Seeking Artist For Long-term FFXI Graphic Novel

Greetings! About a year ago, I posted about wanting to create a FFXI webcomic (technically a graphic novel) on Reddit ( https://pay.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/wu970/currently_preparing_to_create_a_weekly_ffxi/ ). Well, the plan still stands, but due to several RL responsibilities, I've had only little time to practice my drawing for this endeavor.

So, while I'll continue practicing and working towards creating all of it on my own, I thought I might as well ask around on the off-chance there's a capable artist willing to put this humungous amount of effort and time into what is pretty much just a hobby.

The art style I'm going for would be something like this ( http://i.imgur.com/JqYEXSM.jpg or http://i.imgur.com/CM0tlfW.png ), albeit slightly more realistic/serious, particularly with regards to the eyes and obviously less overkill with the details and shading. Also, since coloring requires a quite significant amount of additional work, black&white is absolutely fine.
The storyline will be considerably darker and more violent/bloody than in the game, and there'll be lots of magic effects. Decent backgrounds are certainly necessary, as well.

As you can see, this is asking for quite a lot for nothing in return, hence why I don't expect any takers. But it doesn't hurt to try, especially since Square-Enix basically gave the official go-ahead just recently: http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1&tag=authc.

I'll also be cross-posting this to Reddit for visibility.

Thanks for reading!

PS: If anybody could get me a dump of the game dialogue/script, I'd be insanely grateful.

I don't know...

I mean, your first post, reddit, a game going in it's teenage years, and nothing in return?

Good luck in your endeavors.

I don't see the whole "nothing in return" thing as that big of a deal. It's a hobby to him, so it stands to reason that someone else out there might have a similar interest in doing the illustrations just for fun.

I don't think anyone can expect to make money off a webcomic, regardless of the topic. Almost all of them fade into obscurity; the successful ones start out doing something they enjoy until they manage to reach a certain critical mass of readers that can carry the project forward through ad revenue and sometimes merchandising. While it's true that an FFXI comic will almost definitely never reach that point (due to the small base community and the eventual legal ramifications of merchandising SE's intellectual property), there's no reason this sort of project couldn't just stay in the "doing something we enjoy" phase.

In any case, this site has certainly seen its fair share of talented artists over the years. A lot of them paint or draw FFXI scenes in their spare time--I think ffxiah is a perfectly reasonable place to look. I know I'm not the only one around here who enjoys their art, so an entire series could really make a splash. :] Then again, I might just be biased because I know Aerix. :P And if we're seriously back to caring about post counts again, he can have some of mine. XD

Well, I'm more of a lurker than a poster, so while I haven't been participating in discussions, I've been around for years. The only reason why I posted first on Reddit is mostly because I've been more active there.

If this were something one could feasibly commercialize, I certainly would offer reimbursement (hell, I definitely know how much work this would entail and I really appreciate artists), but Square-Enix cracks down swiftly on those who infringe on their copyrights.
Anyhow: as I said, asking can't hurt. I'll be drawing it on my own if I can't find anybody else. It'll just take considerably longer before I can launch. But thank you nonetheless.

Edit: /poke Carrelo! You need to show up on Skype more often D: We haven't chatted in quite a while.