Seedbound is a turn-based roguelike strategy game with stylized cel-shaded visuals, targeting a 2028 Steam release. I'm the developer running a funded, one-person studio (me!) alongside a small team of contract artists. A concept artist is designing Seedbound's creatures, and I'm looking for a 3D artist who loves bringing creatures to life! You would model, texture, rig, and animate them in Blender from finished concept turnarounds. Ideally, this is one person doing both the modeling and the animation.

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Screenshots & design reference

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What I'm looking for

• About 50 stylized creatures, delivered in monthly waves of roughly 3-4 creatures, through 2027 and possibly into 2028. I'm happy to go faster if you have the capacity.
• Each creature belongs to one of six archetypes: biped, quadruped, flyer, blob, serpentine, and floater. Each archetype has a template skeleton (provided, see below), and creatures can have optional bones like ears and a tail.
• The workflow for each creature is: model from the concept turnaround → simple UVs → texture with a color mask → fit the archetype's template skeleton and skin to it → animate → export. My Blender add-on helps with the rig fitting, checks your rig and animations, and handles the export.
• Animations are shared within an archetype. Each archetype gets one set of six animations: an idle, a movement loop, two attacks, a skill cast, and a death. You'd animate the full set once, on the first creature of each archetype. Every later creature of that archetype reuses it: you copy the animations over, then fix anything that doesn't fit the new creature's shape (like feet sliding or an arm passing through a bigger belly). My goal is that you're not making 50 bespoke animation sets!
• Possible follow-on work if interested: clothing and weapons fitted to the player character's existing base mesh. These would be priced separately.

My preference is to hire someone that does both modeling and animation. That said, if you only do one or the other, you're still welcome to apply! Just let me know in the form.

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Technical details

I explain all of this in detail in the style guide that I'll share for the pilot:

• Blender 5.1 or newer is required, along with my free Seedbound Tools add-on which I'll provide.
• 3,000-5,000 triangles per creature, aiming for about 4,000 (the eyes are a separate small mesh). In-game, up to 40 creatures can be on screen at once.
• Each creature's body is limited to four colors plus black, and patterns like stripes and patches are flat areas of color. There's no painted shading, highlights, or surface detail like fur on the body, since the game's cel shading handles the lighting. Instead of painting final colors, you paint a "color mask" where red, green, blue, and transparent areas each map to one of the creature's colors, so I can recolor creatures in-game. The eyes are the one exception: they get their own small painted texture (iris, pupil, and highlights) in any colors, based on the concept art. There are no normal maps, so there's no high-to-low-poly bake step.
• The rig is bones only (no shape keys), usually 15-30 bones per creature.
• Animation is 60 fps, in place. Attacks, skill casts, and death animations are only 400 ms (25 frames). Loops (idle and movement) are whatever length suits the creature, a couple seconds or less.
• Auto-Rig Pro (recommended): the templates come ready for Auto-Rig Pro's Quick Rig, so you can animate with IK/FK controls. Copying an animation between creatures works best this way, since the IK controls keep the feet planted on legs of a different length. If you don't own Auto-Rig Pro and Quick Rig, I'll reimburse you for both. If you have your own preferred workflow, that's OK too, as long as the template skeleton is what gets exported.
• Deliverables are a .glb per creature (exported with the add-on), its textures, and the source .blend file.

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Style‍

The concept artist's sheets set each creature's look, so the modeling side is about carrying a design into 3D faithfully. Seedbound's creatures are colorful, quirky, endearing, and mischievous: somewhere between kind-of-cute and kind-of-dangerous. The creatures have rounded forms with clean silhouettes. In-game, creatures are mostly seen at a distance from an angled top-down camera, but they also appear close up in detail screens, cutscenes, and other game modes, so they should have personality in both their shapes and their movement.

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What I'll provide

• A finished concept turnaround for every creature from the creature concept artist (front/side/back, an action pose, and the creature's colors).
• The template skeletons, a detailed style guide and tech spec, and my Blender add-on. I'll also share some short recorded tutorial videos for using the add-on.
• Fast feedback, usually within 24 hours on weekdays, plus regular batched reviews.
• We'll work mostly async over email or Discord, no regular scheduled meetings. We can have an optional kickoff call at the very start, if you'd like. If you have occasional questions for the concept artist about a design, you can also talk with them.

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Terms

• Scope: 35 creatures and all six archetype animation sets are committed, with up to 15 more creatures at the same rates, confirmed by Oct/Nov next year.
• Paid pilot: one quadruped from a finished concept turnaround, modeled, textured, and skinned to the quadruped template rig, with a looping run cycle. Then, copy the run onto a second quadruped skeleton I'll provide (shorter legs and a longer body, no mesh) and fix the feet and hips for its proportions. $1,000 flat (50% upfront, 50% upon completion). The pilot is paid at the top of the range to account for a bit of time spent onboarding. The paid pilot will likely run in November. If we are both happy with the pilot, the rest of the quadruped animation set follows right after, and creature waves would start in early-to-mid December, as the first finished concepts come in.
• After the pilot, payment is per approved unit at our agreed rates. You can invoice me as each one is approved or batch them monthly, whichever you prefer. If for any reason you cancel partway through a wave, I'll pay for each completed unit. If I cancel partway through a wave, I'll pay for every completed unit and let you finish anything already in progress.
• Full IP assignment.
• 2 revision rounds per unit included.
• Payment within 15 days of invoice, usually faster.
• Creature designs, models, and other project details are confidential. I'll grant portfolio display rights when I publicly reveal each creature or 18 months after delivery, whichever comes first. Before then, you can show the work privately to potential clients or employers, as long as it is behind a password-protected or private link.

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AI policy

No AI-generated content please! This includes AI-generated meshes, textures, or animation (including AI motion capture from video), and modeling, retopologizing, or animating over AI-generated output. It is important to me to keep all art in my game 100% human-created. If you do use AI for any part of your working process, please describe how you use it in the application form.

As safeguards:

• For every creature, I will request the source .blend file in addition to the .glb.
• I might also occasionally request a work-in-progress .blend partway through a creature.

Add-ons and tools (Auto-Rig Pro, sculpting brushes, and so on) are fine to use. Purchased base meshes, asset-pack models, or animation libraries in the final files aren't, unless we talk about the license first.

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How to apply

Fill out the short form (should take about 10 minutes). I'll review applications as they come in, and will choose 2-3 pilot candidates by November 6th.