I’m working on three game projects (my side projects), One is Flutter front end plus C# back end, another is the same but a different type of back end and the third is a mobile game with C# backend but its put to one side until the others are done. These are all side projects.

I’ve bought graphics and they do up to a point- e.g. kenney.nl is very good. But sometimes you need something a bit better or that’s not covered by that library.

Now one of the things I’ve done is use low costs artists from sites like Fivesquid.com and fiverr.com. Many of these artists are very good but live in countries where things are a lot cheaper than here in the West. Exploitation? Maybe, but they are happy to do the work and it saves me a fortune. What might cost me a couple of hundred pounds here in the UK can be done for say £20.

But I’ve found when dealing with them that you can’t take anything for granted. You have to have a bit of patience and explain everything including your expectations. And make sure you nail the price down exactly. I had arranged everything with one to do 35 small graphics and he wanted £35 for each graphic. Despite his advert saying 5 graphics for £10!

So I’ve found, you need to specify file format (.png or .jpg), layout- single files or in a sheet in a grid. Also fivesquid have a thing where when the order is delivered, you have three days to mark it complete or asks for changes. One artist said it was complete but hadn’t quite got it ready and the three day period expired before I’d received anything. So I could hardly accept nothing. It was though a genuine mistake on the part of the artist and I did get the graphics eventually.