[Flinthawk]

Well, here's my latest piece...it's about 99% done, just a few tweaks I need to do before I out an end to it.

The reason for the subject heading is because this was done as a commision for someone who saw some other works of mine and wanted me to do a pic of his Iksar Necromancer (an Everquest race/class combo for those of you that don't know). I've been approached by people to do art for money many times before but this is the first time that I've actually accepted...never could bring myself to take money for my crappy art but now that I'm an artist by trade I suppose I'm within my rights =)

I'm asking the forum here, newbies and veterans alike, to tell me what you think would be a reasonable price to put on this piece (I've already come to terms with the buyer but I'd like to know what actual artists think before I start doing this on a regular basis). I think I've spent a solid 7 to 8 hours total on this piece, if that factors into your decision at all. Personally, time doesn't matter to me...as long as I think the customer is getting their money's worth and I'm not handing over something that I think is crap, no matter how much they like it anyway.

Oh, and any constructive criticism would be welcome as well =)



...and here's a link to the Hi-res image

IksarSketches3_HIRES.jpg

Thanks for any input you guys have. This forum's great!

-Flinthawk

[This message has been edited by Flinthawk (edited November 20, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Flinthawk (edited November 20, 2000).]

[CapnPyro]

Well, what would you pay?

[Flinthawk]

Well, that's the problem Capn...I wouldn't spend money on something I can do myself...just like I don't pay a mechanic to change the oil in my car or change a tire, I can do it myself so why pay?

All I know is what I wouldn't pay which is the outrageous prices I've seen other less talented artists, for lack of better words, charge for their work. I've seen sites that charge up to $300 for a two character piece and they aren't even done that well . That's why I'm hoping for a response from some of the people on this forum that do work similar to this for a living...it'd help make me feel right in knowing that I'm charging a price that's fine with both the buyer and myself.

Anybody have any thoughts?

-Flinthawk

[This message has been edited by Flinthawk (edited November 21, 2000).]

[[Shizo]]

I know about people drawing for EQ players.. One thing you're missing out though is a cool background from real EQ place and equipment really showing out that the character has.. For example if he had a real kickass sword, you'd put a huge beautiful sword in his hand to underline the presense of it. It looks like this character owns a 1337 spiked mace.. but if it was pictured really big with character showing it to you, the scene would be more exciting..
Also you may want to center the text and find a more suitable font for it

Just a few mein ideas, might find a couple of them useful.

------------------
Chinese student do homework, AND they study real hard!

[Flexible Elf]

I'd be willing to wager that those lesser quality works that were going for $300 probably aren't selling well. Character drawings for RPG's are a tough thing to price. Your painting of the character is definitely better than a lot of stuff that I've seen as far as RPG portraits go. It's all in how much time you spend and how much you feel your time is worth. You wanna sell well but you also don't wanna wind up doing it for minimum wage and wasting your time [as fun as it may be, but later once you start doing a whole crapload of them and you think the character ideas suck, it gets boring real fast ]. Since the painting took you 8 hours you should just think of going maybe 15-20 bucks an hour. Maybe around $120-150? And then either go by hour or just go a flat rate. Most people like the flat rate because they don't care how long it really took you and they don't wanna pay for that extra hour or two from the last one.

I dunno. You also have to think of how much money the people you're doing drawings for have. I've heard of Everquest characters going for $1,000 on E-bay so some players have money to throw around.

You've got some definite skill so don't undershoot yourself. Just don't start charging thousands and thousands until you've got a name

I'm no expert, I've undershot the time/money thing before and regretted it. But I hope that helps a little. I'm a monkey!

-Flexible Elf

------------------
http://www.geocities.com/flexible_elf/Main.html

[Tiger Eaten]

How large is the full work? Dimensions?

It's hard for 3rd party people to judge this in a way. An example of this would be: Say someone paints a great picture of your girlfriend. To you it has so much more meaning than to anybody else. You might want to frame it and put it on a wall or something, while to anybody else it's just a nice pic of some girl and they aren't going to open up their wallets for it.

I don't know if I'm being clear. But your client is paying for a custom work that hopefully he has had a fair bit of input into, he chose you as an artist to do it which I would infer to mean that he has seen and liked other of your works. The ball is in your court. I'd recommend that instead of picking a price out of thin air, you set yourself an hourly rate and multiply by the amount of time you spent on this work. If you consider your skills worthy of $30 dollars an hour and worked for 3 hours on this then you are owed $90 dollars. I've found if you break things down in this way, the figure you end up with is usually quite fair. Hope this helps!


------------------
ROAR! CHOMP! MUNCH! (You've been tiger eaten!)

[Tiger Eaten]

Ooops! I didn't see Flexible Elf's post and now I am nothing but a boring repetitive shell of a man. Ummmm.....like he said.


------------------
ROAR! CHOMP! MUNCH! (You've been tiger eaten!)

[Xcal]

Take a look at this site. Pricing information is listed.


http://www.illuminatorsguild.com/



[This message has been edited by Xcal (edited November 21, 2000).]

[[Shizo]]

AHahahHAHAhah!!!
check this out
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/zoom.jsp?producttype=mousepad&storeid=crowolf7&groupno=1

Do you know who's face is it in the middle? Asia Carrera! It's a pr0n star!!!!!!(!) How do i know? Because some tech guy made an interview with her with some "special" pics.

And everything else seems to be copy/pasted from somewhere else.. $15 for this? I wouldn't like whores pictured on my mouse pad/milk mug with poorly drawn clothes on them and some copied background.. Not nice :p

------------------
Chinese student do homework, AND they study real hard!

[Flinthawk]

Xcal: thanks, never knew there was a site like that around...very informative. I actually recognized some of those pics from a few of those artists from fan sites I've been to.

Shizo: man, that's fugly and I hope nobody paid $15 for that, hehe.

-Flinthawk

[Fianchetto!]

Flinthawk- Well, here is my two cents... In '98 I started a small web design place and targeted Mom and Pop storefronts. I assumed that they wanted a presence on the Internet but were concerned about how to get there. Well, through a lot of marketing I got some business a good bit was Logo design. So, enough with all of that. I did a good bit of Logo design for a set price, 50$. I then found that I had more work than I could keep up with (that being my second job). It seemed that the Mom and Pops were looking for someone all along. I then began to do Logo's and stuff exclusively because of the shear amount of jobs. I found out exactly what Flexible was saying. I was doing stuff I didn't want to do for a far to cheap of a price and some stuff was very detailed wich took a while. Soon after, I changed to what I feel is an exceptable rate and now charge an hourly rate of 25$ with a minumum of 75$ and also a maximum of 150$. It also seems that a customer (again in my targeted market) wants to really know what the MAX amount would be. If you fall within their comfort zone then they're happy. I guess what I'm saying is cheap quality work is a gold mine for word of mouth but you could drown in the sea of replies... I will say that I would have paid (having commissioned the work) 150$ for the pic, that is given the size and resolution of the finished product and that it met my particular parameters. Also, some people do not know the value of their money and will through away twice the amount as the average person. Unfortunatley you can't spot them because they look just like everyone else. Then again you can't rip anyone off because the first time you do the word of mouth works against you and your work is gone for good.

By the way I think the pic is very nice and you definitley have the talent to go forward.

Whoo! Sorry for all of that. I hope that at least some of it helped.

-Phil

[Flinthawk]

Shizo: Thanks for the input man. I've taken a lot of what you've said into account when I started this image. I did a bunch of thumbnails for just the pose itself and this's the one he liked most...he liked the effortless look to calling down the plague on his enemies, heh. Honestly this was the last pose I'd pick, the least dynamic pose, that I had sketched up but, hey, he's the customer =) He loves what I did for his ketchata (the mace, though it's considered a staff-like weapon) since in-game it's a brown stick with some spikes. It's not an uber weapon, or 1337, so he's quite literally astounded with the look I gave it. The most important things for him were the robe, the pose and the helm. The rest is just fluff that I added. I'm still debating the font though...I need to find something a bit more evil

Flexible Elf: this was the kind of info I was looking for, thanks. For this piece I'm only charging $50 since this's the first person so he gets a special 'introductory' rate =) I think I'm undershooting myself right now but I think it's more important that I get a few more jobs under my belt in order to make a name for myself. In a few days I'm probably announcing that I'm officially taking orders for portraits and I was thinking about starting off in the $75-100 range and working from there, possibly working my way up to but no more than $150 depending on the response I get. I just needed to know if that was going to be considered outta line. I was basing these figures on an hourly rate converted to a flat rate. At least it looks like I wasn't off in my thinking. And yes, EQ players tend to have LOTS of money it seems...I still remember last summer when my friends and I tracked the prices on Platinum (EQ currency) on EBay and found the exchange rate to be better than that of the Mexican peso!

Tiger Eaten: I think the hi-res image that there's a link for in the original post leads to one done at 1000x1500. I know what you mean about the pic meaning something to the buyer...I do my best to think about that when I'm working on it. He did have LOTS of input along the way...I made sure of that. He mostly told me that he's trusting me to go crazy on it but I've made sure to send him updates on the progress right from the beginning sketches and letting him pick which concepts he liked best. You're right, he did pick me because he looked at my site and saw my design sketches for a dragon I built for a 3D animation...he liked the 'soul' I gave to the pics and was wondering what I could do for his Iksar =) As I replied to Flexible, I did the hourly rate thing but I know that not too long from now I'll be able to produce something like this in half the time so I'd rather work my way to a reasonable flat rate. The image that got me noticed took me about 20 hours...this second one took me about 8 hours and came out better than the first...and I'm only getting faster as I get comfortable with this. Anyway, thanks for the input...it really helps me a lot.

Thanks for the input again, guys. I just want to make sure I'm doing things right and going about this in a fair way.

-Flinthawk

[Flinthawk]

Very informative, Fianchetto!. That sounds like a good approach you have there...a minimum and a maximum based on an hourly rate. I, too, am worried that I could get inundated with a sea of replies because of low prices but it'll help if I come up with a good mid range price that can hold the waters back a bit, if they need holding back at all =). Thanks for the input and compliments.

-Flinthawk

[Loukus]

Well... uh... I probably wouldn't pay anything for it, it's not exactly my cup o' tea, but i suppose if your into the shadowy outcast monster motiff... I bet if it was a human or... a jedi like guy, you know with a cloak and whatnot it would be more appealing for all.

JL

[EviLToYLeT]

might just be my video settings.but that picture is dark. I recomment brigthening that glow on the charachters right hand and also having some of that glow on the guys body..... .. you gotta light up the character a bit...

[Flinthawk]

Loukus: Well, I guess I got the whole idea of the character across if you're getting the feeling that this guy is a shadowy outcast =) That's exactly what this race/class combo is within Everquest...the most hated being in all the land. Not only is this a race that doesn't have ANY good faction with good or evil races but being a Necromancer means that he pretty much has no chance of being accepted into any culture but his own. Just to clear up a minor fact, I wasn't necessarily asking if you'd buy this particular piece but if you'd buy a similar quality piece done to your specifications, kinda like what Fianchetto! said...if the piece was done assuming he was the one calling the shots on what was in the image he would have felt comfortable paying such and such price. On another note, I don't think I'd wanna do Jedi's or people in cloaks...I've enough of that in the past, time to move on =) Thanks for your input though...at least I know I got the feeling of the character across.

EviLToYLeT: Yeah, you're right, that's where that 1% of work left to do comes in. I'm still playing around with the robe but I'm afraid to lighten it because it's already lighter than what the actual robe is...it's quite a dark red in the game, bordering on black. I am planning on revisiting the green glow to bring out some of the higher areas on the front of the body since I've got the keylight coming from behind this character. Thanks for the comments...I'm definitely keeping them in mind, as I do any comments given to me.

-Flinthawk