Why does this one always keep coming back up? If you know anything about me, it’s that I am a cheap bastard. My wife will tell you that. My brother will tell you that. Even my mom will tell you that. I don’t like paying more than I have to, especially in the arena of business. When I first started doing RPG all kinds of people told me all kinds of silly things about what I should pay artist. “The industry standard is $100 a page for RPG work.” That is complete crap! This is the greatest lie that has been put to RPG publishers by artists since the beginning of time. If you listen to some artist about their artwork too long they will tell you that it does everything including cure cancer so that is why they ask for that rate. Hate to break this to you “artistic” types but you make a “commodity”. A commodity as defined from dictionary.com is:
- Something useful that can be turned to commercial or other advantage: "Left-handed, power-hitting third basemen are a rare commodity in the big leagues" (Steve Guiremand).
- An article of trade or commerce, especially an agricultural or mining product that can be processed and resold.
- Advantage; benefit.
- Obsolete A quantity of goods.
And when you make your artwork to sell you are making a commodity. I know a company who paid $500 for a one print time usage right for and image that Brom did. One print run and that is it. What happens if you underprint the product and your product becomes an overnight hit (
see WizKids' Pirates of the Spanish Main for that answer)? Sorry, you have to purchase a new cover for it. Think that was crazy? Well they did it two more times!
Any of you RPG publisher who are in need of good and inexpensive artists, just let me know and I will help you get in touch with them. You have seen the guys who do my artwork so you I am dealing with good guys. You don’t have to say it, but you’re welcome!
I'm _always_ on the lookout for good, reliable artists. I usually pay for 1/4 page images and only go to $100 or over for full colour cover images that I know are for lines that are going to work.
ReplyDeleteMy real problems are finding reliable writers though. If you've got a line on either I'd be interested.
grim AT postmort DOT demon DOT co DOT uk
Well... we already know that the game industry doesn't pay the same as the real world. But $100 for a piece of artwork is cheap. (This is the first I've heard of artist rates, so... grain of salt.) I know, game industry doesn't have the budgets the real world does. We're in this for our love of the hobby more than anything. You can find really good artist for cheap just as easily as you can find overpriced artist that are not so good.
ReplyDeleteBut... I do think that people who know the value of what their getting and still won't pay the value for it just devalues the work as a whole. (Not point at you Louis, you cheap bastard.) But it's the same way in the graphic design field, people get what they pay for though sometimes they don't know what to buy in the first place. I dig the artwork you have LPJ, as long as the artists are happy and you're happy we're all happy.
It depends on what you want.
ReplyDeleteDo you want clip art, pre-used or art that isn't specificly for YOU but more or less works? Yeah, it's easy to do cheaper art that fits those categories.
If you want something to spec, then it's usually $100-$150/ page. Greyscale.
From MY perspective, $100 a page and I never do full page art, I end up doing a ton of quarter pagers and half pagers, is a rip off for me.
quarter, half or full page, it starts out as an image to exacting specifications, which means not only do I need to draw something to spec, but it'll likely be wrong due to comminucations issues. This image is a full page to start with regardless. So say a minimum of an hour's work to two in order to get a rough sketch approved that I can go forward on.
Now the work begins. Details, details, details. About four hours here per image. I have to get approvals again, and stuff may need adjusted. I may end up adding an hour to 4 hours (rare, but it has happened). Average is a couple hours. (6 hours total now)
Now inks. A bare minimum of 2 hours, usually 3. If it's a complicated scene, 4 hours. I get approvals again. (8-10 hours now).
Now Photoshop. Shading, greyscale, depth, this takes 2-3 hours minimum. Usually 3-4, occasioanlly 5 but rarely more. (average of 11-14 hours now)
I submit the work and everything /should/ be good by now. If not, I may spend up to an hour to ice the cake.
So 11 to 14 hours on average per image. Now on those rare days I get to do full page gigs, it's like Christmas! That means I made between $9.09 and $7.14 an hour.
Here's the problem. 99.9 of my clients order Quarter and Half page spots: which cost 25% and 50% respectively (and I make somewhere between Jack and shit).
Everyone knows I overproduce, so I submit images slightly larger thah ordered so it's easy to fit when it goes to layout. Not HUGE, but a little bigger.
I don't get these every day of the week either. out of a month I end up working approximately half to three-quarter time...making the above wages.
My time isn't any more valuable than anyone elses, but why is it less valuable than the cashier at Taco Bell?
If you want cut-rate art that has been used in other products, or is simply stock art (which is by definition not to spec for your product and also likely to pop up elsewhere) then yeah, you can do it for cheaper tha $100 a page.
For art that is for YOUR project, drawn to YOUR specs...$100 a page is a steal. But then, we all know that people will end up ordering the ^&$##^%(*& quarter and half pagers and I can go on struggling to keep the lights on. ;)
I love what I do. I love the hobby. I do everything I can to do the best job I can every gig, and for people on budgets I try and squeeze a bit extra out for them...but in the end, I know I'm losing money every time I do art to spec for a client and it's a half or gods forbid quarter pagers. The only way I can make anything back is with the full pagers.
Thing is, there's always someone willing to screw someone else in order to make a percentage. I bust my butt. I average a few hundred dollars a month income total. If publishers are going to put the screws to us to get any more for less, I'm out of a job. Serious. I can't afford to do what I'm doing NOW, much less doing it for less.
I'm just one of hundreds of illustrators, doing the exact same thing, barely eeking out "a living" doing this.
Yeah, there are SHYsters out there milking publshers for all their worth. $100 a page isn't unreasonable by any stretch man. Don't go after the $100 a page guys (like me). Go after the $300 a page guys who may or not deliver on time.
If the typical comic book is 23 pages in length with on average of 6 panels per page then the basic freelance artist needs to do 23 pages in 2 weeks to keep the book on schedule. That means 1.6 pages each day or 2.3 per day if you want your weekends off. Why is it that these guys can do this schedule for YEARS but most RPG artists can’t seem to keep this speed rate?
ReplyDeletebecause there is a streamlined process of handoff, pencils to inks to colorist to letterer, and little in the way of approvals in between. I have to wait for approvals.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to this the artists on the comics above are given a much wider berth than I am. I end up having extremely exacting specs to deal with, like working on a Licensed comic for Lucasarts etc...and those aren't done on the same schedule as your typical title. Most comics these days aren't on schedule anyhow.
If I could get as much free reign to do what I do, I could get more done, quicker. Unfortunately I go back and forth with art directors who want something very specific, but often don't communicate it well. Until I become psychic and can simply see what they want, we're stuck with translating what we want via language and text and then retranslating until it gets on target.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes I get a hole in one. Sometimes not.
So what does the average Comic artist make per page?
Jeff, the rate for comics USED to be $100 a page, but after talking to a lot of my friend in the industry this weekend at Florida SuperCon It sounds like it is down to $50 - 60 with most work getting done by overseas arthouses. Hell, comics sell between 20K to 60K on average while RPGs are lucky to get 2K in sales.
ReplyDeleteI can see that. There's a ton of untapped talent overseas. If I could put up some kind of masking filter to hide them all I would.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I don't know how the comic companies stay in business. They print tons of stuff, most doesn't sell. Licensing I guess. I dunno.
I think the heyday for comics and being a comic artist are over. I missed the boat. Sad. Unless I can get a solid stream of work that is as regular as the mail, I can't work that fast/ cheap. My wife is ready to stab me as it is.
You need to work on a webcomic, like my webcomics, Suits. I need an artist who can draw one panel a week. Let me know...
ReplyDeleteWell, another great post.
ReplyDeleteWhen I colored comics ~1993-1994 I was making $8.00/hr. We ususally did 3-5 pages per shift unless it was some high detail large scene which would take 2-3 days, assuming we had the time, which many times we didn't. We had a comic given to us with no color guides and expected to turn it around in a day and a half. (Happened about once every 4-5 weeks.) Those were fun times.
ReplyDeleteThe shop worked 24hrs a day, people constantly coming and going. Pretty crazy work environment.
I have nothing against you hiring cheaper artists or artists choosing for themselves to run cheaper-than-standard rates.
ReplyDeleteBut what I DO have something against, and personally so, are your demeaning characterizations of artists who don't follow your personal beliefs about how they should run their businesses: as greedy, lying primadonnas.
It's insulting bullshit, Louis.
Nonsense like that is what leads to artists being underpaid, and even never paid, for their work, because the effort and time that goes into the work is under-appreciated by clients whose heads are filled with ideas that art is or should be cheap and easy and not worth that much.
So I'm quite fond of Jeff's question above about why you believe a skilled worker--someone who has taken years to train themselves in a skill--should be paid less than an unskilled worker whose position could be filled by a monkey? Since apparently to you making art is barely even the equivalent of flipping burgers?
Might as well ask someone to build a complete house for you, then flaunt your ignorance when you whine and disparage them for quoting you $200k and two months instead of the $20k and two days you want it to cost ("because the Amish could do it for that!" or some nonsense).
The attitude you express towards artists/illustrators and the work involved makes me glad I've never done any work for you. Demanding a full page of work for less than $100? At that sort of rate you would quite literally be stealing food from my children's mouths. I could earn more pumping gas or bagging groceries.
And I'm sorry you don't think so, and have this weird sense of entitlement that art should be cheaper for you because you want it to be, but that is flat-out the hard truth of what you have been arguing is right, proper, and good.
Charging a (barely) competitive fee for honest labor in order to feed one's kids and pay one's bills is not wrong-headed, a lie, or crap no matter that you want to insist it is or suggest that artists who do so are full of themselves.