What style are you going for? Hyper realistic unique demons with unique rigs are going to be infinitely harder to get your hands on than some generic low poly type characters.
You kind of want to think backwards if you just want generic humans. Think about the rigging and animations first, because if you can ensure your artists you commision use the most generic form first, or at least create the art in such a way that it’s very easy to rig them to the most generic and easily used rig, you save yourself a ton of headache and you can dump all sorts of animations on it later simply buying it off the asset store.
Think of the rig like a wall outlet, you probably want the most generic one that 99% of appliances plug into, and not some weird one that will only work with the custom animations you do.
There is a lot that goes into getting art done right that you will later use in the full game, especially for characters as rigs and animations can get tricky.
If you’re not too familiar with art, or you’re not sure what style you want, or the performance benchmarks, or even which shaders and materials you plan to use for which parts of the character, you can be stuck having to go back and forth with artists for a very long time.
I’d highly recommend taking SunnySunshine’s advice, and just find some modestly priced “placeholder” assets, but you might be surprised, you might be able to find some very good assets out there for a decent price, that you really like and have a solid rig and animations, and maybe you could pay an artist to modify that just a touch and make it “yours”.
Beyond that, it’s super important you know what you’re asking your artist for, be able to sell the gig to them, and to have very clearly defined pay, quality expectations, and timeframes. Don’t pay too much up front, and pay for small ammounts along the way, don’t pay the full commision until they give you a quality asset up to the standards they show in their portfolio and that you agreed upon.
Important: Don’t show weakness, don’t be like, “haha, you’re the expert”. Be the boss, don’t goof around too much, this is business, you’re spending your hard earned money. Let them know along the way what you expect and your standards and do not waver. Most people out there are lazy and will try to swindle you and try to make it your fault if their art doesn’t live up to expectations. Be professional and honest all the way through, and stand by what you expect from them. Don’t get tepid early, maintain the expectations of quality from the very start and be unwavering.
There are a lot of burned out artists, or people who take shortcuts in all sorts of ways out there, who will do ok for the first day or two and then fall off a cliff. It’s a real jungle out there. Generally speaking, you can tell when an artist is going to be any good when they have a good demeaner about them, they communicate promptly and they just act professional and positive and everything goes very smoothly. If you encounter any speed bumps at any time it’s usually a huge red flag that there will be problems.
If you want the most bang for your buck, you’re going to want to poke around lots of forums and find someone lesser known who just seems to have an awesome portfolio.
While I was commissioning art for my game, I sold it to potential artists by saying fish are super easy to make and you could probably make a couple high quality fish a day, no items required, no hair, etc. Super simple. Just keep in mind, if you want top notch work, a fully rigged character it could end up costing thousands of dollars if you want competitive quality, not just for the art, but the rigging too. And if there are game breaking issues with the rig, you may not catch them until the artist is long gone not being an artist yourself. Make sure the art is in Unity and doing all the thigns you need it to do in the build before you cut off communication because there are lots of things that cuold potentially go wrong with rigging and materials and poly counts and who knows what…
Not sure what you’re looking for with your project, but if it’s something fun or interesting to work on, or easier than other games, make sure you sell that in your pitch to artist.
Edit: Oh yeah, if you just google for generic NDA’s and commision contract stuff you’ll get stuff you can copy and paste into an email. You need a papertrail of the agreed upon amount and that you will own the art rendered.
Make sure you have “style sheets” ready to give the artist an idea of the look, color, form, visual quality, poly count, style, etc. that you want.
As for payment you’ll just want to give a low amount up front for some concept or an ealy mock up. It’s important you both show you’re serious, them creating some art, you giving a bit of $$$, maybe 50 bucks or something. If the art at this phase is way behind the quality you expected or you feel things are fishy, don’t be afraid to back out and find someone else.
From here if things are good, maybe pay 25% of the full amount for a mostly done asset that you want some revisions to. and then 100% for the finished asset. The first asset is the one you have to really go back and forth on and be careful with so no one gets swindled. Once you find an artist that gets the job done and knows what you want, it gets a lot easier and you can streamline the process once trust is built. But a lot of this comes down to what the artist is comfortable with, you gotta meet in the middle sometimes.
