2D Game Artist — 16-bit Pixel Art + Painterly Fantasy Scenes for Mission-Driven Mobile Game

2D Game Artist — Pixel Art + Painterly Fantasy for a Self-Care/Self-Development Cozy Game We're building an idle behavior-change mobile game based on the latest neuroscience on behavior change. The mission: spread curiosity and kindness, build self-awareness, and help people actually change. The game is the delivery mechanism for real behavioral science that has helped tens of thousands of people through clinical-level programs. We're looking for one artist who can carry the game's visual identity across two registers: (1) Game-world pixel art — top-down 16-bit style in the spirit of Stardew Valley: a walled castle hub, forest surroundings, buildings, props, and character/creature sprites. Muted earthy palette, warm golden accents, crisp pixels on a true native grid. (2) Painterly fantasy key art — higher-resolution, atmospheric scenes (think HD-2D / Octopath-adjacent) for story moments, onboarding, and app store presence. Same world, more cinematic. We have AI-generated concept art that establishes the mood, palette, and layout of the world. You will not be cleaning up AI output. The concepts are reference material — mood boards with opinions. All game-ready art will be your original work, drawn by you. We want an artist's eye, craft, and consistency; that's why we're hiring one. First projects (roughly in order): - Castle hub map. Redraw our castle courtyard as a 3×3 grid of screen-sized tiles (360×720 px native per tile, 1080×2160 full map) from a detailed spec we'll provide: layout, path network, and edge-matching rules are already worked out. You bring the craft — true pixel grid, seamless tile edges, consistent light, game-ready PNGs for Godot (nearest-neighbor scaling). - Gremlin designs. Concept and design the gremlins — the creatures embodying bad habits. This is the most original creative work in the game: they need personality (menacing-but-sympathetic — players befriend their gremlins as much as they battle them), a coherent creature language, and readability at small sprite sizes. - Painterly key art. 1–3 full illustrated scenes (e.g., the glowing tree at the heart of the castle) for story beats and marketing. - Static art for now. Animation (walk cycles, idle loops, gremlin behaviors) is likely future work — if you animate, say so; it's a plus we'll want later. How we'll start: a small paid fixed-price trial (~$150–300): one gremlin concept + one castle tile section to spec. If we're both happy, we move to an ongoing hourly contract at ~10-20 hrs/week with a steady asset roadmap. We're looking for a long-term collaborator, not a one-off gig. Logistics: - Starting with a paid, fixed price deliverable (we will be working with 2-3 artists to see how well we work together and quality of deliverables), followed by: ~10 hrs/week ongoing, hourly rate depending on experience - ideally at least 4 hours of working-time overlap with US Eastern Time for occasional live reviews; otherwise async (Upwork messages, Loom, annotated feedback, SIack) Deliverables: layered source files (Aseprite/Photoshop) + exported PNGs; specs provided per asset Engine is likely Godot (though we are testing other approaches) no engine experience required, but pixel-perfect export discipline is To apply, please include: - Portfolio links showing top-down game pixel art (tiles/environments and characters or creatures) — this is a must - Any painterly or high-res fantasy work — if you only do one of the two styles, tell us which; a truly strong pixel specialist is still interesting - 2–3 sentences on how you'd give a "doomscrolling gremlin" a visual personality - Your animation experience, if any (not required now) - Start your proposal with the word CURIOSITY so we know you read this :) We care about this mission and want an artist who finds it worth caring about too.