for. i also think that for a square tiled RPG, that pixel art will look nicer. but its one main advantage will be, at least i *think*, is that if i do find an artist, when he bails out on me, i could find another and the second guy's art wont be dramatically different then the third. im thinking that 3d art is easier to make look similar, no ? this would make it so my only real choice would to be go with 3d art. the main dis-advantage to 3d art, is that if i have 3d characters, wont i need to make the tiles and props as screenie's of 3d models also? im thinking this would be a lot of work. the last thing i was thinking was, what about mixing styles of art? is it wrong and ugly to mix 3d art and 2d art? for example, for sprites and tiles i use pixel art, but for the profile of a character (IE, their face image when your chatting with someone), would be 3d rendered art. would a mix like this be bad? i dont think ive ever seen a game with mixed art before, and thats probably for a good reason. one last thing id like to add, is that lately ive been trying to do my own art. what i do is use Poser, go into cartoon with line mode, and take a snap of the model from a top down RPG angle. then i paste the snap into paint, and the line-art is done for me. i just do the coloring / shading. they actually didnt come out that bad, considering this was the first time in my life ive ever tried to do anything artistic on purpose. i suck really bad at art. are they that bad? i was thinking it might be stupid for me to be taking a screenie of the model for line art and then pixeling the rest. why go through the trouble of pixeling it if i can just dress up the model in the first place and then use 3d art instead of pixel art for my characters? the problem with this is then the main dis-advantage of 3d art again, making props / tiles. or maybe i could mix? thanks for any help!

There's a few games that mix 2d with 3d, including Final Fantasy 7 and hamumu soft. It's definitly the cheapest way of producing a lot of character sprites.

Any good artist can make their artwork look like a prevous artist's work, which at mots contain a few niggles. If I were in your situation, I'd either.

1. Group your graphics into logical groups, like Overworld Tile set and underworld tile set and assign artists to that paticular set Inconsistancies are not as noticable, since they're logically different.

Or

2. Do it yourself and use the thousands of game sprites as your guides. This is definitly not an artistic 'high ground', since many artists believe pose copying is exactly like copying. However, you can't copywirte a pose, so it's perfectly legal. You'll know it'll all look simular and you know it'll get done, since you can trust yourself.