Actually designing now. Woot!

Okay enough ranting, I'm actually going to put my money where my mouth is and design a damn game. I now have the basics to make a 2D fighting game for the Gamecube (with logic abstracted away from draw code so I can eventually finish it for PC once my devkit access goes bye bye). I've decided to finally shut up and attempt it instead of a typical side scroller shooter which is easy because the art is easy. I'm mostly wanting to focus on the fighting engine which means that this project will be contingent on finding some dedicated 2D character artists/designers to take ownership of at least one character each. I'm going for two characters initially just to get a proof of concept up. No artists will mean, back to the side scroller which I already have some art for :(

I'm also a firm believer in strong character design, after all I never got into Guilty Gear despite the strength of the fighting engine because I couldn't get into the characters. However Melty Blood React is very similar but I like the characters a lot more and got pretty hooked last weekend :) I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who has existing character sitting around where you might have once wanted to make a fighting game but couldnt find an engine or programmers to make it. Yes I know of Mugen, but I want this to be a coding exercise too, not just design :)