Hiring a freelance layout artist

[OnlineDM]

I've written some adventures that I've distributed for free on my blog, and I'm in the polishing stages for my final adventure in a trilogy. I'm not planning on selling these adventures or anything like that, but I have some disposable income and would be willing to spend some of it to hire a layout artist to help make my adventure look nice. This is simply an area where I don't have skills.

I also might be interested in hiring some visual artists for some artwork in the adventures, though I'd also be happy to just license existing works or find some public domain art if there's anything good out there.

Can anyone offer me suggestions on how I should go about hiring these sorts of people, especially on the layout side of things? Or should I just try to develop those skills on my own? I just don't even know where I'd go to find people who do this type of work.

 

[alms66]

rpgFREELANCER.com: role-playing games, vacancies, jobs, artists, writers, auctions
That's one such place.

Or you could go over to rpgnow or drivethrurpg and pick up a pack of art and do the layout yourself in Word/Open Office (all you really need to do is put in your two or three columns broken by headings), with a background and some other artwork scattered around (that would be the cheaper method by far).

 

[shadowmask]

...Can anyone offer me suggestions on how I should go about hiring...?...

Good morning, OnlineDM. I think I can help with at least some of your questions.

Usually, I send a pm regarding business; unfortunately, I am unable to do that this morning. I have some layout credits to my name with Rite Publishing. Depending on the size of the project, I can help you out with this, and possibly the visual art as well.

Please, either pm me here, or email me at marie.small1@gmail.com if you are interested. I have a portfolio I'm more than happy to send you.

If you'd rather go with stock/licensed art than commissioned art, you can google "stock art creative commons" and that should give you some resources.

Hope this helps, regardless of whether you contact me or not.

 

[OnlineDM]

[MENTION=52236]shadowmask[/MENTION]: My apologies; my Community Supporter subscription expired a week ago and I renewed it, but it hasn't raised my private message inbox limit yet (I guess it's a bug). I'll follow up with an email later (in a few days, most likely).

 

[shadowmask]

[MENTION=52236]shadowmask[/MENTION]: My apologies; my Community Supporter subscription expired a week ago and I renewed it, but it hasn't raised my private message inbox limit yet (I guess it's a bug). I'll follow up with an email later (in a few days, most likely).

No worries. Whenever you can.

 

[OnlineDM]

After playing around with some of the other suggestions for the do-it-yourself approach out there, I've decided to settle for my own lousy do-it-yourselfness in the end. I appreciate the suggestions, and my apologies to [MENTION=52236]shadowmask[/MENTION] for deciding to do my own thing in the end.

 

[shadowmask]

After playing around with some of the other suggestions for the do-it-yourself approach out there, I've decided to settle for my own lousy do-it-yourselfness in the end. I appreciate the suggestions, and my apologies to [MENTION=52236]shadowmask[/MENTION] for deciding to do my own thing in the end.

No worries. I certainly understand the desire to do it yourself. Good luck, and let us know when we can sneak a peek.

 

[Matt James]

Spend me a PM, Online. I have a good friend that does freelance layout work for some big gaming companies.

 

[Living Legend]

After playing around with some of the other suggestions for the do-it-yourself approach out there, I've decided to settle for my own lousy do-it-yourselfness in the end. I appreciate the suggestions, and my apologies to [MENTION=52236]shadowmask[/MENTION] for deciding to do my own thing in the end.

You're timing is good in the sense that the newer versions of Word (2007 and above) are way better at laying things out than previous versions. I do a lot of this at my job for internal documents, and with old versions there was a lot of trial and error. Open Office isn't bad either. From what I've heard they aren't as good as professional software, but if you don't need anything fancy they work just fine and don't require near the money or learning curve.

With that disposable income you've go you could also take a look at a class at a local college or similar to familiarize yourself with whatever program you choose. I know the continuing education classes at my local branch of Indiana University are about $150 a pop and last for a few weeks a couple days a week (or online), so not a big commitment there in time or money.

 

[Alan Shutko]

With that disposable income you've go you could also take a look at a class at a local college or similar to familiarize yourself with whatever program you choose. I know the continuing education classes at my local branch of Indiana University are about $150 a pop and last for a few weeks a couple days a week (or online), so not a big commitment there in time or money.

Another option is Lynda.com. The link (which gives me nothing, btw) offers you a seven-day trial, and it's $25 a month after that. Lynda.com is a library of videos on how to use lots and lots of software. I've used it to learn a whole bunch about using the Adobe applications, but they also have classes on Office and almost anything else you can think of. There are a lot of classes on layout and design, and tons of stuff on creative applications. (Including one on the GIMP!)