I've decided that I'm going to hire a couple of artists to work on assets. I'm too out of practice to draw anything I'd be okay with releasing and I don't want that to kill the project. I have the means and resources to delegate that to more proficient artists and so I am going to do that. I will probably still work on some sketches and things here and there as I fall in love with my characters through the story writing process, but I have been cruising subreddits and bsky pages for artist that I think will bring a unique style and look to the game and I have a few shortlisted that I'd like to work with.

I've got to get brakes for my car with my next check but so long as that isn't crazy expensive I should have plenty of funds available to get some profiles/ref pages done for the starting characters needed to make the planned demo.

I'm also looking at hiring a BG artist because I hate doing backgrounds, but I'm worried that might be too cost prohibitive without additional support. I've also looked into building scenes in UE5 and then playing with the styles and textures and editing them in Clip Studio as an alternative to trying to draw everything. I've spent most of my free time working on moodboards for the characters so I don't have any game progress to update, but I'm going to be working on it today. Hopefully I will have an update soon with some preview art!