Word. I don't do furry work anymore for that very reason: furries are harder to please than commercial clients and they pay a lot less.

$10/hour just doesn't cut it for art of that quality. Bara-Chan looks pretty versatile; I hope she knows there's an audience out there who'll pay her what her lovely art is worth.

That is correct, I wanted her to make as much money as possible as well as satisfying my curiosity about the sell factor of my character.

Design work is commercial work that pays you more because of usage rights.

A personal commission is nowhere near the same realm.

I have expectations when you get in the $100 dollar range. That means I expect choice, and thumbs, most artists bitching about being underpaid don't even do thumbnails or concept pieces. They just slap shit together in the first run and fuss over details which causes them to overwork the piece, then they complain how little they're being paid.

I also irritated that people complain about being underpaid compared to other professionals while they pirate software and stuff. Most professionals I know getting the higher end rates buy their software too.

Correct, but saying what you feel she is worth paying for, still isn't the overall deciding factor what everyone else pays for the work.

There seems to be a disconnect when people say "no they should be paid more" but then don't account for other factors why they're paid less. The type of art, the kind of clients they're with, who they are, and what they're doing.

I'm not saying she's a horrible artist or even a shitty person. I am saying however she's still a relative unknown in the big picture, so that DOES account for how much people would pay for her work. If she's upset over her dilution of name recognition then that is a personal problem. It's not a personal insult because I'm referring to the generalities of internet fame versus mass distributed work.

Nor am I saying you shouldn't do business with her because this is really not about Amarafox, but the artists that complain in general about the cost of art and who they're selling the works to.

Artists need to look at all factors before reaching the conclusion that it's just this way for X reason. Business unfortunately doesn't work like that.

If she's upset about me countering her opinion, she needs to look at the discussion as a whole. If we're not talking about ALL the factors that can affect pricing, how can you propose solutions or find way to make change?

Right. The time card thing was an eye opener for her. I think people miss the point of WHY I had the time card. They think the time card is the necessity. It wasn't. I put it in the terms of the commission to give her a perspective, in other words I was running an exercise with her to get her to see something.

It's a good practice to see how long you're spending on your work. If you're spending way too long just getting the concept art, or just getting the beginning stages done, then you need to work on that and handle yourself more efficiently.

Does that mean you need a timecard when you work with clients? No. In fact, it's generally not a good practice to charge an hourly rate. The timecard was to give her an estimate and approximation of how long she's working on her stuff to show her "hourly rate". If she decided "Well 11 dollars an hour is too cheap to be charging" she can now use a calculation to say "well my commissions go for X amount based on me wanting to earn an average of Y amount an hour"

I don't think there is that ONE Magic formula that a person can work with when taking commissions, however, this is a good rundown with certain stages. People may find one thing to take away with them. I have certain expectations for various commissions, and the higher the amount I do have expectations of what I get. I think people are afraid to post certain progressions with people like it takes away the magic of their craft. Like it's some carnival act. If you show them certain stages, people won't go for the show anymore. ;)

Nor am I saying this is the method I work with every artist, some are rather good at communicating and presenting their works. Some artists are too rigid in their methods. Some are too lax which both lead to problems with commissions.

I'm sorry if I'm wordy explaining it on your post, but I think people are missing some points.

That's not the point of the system since it was a training exercise, and it's not the system or solution she ultimately decided on. The system will vary for each commission, and certain things in there were done to document an artist's time and money.

I understand that the system wouldn't work for you on traditional stuff. However, the frequent argument made by people is the "too much/too little" stuff. That was the overall point of the system was a good documentation of how it is work. There are way too many who don't understand.

You also can't blame people for getting the best deal possible, so people "doth protest a bit much" when people are trying to tell them the kind of work and usage they're paying for.