just blocked like 30 porn blogs can u guys stop… like wtf u trying to jack off to… my sadness?

truly

or months or years or- 💀

… aaaahahahaHAHA HA. HA. HA.

I make snapchat art now, since I have no time or desire to make real art. I'm clearly not bitter at all about going to art school ahahaha- 😐

ATTENTION ARTISTS: Need help calculating your commission prices?

A tool that I’ve found is really handy is a called the Cash Clock. It’s a simple program that measures both the time that you’re working on a piece as well as how much money you should be earning. You can adjust the hourly wage to whatever you feel is right. Simply start the clock whenever you begin working on a project right up until you’re finished. It can give you a clear indication of what you should charge for commissions.

No artist should make below minimum wage for their artwork.

The Cash Clock is found as a download here. 

My art tumblr

My deviantart

Definitely needed this.

Value your skills!

Yes!!

for all of my artist mutuals! get your money for your work, you deserve it!

marvilus-artist

im not even an artist and these prices are hurting my feelings 

This is what I have to dig through every time I look for new jobs to apply for.

For non-artists, let’s give you a little perspective.

For me, an illustration takes a bare minimum of 6 hours. Mind you, that’s JUST the drawing part. Not the research, or the communications, or gathering information. Just drawing.

That’s if it’s a simple illustration.

My art deco or more detailed stuff can take 20+ hours each.

Even simple, cartoony things still take at least 3 hours.

Let’s go with the second one. 2 illustrations for $25. Figuring 6 hours each. 12 hours total, for JUST the drawings. That’s approximately $2.08/hour. 

Asking these prices is an insult. But what’s even more hurtful is there are people out there that will take these jobs. Which only encourages rates like this to be acceptable. And there are people who will try to say these are just what you have to do to get started.

I believed that. So my first coloring gigs were just $10/page. The day someone offered me $25/page for just flatting work, I realized just how wrong I’d been. I’m still not making the rates I’d like, but now I refuse anything below $25/page. Because there is value in my time.

In any standardized industry, even ones that pay piece rate over hourly, these numbers are criminal.

Do your fellow artists a favor. Never accept jobs like these. There are others that pay legitimate rates. Or at least closer to legitimate.

Such baby bullshit. Don’t even get out of bed for these rates.

    If you are an artist who wants to make money off their art, I highly suggest you buy The Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook. It goes in depth about copyright issues and even contains contract and model release templates. The 2013 book *I believe* states the average professional charges $72 an hour. This article calculated that to make a 40k annual salary you would need to charge about $60 per hour.

  After graduating from Art Center in 2012, I think I asked for somewhere between $35-45 an hour and got laughed at by multiple big name clients, which was infuriating, sadly expected, and terrifying with over $100K worth of student loans staring me in the face. If they tell you it will be “great exposure” that’s a red flag. Ask yourself how their exposure can compare to your Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and Facebook pages combined? 

And when you do get a decent paying gig, PROTECT YOURSELF. You have the right to negotiate and revise a contract. Do not start a job until you have a contract signed. If they don’t provide you with one, MAKE ONE. And make sure you have your bases covered. You can specify in a contract that maybe two revisions are included in your cost, and if they ask you to revise the piece more than twice, they will have to pay extra. In terms of payment schedule, I usually do the 50/50 Method (50% before, 50% after) or the 3/3/3 Method (1/3 before, 1/3 in the middle, 1/3 after all work has been received). Both of those are pretty standard in the industry, as they guarantee you will get compensated for your time, even if the job goes bad.

Remember you have a skill, and you have spent time honing that skill and you deserve to be adequately paid for that time and effort. You will have clients dismiss you because, honest to God they think, “Well, I could do that if I wanted. Hell, my five year old does it now.” No they can’t, because they didn’t, they don’t, they won’t and they probably never will. And good luck hiring a five year old. They can’t keep a fucking deadline.

And in a last ditch effort they’ll say, “But that drawing only took you an hour!” Son, that drawing took me 20. fucking. years.

10 Dollars for 1 minute of animation.  Oh my god my heart.  It took my team 6 months and a team of 12 to make a 4 minute short. 

The Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook

I second this book! I’ve had it for several years now, and it’s been a HUGE help in my work as a freelance artist. It gives great advice on what to charge for different areas of art!

Please remember. Your art is worth a respectable payment! Accepting ridiculously low prices actually hurts the arts/illustration/animation communities because it makes employers believe they can employ people without offering decent pay.

Check the internet if you need help figuring out what you should be charging for your commissions. Invest in the books that will inform you professionally, and put your foot down if you think someone is trying to cheat you out of your time and hard work. You have a right to refuse a job, and/or request decent payment. If your employer denies a you decent pay, well then they’re probably not a very good employer. Do not undersell your skills. it is bad for the art community and you are worth more then that.

Let’s get something straight. 1. I DO NOT do commission work for exposure 2. I DO NOT do commission work for people for followers as payment, my work should always speak for itself and people can CHOOSE to follow me if they enjoy it. 3. If I make free work, it’s my personal work or presents I decide to make for friends or people I’m a fan of because I WANT TO AND THAT’S IT. If you aren’t willing to pay for work people are doing for YOU, I don’t want your business. It says a lot about you as a person. I understand wanting a “deal” but there’s a difference between fair prices and outright cheating someone out of their LIVING. Sorry I’m so mad everyone. :( I didn’t think I was being THAT rude in my message. EDIT: kinomatika brought up a good point. Minimum wage in most states averages between 7-8 dollars for ONE HOUR of work (most of the time before tax) and this project he was describing in his original message (not pictured) was at least 12+ hours for me. Assuming it took me exactly 12 hours, I would be working for EIGHTY THREE CENTS. ($0.83) PER HOUR. JFC 

So hey here’s something I never thought I’d had to talk about every again, but here we are, so let’s talk about this because it’s important and I want y’all to understand how important it is, not only for established artists and industry professionals, but for new, young artists who are just getting on their feet and trying to figure out how to go about making a name/living for themselves through what they love to do.

First off, if you’re a commissioner, do not ever try to haggle with an artist. If you can’t afford their work, don’t buy it. When you go to Best Buy, do you try to haggle down the cost of a TV? When you go grocery shopping, do you try to haggle down the cost of that pound of ham you’re buying for the deli? No, you probably don’t. The same concept applies here. If you want to buy something from someone and they tell you that it costs a specific amount of money, don’t get mad at them because you can’t afford it. You’re paying for a fucking luxury service. Being able to buy custom art or being able to hire a private artist for a project you have in mind is a luxury and if you can’t afford it then you need to move the fuck on and not blame the artist for your not being able to afford their work. Like, I’d love to be able to have a closet fucking FULL of haute couture clothing custom tailored to my body, but I know full fucking well that Dolce & Gabbana is not going to do that for me for 50$, so I don’t have a closet full of haute couture clothing and I don’t blame Dolce & Gabbana for it.

Second off - when an artist does work for free or for friends, that’s their fucking prerogative. If someone does something out of the goodness of their heart for someone else that they like, or if they want to do it as a gesture of affection, or they want to show appreciation to their followers, they are doing that because they want to. You know what most artists don’t just randomly *~*~feel like drawing~*~*? Your commission. Because chances are your artist of choice has absolutely no desire whatsoever to draw what you want them to draw for free. So don’t you dare ever presume that because an artist likes to draw for themselves now and then (because hey guess what, we aren’t fucking machines! How about that.) that you are at all entitled to their effort and skill for free or for an extremely discounted price because you want it. Get real, you clod. 

The most irritating thing is to hear or read “Well, you did x thing for x person for free, so why not me?”

Chances are is because you have no personal connection to us. You’re a client. You are a customer. While your business is appreciated, we have no emotional attachment to you. You’re not our friend. We have zero obligation to you outside of a financial one, and when you treat us like you did us some major favour by offering us fucking peanuts for what is a hundred or thousand dollar job, you can honestly get bent because we have no time for that.

The above message in black (in the images) is nothing more than an insult coming from a whiny crybaby who doesn’t value all of the years of hard work, passion, dedication and struggle that an artist of any medium goes through to hone their craft and price it at a reasonable, liveable rate. 

Listen dude, I’m sorry that you can’t afford more than ten bucks for a commission - it sucks for me and you, but what sucks even more is when you try to guilt trip an artist into feeling bad that they aren’t going to accept your ten dollars for what is a job that would cost around, if I calculated correctly, a hundred dollars, which, IMHO, is still RIDICULOUSLY underpriced for OP’s skill level and professionalism.

SO YKNOW, maybe have a little consideration before you treat an artist like their skill and hard work isn’t worth a pack of fucking gum.