[HELP FOUND] Low-res pixel art backgrounds for bleak, snowy world

[trevize]

I am looking for a pixel artist interested in doing low-res backgrounds for a bleak future world of snow, and gigantic steam trains.

For a couple of years, I have been developing a storyline loosely inspired by the world of Silmarils' Transarctica, but more in the direction of an adventure/RPG with some strategic elements. As in most adventure games there will be an emphasis on story and dialogue, and there is one central character, but the plot concerns a whole party of characters. When not in a town, the player will have control of a train and travel across an icy continent, trading commodities. Strategic combat will occasionally occur.


What kind of art?
-----------------

I initially thought to use pixel tilesets to create the backgrounds, and the game will probably still use these for the world map travelling, but I really want to get away from the JRPG tiled look. I thought instead to go for traditional adventure game backgrounds but in a very low-res style: 214 x 134 pixels onscreen, with subtle use of colour and animation to bring the atmosphere.

Many of the outdoor scenes will be expansive and very grey. The landscape is permanently snowy, and some settlements consist of little more than hovels gathered around the ancient train lines and platforms. Interiors, as well as the gigantic trains themselves, could be steam-punk inspired.

I intend to make the game using AGS as the engine with the hope of making it tablet-friendly in its interface (ie. no right-clicks). I'm very keen for it to work, for example, on Android.

I hope to take care of most of the character art myself, such as for one of the main characters below:


I don't want to waste an artist's time, so I would be willing to pay some amount of money for all suitable background art done, even if the final game never saw the light of day. I would also welcome creative input on the characters, setting and story.


About Me
--------
I live in Melbourne, Australia.

I've worked on games before, including developing an adventure game engine and accompanying level editor, built on top of the jMonkeyEngine 3D Java-based library. That project, which required making animated 3D models for characters and backgrounds, was a little too much for me, even with someone else doing the concept art. I used Blender and got a few of the low-poly characters and background pieces done, but the scale of the art requirements, as well as doing all the programming and level editing, was way out of hand. This is one of the reasons I want to stick with an existing engine like AGS this time.

The website I made for that game is here, a little demo video here and anyone interested can download an actual working demo for Windows here (just unzip the whole thing somewhere and run the exe file).