Eurobeatjester wrote:Atario wrote:
Hmm. You, uh, wanted to see this scene quite a bit…
That's not a bad price for that piece of artwork, the detail involved, and especially if there was a lot of back and forth on it.
There's a bit of a controversy in the "commission" community right now where you have a ton of newer artists that are charging way less for stuff than older veterans and undercutting what the rates used to be. The piece I had commissioned from Saki cost be about a quarter of what it would have a few years ago.
There's a legitimate movement in the community to get people to charge more for their work because they're underselling their own abilities and are worth a lot more, but a lot of the people who have jumped on that bandwagon are upset because they can't charge what they used to.
It also doesn't help when some of these newer artists are a lot better than the old guard.
I agree with you. It's one thing if it's a quick caricature like you see sidewalk artists draw (no offense to them, of course that takes skill as well, but those are very quick and doesn't take up a lot of time), but this drawing took up a lot of time from him. There was a lot of concept pieces that he drew for me that in themselves were quite detailed and artistic, yet they were just to discuss possible poses, backgrounds, and other details. And honestly, if I had the artistic ability to do that, I wouldn't be charging anywhere close to under $100 for that. That's a skill that not every one possesses, so I think that it deserves a bit of a premium. If it's something just anyone can do, then I can see not charging much for it. The way I see it, an hour for specialized work should cost much more than an hour of non-specialized work.
And even knowing that maybe if I shopped around I could probably find a better "deal," working with Eduardo was very nice as he was really receptive of any changes or alterations to his work. For example, on the original pre-final drawing, where it was basically done, just needed to do some shading and other finishing touches, he sent it to me to make sure everything was ok. But I found that he made the top of Rin's head slightly too large. I was kind of afraid to say something, hoping it wouldn't insult him, but based on our conversations prior to that, I felt that he should be pretty receptive on what I had to say, so I told him about it, and he was happy to fix it for me without making any fuss over it. I know he was cool about it because I offered to pay him a little more since it was supposed to be done and I was asking for an alteration, but he turned it down and told me that he only would charge more if I was actually changing something, that was something he felt he might have drawn a little off, so he was fine with fixing it for me. So in the future, I wouldn't mind working with him again even if someone else might be cheaper. The only way I might approach a different artist is if I was looking for a very different style than what Eduardo does.