Commissions & Pricing

Media Outlet Fan Art Gallery
1

My co-worker produces music and has a music artist who wants some album art for a mixtape they’ll soon be releasing. So my co-worker wants me to do the art for it and we’ll be informally meeting up to discuss how it should look and the pricing for it. Now, I know some of you do commissions on deviantart or have had work in magazines, newspapers, or comics and I just wanted to get some feed back on how that whole pricing stuff works. How do you know what your work/time is worth? How does size, medium used, reproducibilty, what the art will be used for, and copyright/ownership come into the equation? Basically I don’t want to overcharge for my services (as my skill level is not high), but I also don’t want to get shafted, so how do you guys go about doing that?

Here’s some stuff I’ve found regarding art commissions on google for others that want to get paid for their work, but I’d like to have some of SRK’s thoughts on it.

http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/2009/07/paintings-overpriced/
http://www.artbusiness.com/pricerealistic.html
http://visualartmerchandising.blogspot.com/2010/12/price-formulae.html
Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines

2

Honestly the links you posted probably said everyone you need to know; how much does everything cost, hourly rate, are you a known artist.

Like the first link said, if you’re just starting out, you have to take what you can get.

3

nice. I was wondering about this myself.

4

it depends how you carry yourself. everyone on deviant art who sells\commissions their crap for $50 and bellow can go to hell. they’re just cheapening the medium.

the ethical guideline book is definitely worth getting if you plan on being a freelance artist for a good while. they extensively list a lot of freelance art jobs and their idea of what to price things.

5

I sell my Black & White Vector car drawings for $100 a piece to a client doing a printed tee’s business. Pretty sure I could be charging more, but I’d feel like I’m ripping him off if I did. :rofl: