Commission Prices Help?

Hi!

I've asked about but not really gotten anywhere, however people have shown interest but anyways...

I'm new to the world of Commissions.  As much as I like to take Requests and do Art Trades, like all Artist’s there comes a point when we're in desperate need of some income.  In my case Art is my Career.  I just completed my Degree in Animation and am now building up my Portfolio for the Industry. 

So I'm asking, realistically how much do you think I should charge for my artwork?  I'd be doing full coloured 300dpi works of pretty much anything the Client asked of me if that helps?  Btw I am flexible with styles.  I can do cartoons and semi-realism and if needed I could even give anthro art a go.

Now here's a few snags I've come across:

GPB and USD differ greatly, as I'm from the UK £'s is my currency.  So at the moment the average wage is £5-something.  Now an artwork takes me about a week-week and a half to complete but I can work faster, just depends on factors like art block, lack of motivation or one of those days where every drawing turns out rubbish.

I work from the paper-based sketch right up to the finished digitally inked/coloured artwork.  This has to be a form of income so I need to charge realistic prices.  Now as mentioned a person can earn £5-something an hour wages so I realistically can't afford to charge peanuts for hours-upon-hours worth of work.  Not that I don't enjoy what I do, heck effort (that's the perfectionist in me for you), energy and passion go into my works.  Surely that's worth something right?

So I see many American Artists charging from $5 to $30+ and that might seem a lot.  But here's the problem, whilst say $20 is a lot in their eyes for me it's only £10.  So it's a little, well sad, to hear people complain that even small amounts like $5 is too much.  That's £2.50, that half the cost of my Retro Gamer Magazine.   To charge a reasonable price in GBP it just ends up looking at fortune in USD.

It's also not helped, but those I've noticed people on DeviantART charging ridiculous prices like £2-£3 for a fully coloured Artwork.  Now that's up to them, but it's somewhat hard to be taken seriously by people when there are people charging so cheap for their works.  Suddenly everyone expects you to be charging that that much or less!

I want to be fair but I don't want to be ripped-off for the time etc I put into the work.  I'm 22-coming up 23 soon, I have bills to pay and stuff.  I'm aware most people who DA Watch me are Kids.  No problems with that, I want to make it affordable but seeing as I am going into the Industry and etc this is serious for me and not just a hobby.  Another thing is, do people not save up anymore?  I have had people say the usual "I'd like to Commission you but..."

Anyways any advice/help is greatly appreciated. 

~Angelina

That's a difficult one, cause I live in NZ- I have to convert USD over and it can get expensive to me. I think you need to create a demand for yourself. Once you have that, then you'd have more luck. Pound for NZers is triple though, so for a 20 pound commission, it's $60 NZD for me, in which I'd expect a pretty damn awesome pic. I think you need to deal with the fact that the exchange rate is a challenge, and if you can't lower it to a point that the Americans want to purchase your art, then perhaps you need to go to look more at the local market and see how you do lcally only. I don't know how easy it is to get commissions there, but you have one of the most expensive currencies to buy ^^; I don't envy that...

Hon, no matter WHAT you charge, 99.9999999% of commissioners will complain it's too much. Even the $5.00 price tag. Online the majority of people who want to commission art are teenagers and they are notoritously short of money.

1.) In my experience you can slash prices and get a handful of takers.

2.) Get your money FIRST... I used to collect after the fact but after being screwed out of payment more often than getting it. Collect FIRST. If they bitch, they were going to stiff you the money in the end.

3.) Looking at your art, I see you are into Nintendo, your audience for commissions will be very young for the most part, it's a small niche. Look at others doing commissions in the same genre you draw and price yourself competatively. Look at their art compared to yours, see how you measure up to others in the skill arena and price yourself accordingly.

That's the best advice I can give. Look at your genre, look at others selling art, look how your art compares and then price it that way.

After my experiences at AnimeExpo and Fanime this year, I saw most good artists selling their 11x17 prints of existing artwork for $10-15. There was this guy selling his prints for $20 and people were happily paying it but he's really good.

Considering you are doing commisions which means custom illustrations, I would say the price should be far above that, at least around $30-50 for a full color piece. I personally believe most artists are selling commissions for way too little money. Unless your doing quicker more cartoony stuff that you can knock out fairly quickly then go lower.

It may be better in the end to just draw what you like to draw and sell those prints at anime conventions. You probably couldn't get away with it online since its infringing copyrights (somehow cons are magically allowed to infringe japanese copyrights?! If someone knows the answer to this I'd love to know). However I don't know how much it costs to get a table, plus there's the convention admission fee.

The video game crowd is aging though. If you go with some of the retro stuff you might get an audience with more money. A friend of mine subscribes to retro gamer and I'm borrowing his History of Zelda issue which is really awesome. Sorry slightly off topic... I just thought it was interesting that I'm in US, your in UK, and you mentioned a UK magazine that I'd first heard of yesterday and am borrowing. Weird.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.  It's been very helpful.

I agree with BogusRed, Artist's do charge too little for their works.  DA is proof of that and sadly it’s the Artist and the Client who seem to get conned.  This is because the Artist charges so cheap but also the Client, after purchasing a Commission can then discover that the Artist is taking Requests.*Sigh* It’s hard to make it fair for everyone.

I'm aware most of my audience at the moment are kids....strange though that these kids who claim to be so poor (after all $5 is too much) can afford $40 for a game etc which they saved up for!

Slightly off topic, but there was an Artist on DA asking how much people would pay for their works (a bit like me at the moment, lol) and some people said they'd be willing to pay $1 when answering the Poll.  I managed to get into a debate with another DA Member over this Artist's possible Commission Prices.  Basically this Member said I, like any one else, were greedy for even dreaming of charging any more than say $1.  Now I can see where they're coming from that a Video Game might be more fulfilling than purchasing an artwork, but seeing as artwork is cheap it's pretty hard to justify the purchase of a Video Game and then complain they can't afford $5.  Saving up springs to mind...?  Anyways I quit their pointless debate, they were clearly someone who wants things for free.  There's too many people with this mind set unfortunately.

So anyways, people complain that even $1 can be too much.  So who's the more greedier?  The Artist who's trying to earn a morsel to get by in Life or the Games Company who charge a small fortune for their product, sell millions upon millions and make a profit.  Not that I have anything against any Games Company, but the way I see it is if a person can afford to save up for a Video Game/New Brand Name Trainers etc. they can easily afford to purchase Artwork.  Whether they want it or not is another matter…

Of course I know I need to upload more of a variety of works that I do.  I'm not super fast when it comes to art but that's because I want it to be perfect, so it takes me a few days sometimes to complete a sketch/research the subject and then about a couple of days to ink/colour it.  I have very bad circulation in my hands, which doesn't help so they freeze, blah!  Only happens when I'm using my computer mind.  I have to wear gloves sometimes.XD  I would be faster if I didn't have this problem. Well I can be faster when I know a deadline.  Least I can work to them.  

I’ve never thought about selling Prints before.  Lol, yes I too would like to know how Conventions get away with copyright issues.  Still if I could I’d go to some Anime/Game Conventions.  Unfortunately I live at the top end of England (not Scotland!) and all the Cons are down South so it’s one hell of a track and I don’t usually find out about them until after it’s been and gone.  Still it’s always an option.   A friend had suggested selling on eBay but I told her about the whole copyright issue made it a no-no.  Of course I don’t and won’t limit myself to just doing artworks of well-known fandoms, heck I can do fan characters as well.  Like I said I’m happy to do pretty much anything.

Still thank you very much for the advice everyone!  It's been super helpful!

~Angelina

Prints are good if you appeal to a great audiance that wants a picture, but not an original. The originals market is a little depressing if you don't have popularity or someone that knows the worth of art, cause sadly, an unknown artists gets less than minimum wage an hour for their art. My last pencil original was bartered down to $1.10 per hour NZD cause the guy was a wanker that wanted a pencil original with two characters and wasn't prepared to pay the rate.

Sadly, I had to accept his terms cause I didn't know how long it'd take to draw and it was my first commission. To say the least, no more pencil originals for me.

Prints might be easier though- If the print is good, it'll pay for itself over time. I have a few which have done that ^^

Personally? I MUCH prefer originals. I don't like prints. I'm very much a minority in the market though

On Jul 13, 2008 1:16 pm, arkillian said:

I don't think that's necessarily true. I bought probably bought $80-100 worth of art at AX and about a third of what I bought was either original or characters i didn't know. I think it really depends on what you do with the original works. For example, a portrait like drawing probably isn't going to be very interesting because no one knows the character so there's no real interest there. However if the drawing has some sort of interesting action or pose going on it may be more likely to be purchased. The original works i bought evoked an emotional response in me and thats why i bought them. if your original art is distinct and interesting enough, people will be more likely to buy it. if you just do a canned pose or portrait, its not interesting.

of course being an artist myself may make my reasons for buying art different than the average customer.

Sorry Susie- I musn't have expressed myself clearly. Original Art as in the original peice. Not a replica. It's greatly underpriced in the market T.T  I do original characters all the time- they sell well Some people MUST have fanart, but you'l be surprised how many people prefer an original character over a fandom ^^ It's only the otakus that get REALLY worked up about fanart. Most buy it cause it's a character they know at the right price. And original peice is usually more worked on

Ok  I know its hard to price your artwork. Especially when somepeople can put out in minutes what others do in hours. But there is actually a priceing system out there. Do a search for the artist guild. The artist guild is much like the writers and directors guild. They set up a pricinging system for artist and buyers. There is always a fear that you are not getting paid what you deserve and also if someone out there will undersell you just to take away your business. Now I know for the most part we are not ready to join the guild. But they help artist wether they are in the guild or not. They also support artist through copy right laws and such.

So when time comes to do major art commissions, joining the artist guild is a good place to start. I have not checked the site in a while. But I do believe they sell a book on amazon.com with some of the basics, i believe it includes rates.

Here is a link hope it workd

http://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Artists-Guild-Handbook-Guidelines/dp/0932102131/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216015444&sr=8-1

 But in the end its your call. After all I have given My art away for free at times. Also when someone says your art is over priced let them know how long it takes you in actual time, then ask them if they would work that time for what they expect to pay you.

On Jul 12, 2008 6:01 pm, BogusRed said:

I asked a friend of mine who works at Otakon about this, and this is what she had to say about selling fan art/fan goods at conventions:

As long as it [the art/product] doesn't infringe on a registered/licensed product, is a very limited run (25 or fewer prints for art) and is not priced as to compete with licenced merchandise, then the company is okay with it.

She gave an example for merchandise from Naruto, because that shows up at conventions fairly regularly now. Naruto headbands [made by fans] are not cool.    This is because there are licensed Naruto headbands in production, from costume quality to cheap kid quality ones you can get at Wal-Mart.  However Akatsuki hats, cloaks, and other gear is okay, because there is no licensed merchandise equivalent.

In this way, the companies are letting fans have some fun with drawing their favorite characters or making cool costumes for cosplay, but they are not taking any kind of loss from the art or merchandise.  Since the art is in limited print runs, the person is not going to have a continuing business from that particular piece of art, and since there is no licensed merchandise equivalent of things like the cloaks, it's not causing a fan to buy the fan product instead of a licensed product.  (Printing in limited runs is also beneficial to the artist; if only a limited number of that particular piece are ever going to be available, and someone really, really wants one, they'll have to pick it up right away.  If they sit on it, thinking, "Maybe I'll get it later," they run the risk of the art being sold out when they return.  This encourages people to buy art rather than look at it and walk away.)

As far as how much a table in Artist's Alley or the Dealer's Room costs, you'd need to look up the information for the particular convention you want to go to.  Each convention is priced differently, both for door price and table prices, and they have different regulations regarding the amount of merchandise you can bring, how much art you can display, etc.  However, each convention usually has the information clearly displayed on their website - most like to encourage the business they gain by having artists and merchants at the convention.