mulattafury:

so here’s something i’ve been thinking about and kind of hoping might catch on

commission info pages without prices

maybe ballparking a price like “starts at about $50/character for artwork creation” but don’t put hard prices on anything? ‘cause like, here’s some scenarios

u price your art at $50/character because most of your client base comes to you for character designs like this:

(source)

And someone hits u up one day like “it’s $50 for a character illo right?” and you’re like “yah man” and they’re like “cool cool here’s my character” and it’s more like this:

(source)

Like, that puts you in an uncomfortable position of either doing waaaay more work than you anticipated for a small amount of money, or trying to renegotiate after you’ve already “agreed” on a price without seeming like you’re bait-and-switchin’

Another scenario:

You make an “emergency commissions” post (and y’all know my feelings about those) and someone emails you wanting to buy all 10 of your miserably underpriced slots!

Also, they’re representing an indie card game developer! So they expect to purchase 10 illustrations from you for $25 per, and then print them on cards which they will sell at conventions.

Again, that puts you in an uncomfortable position, because asking for more money after you’ve already agreed to one amount is a weak negotiating move because you’ve already established how little you’re willing to work for.

Other things to consider:

You might be fine working for a client with a smaller budget if their project is something you will really enjoy drawing. Conversely, you might be more motivated to work on a project you don’t really enjoy if you’re able to charge a little more for it

You need to understand usage scenarios and how to price accordingly for them. When someone commissions you they are paying you to create the artwork – they do not own the artwork. If they want to do anything with it besides gaze at it adoringly, they need to pay you for permission to do so.

So yeah, bottom line:

Flat-rate commission pricing puts the artist at a 100% disadvantage. Don’t feel pressured when a client demands your price before even discussing the details of a project with you. Before you agree to a price, you should ideally know:

- Full scope of the project. That is, what, exactly, you will be producing, and how it will be used.
- Client’s expectations. In terms of quality, timeline, deliverables.
- Client’s budget. This one is tricky and you might not get it but if you do, congrats, you now hold all the cards.

Once these are established, you can then offer your client options within the proposed budget, as well as options a little above the budget they quoted you.

THEN you create a contract putting your agreed-upon terms in black and white (here is a website for making contracts, there are a lot of good templates for freelance illustration and design on here as well). THEN you have them pay you (if using PayPal, by invoice.) 

And then I guess you draw their anime OC haha

Happy hunting, and never forget that commercial illustration is a skilled profession that deserves to be taken seriously. Don’t short-sell yourself just because everyone else is.

queijac:

Starting again on July 1st is my favorite online artist event: Art Fight! If you have OCs, and enjoy making and receiving art involving OCs, then I highly suggest you check out the site and set up an account! 

For those who aren’t familiar with Art Fight, here’s a brief overview:

Each year, participating artists are split into two teams. 

The main goal is to find any artist from the team opposite yours, and ‘attack’ them by drawing art of their ocs! Your team receives points based on what you create. 

Artists that receive attacks can then ‘counter’ by drawing an OC belonging to the person who fought them!

The official about page with more in depth information is located here!

Art Fight is a great chance to interact with tons of different artists, get to know the amazing OCs that others have created, and have a lot of fun making art! The art you receive is also very exciting; you never know who may attack you! 

The event lasts a month (July 1st - August 1st), and the team with the most points by the end wins!

My account can be found here, if anyone feels like attacking me! I hope to see you there!!

pikminpedia:

psyk323:

tammdraws:

swedneck:

swedebeast:

tammdraws:

shitpost-senpai:

a-very-large-bat:

dear-tumb1r:

shitpost-senpai:

Artist: Hey guys i need money! Commissions are open!

me:

Artist: Lineart:: $40, Fullbody: $60, Colored: $120

Me:

Look man either pay them or learn art yourself to feed your fat fetish.

bitch 40 for lineart should be the standard, art is a damn luxury and some of these artists need food

@ whatever greyshades is these days, Like I said, they’re kids who don’t know how to haggle.

>Lineart - 2 hours for pencils, 1-2 hours for lines = 3 hours at $40

>$40/3(aprox) = $13/hr - paypal fees and bank transfer fees = 10/hr

>Colour - 2 hours for pencils, 1- 2 hours for lines, 3-6 hours for colour = aprox 9 hours at $120

>$120/9 = 13/hr - paypal fees and bank transfer fees = 10/hr

Art is an extremely specialised skillset that takes anywhere from 5-20 years to develop, costs around 500 minimum entry to be able to create digital art due to requiring a tablet and software, along with enough RAM to run high-layer drawings depending on your program. Thinking you have any reason or right to haggle with someone because you don’t like their prices is some entitled shit my friend. You don’t walk into an autoshop and try to barter with them for their hourly wage and their parts cost, why the fuck would you do it in something else? It’s capitalism, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it but don’t think you have a right to special treatment.

I guarantee you we’d charge hourly if that was a possible standard but because the industry has no standards peope have to charge what will sell and that is ultimately much lower than it really should. Especially considering most of us have standards against drawing furry mpreg vore.

People don’t realize just how cheap commissioned art online actually is. Most of the time you pay the artists minimum wage.

Just think about that for a second.

>500 bucks for a computer used for drawing

Since when do you need an RX 580 to draw? And i really doubt you’d need more than 8GB of ram either, which is standard.

Alot of artists work off shit laptops, myself excluded. The issue is tablets, a good one of which will run you 250 minimum, and the cheapest monitor tablet on the market is a 9" for $520CAD. This in addition to between 50-200 for drawing software, if not included with your tablet can be prohibitively expensive. CSP goes on sale semi-frequently but is still an investment and investments in your business need to be factored into cost of the service provided. In addition, programs like SAI use line smoothing, a CPU intensive process that depending on how much of your computer is working on a streaming program as well as 30+ layers on a 4000x3000 canvas can cause harsh slowdowns and make such tools worthless without a powerful enough computer. Once again ignoring rendering times for 3d artists.

Realistically most artists are working well below minimum wage depending on their country of residence and need things like Patreon to survive, or to keep a steady job on the side. This isn’t a skill you go to school for four years and are workable and hireable, this is a skill that is unique and takes decades to develop into something that you can pay the bills with. Artists are an extremely specialised field and skillset and should be treated as such.

And once again, you don’t like it, don’t buy it you entitled cunt. We get to deal with manchildren and entitled babies that we often don’t have the luxury of saying no to. Do you really want to compare asking for a used table at a swap meet to asking someone to spend ten hours drawing your furry OC taking ten cocks in the ass?

I rarely reblog but this stuff is true.

I started from scratch with a shit computer, shit tablet and shit screen, and have slowly worked from there thanks to commissioners a small few who gave their goodwill to support me and get where I am right now. Most of the time I get paid slightly above higher than the minimum wage for portuguese standards, which are very low, but I would never survive in other countries outside Portugal. EVER.

PS: You do need more than 8gb of ram to draw nowadays without wanting to have your computer shit itself with photoshop alone.

I don’t have anything else to add. Tammdraws dropped the mic on this.

Thought I’d add my own two cents into this.

As a professional artist, I can attest to the time and effort it took to become “good at art” (as friends and family tell me). It took even longer, 5 years minimum, to actually start getting people who wanted to commission me for my style of art.

It’s as the saying goes: “It takes me 10 minutes to an hour to draw you a sketch, but it took 5-10 years of my life to be able to get to this point in which you’d WANT to buy a sketch from me.” (Well… that saying is worded differently everywhere, but the point still stands!)

As everyone else said, art is a luxury. It makes life more appealing and can speak with more words than a regular body of text (which, as an author, I can attest to this. (Not saying authors do not have merit. They’re quite astounding in how they formulate words to create a story.)) Both of these art forms took time to perfect. It took a tenacious attitude and constant support from friends and family to become the artist that people know them for.

If you, or anyone else, wants to tell an artist that their hard work is worth LESS than the gold they see it for, then I suggest you look in a mirror and punch the person staring back at you. Clearly, whoever is in that mirror needs to understand common decency, social etiquette, and the basics of human kindness.

Artists are not pitiful lowly creatures that do your bidding. They are living, breathing people who deserve respect for doing something you cannot do, and doing it WELL enough to be paid the price they have their art set at.

FINALLY: Let the artist decide what their art is worth. If they want your opinion, they will ask it. Don’t assume you’re right in your judgement of price, because you can only speak for yourself, and NOBODY else.

theskywakersketch:

“Use limited colors!” “Use lots of different colors!”

“Carefully plan each piece” “Draw faster”

“Be as neat as possible” “It’s ok if your art is messy”

“Don’t draw stylized work” “Try lots of styles”

fudisi-space-spinster:

cinnabees:

Guys, I keep seeing that post going around about putting uncooked spaghetti noodles in your tablet pen to work as replacement nibs, and I know OP means well and stuff, but PLEASE DON’T DO THAT.

Pasta, no matter how smooth it is, is still a product of dry flour, and rubbing it down on a surface creates micro-sized grit that will scratch up your screen faster than any tablet nib, and they wear down even faster, so it won’t even be worth it. Also, it’s so brittle, if it breaks inside the pen, it will be difficult to clean it out.

Tablet nibs are a pain to replace and buy, but buying a 10 pack of them for $7-8 on Amazon is going to be a better choice than having to pay a heftier sum to repair a scratched up tablet surface/screen.

Spread this post if you can, because I’d really hate to see someone accidentally damage their tablets this way.

@vava-chan-take-over-the-world @datmoki