Although I personally prefer per-item pricing, there are plenty of circumstances where hourly works better, particularly when you're sort of developing art longterm for a game. For example, on most games I've assigned artists who do sprites or animations per-piece pricing (one sprite model, one animation, etc). But things like menus, where it's a wide variety of pieces that have to be done, and usually a lot of adjustments and additions, it's easier to hourly the artist instead of constantly having to think out each piece's price.

Per-piece pricing rewards the speedy, but ultimately if you have a comfortable hourly rate going, and you're in a good relationship with a developer that's offering constant work, that's a pretty good spot to be in.

What do you mean "1 character" and "Consist of 15 overall sprites"?

This would be a terrifyingly intense puzzle if he were doing it by actually rotating the pieces around, but it looks like he's just taking the stickers off.

No it wouldn't, it only takes a minute or two to get 1 side done.

- Adam

But how do you know, how many hours an artist has spend making the gfx. You have no way to check up on it.

Well that's one reason I always pay per-piece whenever possible. If anything, hourly is more dangerous for the artist because if they're too slow and rack up more hours per piece than expected, they'll probably stop getting work pretty quickly. Personally, I think hourly is just bad for something like pixel art. It rewards the lazy/slow artist and has the potential to cost employers a lot more than they expected.

- Adam