Artists - What is their use?!

[Ab]

So I hired an artist, but 90% of the time he just sits around doing nothing. I set him to the role of "Artist" to make sure he doesn't add delays or bugs to my development. Throughout the entirety of my software production, he does nothing.

Is it because I am mainly in the Visual / Audio software market? I figure there might not be much graphical need (aka Artist) in making this stuff.

Would artists come into play much more heavily developing a game or game engine?

Basically, I want to know how I can best use them. Should I have them in a team of their own? When should I switch software production over to their team (in the design or programming stage, etc). Thanks!

[Vinolik]

When you start creating a new software, you can see a precentage down in the right of the software creation window. Often its like 10-0%. That simply means they will not work a lot.

[Burger McFries]

They're pretty much worthless.
Just educate some of your staff in artist-ing, and you'll be all set.

[Vinolik]

I usually only have one or two artists in a 20 employee team

[ChaoticDNA]

Artists work during the alpha phase alongside the programmers. When you hover over the project on the right of the screen it gives you the charts filling up for the diferent bits of work being done (how much completed/how much left) in design it's blue as it fills up, for coding it's green & the bit in red is the art work - sometimes there's a dividing light splitting one of the rows (eg 2D or Audio) in half, this is because half the work is coding & half art, sometimes they have to fill a full bar not just half a bar (something to be mindful of if you have your workers roles designated with coders & artists in separate groups, as it's less easy to spot than a half way dividing line on the bar is).

So far as I've encountered, projects in A/V have had no art but I've only gone as far as 1993. Some software types have a huge amount of art eg:large games, with all the better options (so 3D graphics rather than text-based) selected it had something like 53% art (changing the design components can vary it upto 80% or lower it to 0% if you leave out graphics, music & dialogue - not sure if it stil classifies it as a large game then though lol) and there are some contracts that are 100% art (I think usually game assets IIRC). I found they seem to work better when they're set as artists, even if they're multi-talented, I'm not sure if this is because they prioritise say coding over art; of course it could also just be my perception. I have a seperate team of 6 artists and they do great. I cycle the work through so they're rarely not doing anything & staggered their hours so they stay later than others & that seems to work well for them. I suspect that the reduced amount of work they tend to do is why their pay is a lot less than the others. If you don't like them idle at all I guess you could also put them in their own team without designating them as artists, train them as marketers too and have them doing both?

They don't *seem* to work on the beta phase based on when they complete an alpha phase they stop working completely, whether they would chip in part way through, I dunno - I never give them the chance after passing it back to programmers for bug bashing.

Hope something here helps. :)