How to Build an Art Team
In the age of digital ownership, high-quality art is essential for launching successful Web3 projects. Our friends at Concept Art House have shared the below guide on how to resource art for Web3 projects based on their experience helping startups launch and build successful projects like League of Legends, Hearthstone, Clash of Clans, and more for 14+ years.
Hire an Internal Team
Though an investment in every sense, building an internal pool of strongly skilled, motivated art and production creatives is a great move to increase dedicated focus and product leadership. Developing the ability to grow and maintain your own content with a signature in-house aesthetic is advisable if you need to create the foundations of a new IP or if you do not yet have internal resources to audit and provide feedback to any complimentary external creative resources. It is always advisable to have some level of internal art capacity to facilitate external art collaboration.
The biggest drawbacks of increasing internal capacity are speed and the significant time and financial resources required to successfully source, vett, and manage hires. Once you’ve built a team, it is also difficult to ramp headcount up and down which could result in idle bandwidth and wasted resources.
Partner with an Individual Creator
Working directly with an independent creator can result in the rapid production of uniquely stylized content. This path is best if your team is already connected to top creators and is comfortable managing the production process carefully with clear creative goals in mind.
On the other hand, this arrangement is prone to risks like a narrow talent pool, outsized influence from the selected individual, and limited art velocity. Reaching top artists can be difficult if you don’t have a pre-existing relationship and once you engage one, the style you thought you hired for might not test well. Individuals also won’t be able to produce a limitless array of options to cross-test. Often the same artist’s hand will be evident in everything they produce and it can be difficult to provide feedback when an auteur is at the creative helm of a project and they stubbornly hold out for their unique perspective to catch on. For every time-tested IP created with this path, there are dozens that fail to make a mark.
Partner with an Art Studio
Working with an established art studio has many clear benefits like production speed, scale, creative diversity, and the ability to pivot art resources quickly to meet unforeseen needs. Instead of spending time hiring top talent individually, engaging an art studio will quickly plug you in to a wide network of top artists who are capable of producing multiple styles and lanes of art (2D, 3D, animation, trailers, etc). This one-stop shop solution allows your team to iterate quickly, navigate uncertain future demand, and scale art production faster than any other path without the risk of management overhead or idle bandwidth.
The drawbacks to this path are paying a premium for the expertise of a pre-assembled and capable team which may be pricier up-front than other options. Many studios will also be unfamiliar with or ideologically against web3 projects so finding a web3 native studio can be difficult.
If you do choose to work with an art studio, Pantera has an exclusive portfolio perk with Concept Art House, the industry’s premier Web3 art studio, to provide your startup with the best art in Web3. There is more information on Concept Art House below, and if you are interested in accessing any of the portfolio perks please email their CBO at Patrick@conceptarthouse.com with “Pantera Portfolio Company” in the subject title and he will get you started.
