Short Summary

This is Horde of Cuteness! and I am J Everett Nichol, an illustrator and game designer with a passion for free culture and free software. My professional goal has been and still is the creation of gorgeous, comprehensive collections of art and game assets for anyone to use forever. I release my art under creative commons licenses or else into the public domain so there are few if any barriers to using them.

Utilising the support of my Patreon, one of the collections I created was a set of cute fantasy character icons I called the Questquest Icons. I want to expand that collection and create a full catalog of heroes and creatures for game designers and enthusiasts of things fantasy and things cute. With your help, we could create the largest single collection of free fantasy characters and creatures.

Ultimately, I'd like to create a large enough collection of art to fully illustrate a card game under development called Questquest. But why should I have all the fun? Let's make free art for everyone to use!

What We Need & What You Get

My Patreon has allowed me to create a number of free art collections, but its structure tends to favor smaller sets of works. I usually create four to six of a given collection and then move on to another project to keep my patrons interested and try out new ideas and styles. The Questquest characters began as a Patreon project; a project which I loved so much that I painted more freebies than paid illustrations, bringing the total at this point up to fourteen monsters.

That's why I'm turning to indiegogo. My patreon is perfect for creating small packs of art in many styles, but with IGG I can dig deeper into individual collections. If the preliminary funding is obtained from this campaign, I can eschew freelance for the time necessary to add an additional ten characters to the collection (2 heroes, 5 monsters, and 3 boss monsters chosen by the backers). Additional funding could see our little horde of cuties grow to a truly impressive size. All the characters will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 license, and will be made available as .pngs with transparent backgrounds, and will have include .kra or .xcf source files for editing the characters yourself. All new images will be 2000px by 2000px.

Backers will receive gifts for their contribution and will get to vote on which of three boss monsters are included in the collection. If the campaign is especially successful, additional boss monsters will reveal themselves. If they are defeated, they and five of their minions will be added to the collection. Also, wandering monsters will join the collection if certain goals are achieved to defeat them.

Risks & Challenges

A significant portion of the funding goes to supporting me while I take time away from freelance in order to paint all the characters. I'm guessing finishing the initial ten will take about a month. But another major portion of the funding will go into fulfilling the gifts and rewards due to backers of the campaign. So if the campaign is not fully funded, it is unlikely I will be able to fulfil physical rewards, though other rewards will be unaffected,

Apart from that, there are very few risks for this campaign, I love this collection and I would like to see it grow until there are dozens or hundreds of them. I am passionate about the project, and I do not foresee any difficulty in creating them or backer rewards should I achieve funding.

Wandering Monsters

Wandering Monsters are new monsters that have joined the Horde. If they're here, they're included in the collection in addition to the primary goal. Defeat a wandering monster together and a new monster shall appear to join the horde! The Phrase of Power is #hordeofcuteness.

Huge shoutout to my Patreon patrons who funded the original icons: