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Thinking of "complex" animation, and a potential price raise
9 years ago
█ █ █ - - - - █ █ █ So, first off, "subtle" animation is both kinda confusing as to what that actually means, and also restrictive as to what you can get. Basically, if I can just tween + clean up or just mess with details, that counts as subtle. For instance, if someone's pointing straight ahead, I can make them point up and that would still count as subtle, since all I'm doing is rotating the arm and cleaning up stray pixels.
As I get more confident in my animation skills, I'm also able to do more dynamic things with it. So eventually I'm thinking of adding prices for "complex" animation as well. What that means is animating between at least two "keyframes", or alternate poses. Think of it like street fighter animations; a standard idle stance can just be a few parts shifting and maybe a couple rotations and small re-draws. A punching animation, however, requires redrawing a lot of things; the arm itself, the torso leaning forward, the head tilting slightly, so on and so forth.
I may price them per keyframe, so the price will vary wildly depending on how complex the animation is. This will also take significantly longer to produce, so other, simpler commissions may be pushed ahead in the queue so a relatively large animation doesn't clog up the list.
I don't have any planned date for adding this, it's mainly just a thought.
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As for the price raise, I've been told by multiple people that I'm underselling myself, and I agree. I want to stay affordable, but some add-ons may be getting more expensive. The base price seems pretty fitting; a static, single character, 50x50 icon is fairly simple and quick to make, but an animated, 100x100, animated icon with a detailed background increases the difficulty (and thus the time taken) by much more than their cost.
I will put up a notice before I raise any prices, possibly a week or so beforehand. For now there aren't any exact price differences or dates set in stone.
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<3
As I get more confident in my animation skills, I'm also able to do more dynamic things with it. So eventually I'm thinking of adding prices for "complex" animation as well. What that means is animating between at least two "keyframes", or alternate poses. Think of it like street fighter animations; a standard idle stance can just be a few parts shifting and maybe a couple rotations and small re-draws. A punching animation, however, requires redrawing a lot of things; the arm itself, the torso leaning forward, the head tilting slightly, so on and so forth.
I may price them per keyframe, so the price will vary wildly depending on how complex the animation is. This will also take significantly longer to produce, so other, simpler commissions may be pushed ahead in the queue so a relatively large animation doesn't clog up the list.
I don't have any planned date for adding this, it's mainly just a thought.
--
As for the price raise, I've been told by multiple people that I'm underselling myself, and I agree. I want to stay affordable, but some add-ons may be getting more expensive. The base price seems pretty fitting; a static, single character, 50x50 icon is fairly simple and quick to make, but an animated, 100x100, animated icon with a detailed background increases the difficulty (and thus the time taken) by much more than their cost.
I will put up a notice before I raise any prices, possibly a week or so beforehand. For now there aren't any exact price differences or dates set in stone.
--
<3
And while I like the fact that it's cheap, I almost feel bad commissioning you for so little, and definitely think you should start raising the prices. For an example, I think $30 is a fair price point to pay for my icon (which I did, but after tipping you an extra $12) and would even argue that it'd still be fair if you raised that to $50, though that would be cutting it close depending on how clean it looks.
As for complex animations, somewhere around the realm of $100~$200 depending on the complexity sounds pretty fair. I've seen your work, and while your quality tends to fluctuate mildly depending on the piece (every artist suffers from this, it isn't an insult) a fair amount of these pieces would definitely be up there in value. For example, if you added more details (the foreground is colored and such instead of darkened out) to a piece like this then it could easily be worth near $150. Of course, that's just my opinion; some would pay more and some would pay less. To determine where your audience stands, it's better to try incremental price increases rather than dramatic ones so that you don't immediately drive people away.
I really love your style, and I look forward to seeing how you grow from it in the future! Also, I'll totally commission you again, even if it somewhat breaks the bank in the inevitable future where you're able to charge a good amount for your incredible work.
Cheers!
Yeah, I wasn't planning on raising the prices more than maybe a few dollars at a time.
You were talking about how your queue might get shuffled up some, well, what if you took like one or two complex commissions to work on while doing simpler ones between them if you need a break from the complex ones and make sure that it's understood by the commissioner about such a thing. Granted, I don't know how your work flow is, it was just an idea. Regardless, I think your work is great and I'm definitely going to keep following and hopefully get more from you! I've already got some ideas. X3
And yeah, I'll definitely tell the commissioner that anything complex will take a long while and will have some smaller commissions done while working on it.
Ive seen a few artists do it this way, they will take on a whole bunch of commissions of all different types, smash through them to see how long they all take for the sake of adjusting pricing. This is of course great to figure out how much addons should be, but not good for figuring out base price, thats a lil harder.
Your pricing was always destined to start off low, thats just the nature of being a beginner seller, attracts customers and gets you into the hang of how things work. You have a full queue, and no trouble maintaining it, you should eventually raise your prices. i think the ideal situation is to have prices high as possibe while still getting steady buyers, and if you get into a slump you just offer a sale.
"fair" pricing is what your customers are willing to buy. (or you can be like some popular artists that severely underprice themselves so that every time they open, they're full up within seconds of posting, causing arguments and fighting over slots)
Re: complex animation, for the sake of simplicity you could have something callled "blinkies" which would just be things like something falling in the background, sparkles, blinking, small repeated motions. and "full motion" animations, large things like moving limbs etc. I think blinkies should be a flat price simply because itd all be fairly similar, while full motion animations should definitely have a varied, quote based price. Say you'll do it for between $50 - $100 depending on complexity, for example.
Some artists have a "large commission" queue which is open ALL THE TIME but with limited slots, and obviously a longer wait time. Mostly things like fully rendered scenes, animations other than "blinkies", 4+ characters, environmental scenes etc.
PS. get the hang of good communication now if you can. its a skill few artists have. And one of the most valuable. And have a good thought about stuff like your refund policy, post-completion edit policy. Sooner or later someone is going to try and abuse and take advantage of you, and its good to be prepared.
Ahem, you know me, i can talk for hours about business stuff x.x