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Okay, So Commissions are Getting a Revamp
10 years ago
Updated commission system:
I now work on all commissions by the hour. (Reason explained below) So, $10 hr on everything I do. (If you were quoted a lower price in the past, that will stand, but I think I've only quoted on person) So, that means that if you want me to do something for you I'm going to give you a rough estimate of what I think it will cost. If you want something cheaper expect a significantly less amount of time to be put into it.
Dude, so this last commission I had I finished today. My girlfriend takes leatherwork commissions on her etsy. (They're awesome, I've been trying to get her to post them over here too so I can show her off, but c'est la vie) Anyway, she got a couple of commissions recently and she is going to make more on one of those commissions than I've made the entire time I've taken commissions on my art. I was jealous and frustrated because she is absolutely making what she should on her work, and here I was, sitting here busting my ass to make 35 bucks and Paypal was gonna take a cut. :/
It took me two hours to ink and color this piece: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16265006/ (I timed myself, and this is with no breaks, just flat-out work) and I'm pretty sure I spent at least two hours on it today before I got to that point. Actually, I started around 11:30 and didn't finish until six. Even assuming that I wasted an hour and a half in there it's six hours just today.
To put that into perspective for you, inking and coloring is the part that takes me the least amount of time. It was already to this point (here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16157883/ ) before I even started working on it today. My low estimate for how long it took me to get to that point is three hours, but I would say it's probably closer to five. So overall it took me anywhere from 11-15 hours to do this piece (not counting thumbnail sketches) for $35. This is anywhere from $3.18-2.33 an hour. Holy crap. I hadn't realized until today how badly I was cheating myself, and this is with an updated price scale that was about $10 more per item. :/ Given my updated pricing this piece would have cost $110-150.
So, I don't know where that leaves me. I highly doubt anyone will pay that much for what I'm selling when there are plenty of other people out there willing to do artwork for far less than minimum wage. At one point a year or two ago I was doing timed sketches to make myself faster, and I can draw faster, but the detail falls to the wayside. I don't really know what to do here. As is, I'm trying to get a job and maybe move states, I don't have time to work for $2.33 an hour when I could be filling out job applications. That's absurd. I mean, yeah, I do this to give myself an excuse to draw fun stuff, but today was a wake-up call. I can't keep doing this to myself.
I now work on all commissions by the hour. (Reason explained below) So, $10 hr on everything I do. (If you were quoted a lower price in the past, that will stand, but I think I've only quoted on person) So, that means that if you want me to do something for you I'm going to give you a rough estimate of what I think it will cost. If you want something cheaper expect a significantly less amount of time to be put into it.
Dude, so this last commission I had I finished today. My girlfriend takes leatherwork commissions on her etsy. (They're awesome, I've been trying to get her to post them over here too so I can show her off, but c'est la vie) Anyway, she got a couple of commissions recently and she is going to make more on one of those commissions than I've made the entire time I've taken commissions on my art. I was jealous and frustrated because she is absolutely making what she should on her work, and here I was, sitting here busting my ass to make 35 bucks and Paypal was gonna take a cut. :/
It took me two hours to ink and color this piece: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16265006/ (I timed myself, and this is with no breaks, just flat-out work) and I'm pretty sure I spent at least two hours on it today before I got to that point. Actually, I started around 11:30 and didn't finish until six. Even assuming that I wasted an hour and a half in there it's six hours just today.
To put that into perspective for you, inking and coloring is the part that takes me the least amount of time. It was already to this point (here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16157883/ ) before I even started working on it today. My low estimate for how long it took me to get to that point is three hours, but I would say it's probably closer to five. So overall it took me anywhere from 11-15 hours to do this piece (not counting thumbnail sketches) for $35. This is anywhere from $3.18-2.33 an hour. Holy crap. I hadn't realized until today how badly I was cheating myself, and this is with an updated price scale that was about $10 more per item. :/ Given my updated pricing this piece would have cost $110-150.
So, I don't know where that leaves me. I highly doubt anyone will pay that much for what I'm selling when there are plenty of other people out there willing to do artwork for far less than minimum wage. At one point a year or two ago I was doing timed sketches to make myself faster, and I can draw faster, but the detail falls to the wayside. I don't really know what to do here. As is, I'm trying to get a job and maybe move states, I don't have time to work for $2.33 an hour when I could be filling out job applications. That's absurd. I mean, yeah, I do this to give myself an excuse to draw fun stuff, but today was a wake-up call. I can't keep doing this to myself.
You know, most commission artists (I'm reworking my commissions guide for this factor) charge by categories, because being told what to do makes it go by so much faster - busts, icons, portraits, even silly face commissions. If you have a standard size and presentation, you spend much less time trying for this. Leatherwork, say, has many fewer variables than visual art, and balancing the "head work" with the "hand work" is at the key to so much of this...
You know how in olden daes there was a scale of how "impressive" genres of art were, ranging from history painting at the top to portraits to genre painting to landscape to animal art to still life on the bottom? It's also a good measure of how goddamn hard each genre is to do right, and a useful thing to keep in mind.
I was a bit concerned how much time it would take to render full color figures like this? There are so many variables (size, pose, every limb, composition) that get exponentially harder the farther you go into this. It's a problem that busts, say, don't have.
Hell, I don't even have a category for "full color full figure" or comics art. I say to describe size, medium and scenario and I'll give a free estimate. I love doing watercolor comics work, but I haven't even attempted one in ages. It just takes too much time - it's not just unprofitable, it actually eats away into my free time for nearly anything else.
Tl;dr Maybe start smaller than this? Black and white comics pieces I've seen you do, or color sketches without that much detail... A full-color full-figure fetish subject that isn't exactly very easy to draw (TF may not involve drawing as many buckles and leather straps as bondage, but it's replaced with a crippling kind of freedom - a transformation can go any damn way the artist wants, and you have to be very disciplined for it to make sense)? I'm sadly not surprised it took longer than you budgeted for.
I give you full permission (you can screenshot this one for proof) to use that picture as commission bait or in your ads - it's given you enough grief it seems only fair, and it IS quite awesome enough to be a show-off piece.
(And I want to reassure you - she may, in the finished piece, be missing the armbands, but I actually like it this way. I only put those on myself so if I ever drew myself as feral (which I... never do) I'd be able to identify her. It looks more realistic with the snow leopard markings alone. <3 I know I worry endlessly about every detail about my commissionees I err on, so I thought I'd reassure you about that.)
Live and learn, you know? Mostly I'm annoyed that I can't keep drawing the way I want to draw. I want to be able to use these skills I've worked on to make a little extra income but it's so difficult to promote yourself and while I can make all sorts of craft stuff it's basically starting over on promoting myself (stuff that wouldn't go over on this website) and re-learning how long it takes to make stuff and trying to get people to pay what it's worth. :/ I have a lot of ideas and things I think people would buy, but every time I start out on one of these projects it turns out to be too labor-intensive. I don't know, I'm just annoyed. We've got a cool idea for something we could make together, but then it's a matter of how do you split the costs and profits. Just ugh. I have offered simpler stuff in the past and nobody bought it. Basically whine whine bitch bitch complainnnnnnnnnnnn.
Honestly, I'm feeling better about than I was, I just have to sit down and work out a better system and hope for the best. I'm hoping that having done some nsfw stuff will up my traffic a little bit and give me a chance to do more stuff. We'll see, basically.