3D Artist for Carved-Wood Birds for Godot Game

SUMMARY I'm building a wildlife game in Godot 4. I need six birds built as medium/low-poly stylized assets in a hand-carved painted-wood look, rigged, with a small set of looping animation clips. There is already a working game with sixteen other critters in it, so this is a drop-in replacement against a known, documented contract — not open-ended concept work. The art direction is largely settled and I have reference images. Looking to build a good relationship on this project to expand upon and work on the project past the demo phase or to even expand work into other areas of the demo. THE LOOK Hand-carved whittled wooden bird figurines. Chunky flat knife-cut facets, visible carved wood planes, matte painted wood in natural pop colors. Wing and tail feathers read as separate flat wooden slats in banded rows of color. Think folk-art bird carvings / decoys, not realistic feathers. I'll provide reference images for the species. The wings must be genuinely modeled, spread and separated from the body, with scalloped feather trailing edges — not flat cards and not fused to the torso. SPECIES (6) American robin, blue jay, raven, small owl, downy woodpecker, great blue heron. The first five share one spread-wing T-pose. The heron is a taller standing pose with a long neck and long legs. SCOPE Modeling, texturing, rigging and animation: six textured .glb birds, each with a skeleton matching the bone contract below and four looping clips. TECHNICAL SPEC (HARD REQUIREMENTS) A model that misses these gets bounced back, so please read them. - Format: .glb (glTF 2.0 binary), one file per species. - Triangles: 50,000 per bird maximum, triangulated. Anywhere under that is fine — spend the budget where it reads. - Bodies: exactly one connected, skinned mesh object. No loose parts, no leftover helper geometry in the file. - Symmetry: bilaterally symmetric, tail centered on the body midline. - Scale: robin wingspan 1.18 units, nose-to-tail length 0.965 units along Y. (The game applies a 0.4 scene scale, so it lands at about 47 cm across.) Scale the other species relative to the robin as life proportions dictate. - Orientation: facing -Y, +Z up, origin at the body center, transforms applied. - Materials: one material per bird, dielectric (non-metallic). Baked color/albedo texture, 1-2K. - Texturing: paint the whole bird — general vibe is captured pretty faithfully in the concept art drafts. RIG Twelve bones. The skeleton must use these exact bone names, with this parenting: root tail_1 (child of root) chest (child of root) head (child of chest) wing_arm_L (child of chest) wing_hand_L (child of wing_arm_L) wing_arm_R (child of chest) wing_hand_R (child of wing_arm_R) upper_leg_L (child of root) lower_leg_L (child of upper_leg_L) foot_L (child of lower_leg_L) upper_leg_R (child of root) lower_leg_R (child of upper_leg_R) foot_R (child of lower_leg_R) Wing bones run outward along +/-X in the rest pose. Legs and feet are required: the birds perch on branches and the player photographs them at close range, so the feet need to make honest contact with the perch. Claws/toes can be simple — they're never seen up close — but the foot must read as a foot, not a stump. ANIMATION Four looping clips per bird, named exactly: - idle: perched/settled. Wings folded against the body — a real 2-bone fold at wing_arm + wing_hand, not the wings scaled to zero. - move: flight. Wings spread and flapping. - coax: a short "noticing the player" beat. Wings folded, head turn. - land: flight to settled transition. The wings are modeled spread. idle, coax and land must fold them down against the body convincingly. Wing-to-body interpenetration during the fold must stay under roughly 10% of body width. This fold is the single hardest part of the job and the thing I will look at first. WHAT I PROVIDE - Reference images for a few species as a general art and vibe reference. - The bone names, clip names, scale and orientation in this document — that's the whole integration contract; you don't need my project to hit it. - I do the integration pass, so Godot experience isn't required. ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA Each bird is accepted when it: 1. Meets the spec above (format, tri cap, single skinned mesh, scale, orientation). 2. Reads correctly from front, side, top and rear. 3. Folds its wings cleanly in idle with no visible interpenetration, and all four clips loop without a pop. I'll review species-by-species. The robin is the gate — we get it fully right and signed off before you build the other five. That protects both of us: you don't build five birds against a misunderstanding, and I don't pay for a batch I have to reject. SKILLS Blender (or Maya/3ds Max, but delivery is .glb), hard-surface / stylized low-to-mid poly modeling, clean topology, UV unwrapping, texture baking, character rigging and skinning, keyframe animation. RIGHTS Work-for-hire. Full commercial rights and ownership transfer on payment, including the right to modify and redistribute in a shipped commercial game. Please confirm you can agree to this. Do not deliver anything built on assets you don't have the right to transfer. TO APPLY Please include: 1. Portfolio links showing stylized/low-poly creature work — ideally something with a hand-carved, faceted, or folk-art feel. Please point me at a specific piece and tell me what was hard about it. 2. A one-paragraph note on how you'd approach the wing fold (spread-modeled wings folding to a perched pose). This is the crux of the job and the answer tells me a lot. 3. Confirmation you can deliver .glb hitting the spec above. Please don't send a generic proposal. Mentioning the wing fold tells me you read this.