Advice on Hiring Artists

[snow1wolf]

Greetings, I am new to the forums here and I am considering hiring an artist.  I am looking for advice on how best to approach things from the artists standpoint.  I have had it strongly recommended to me that I should push for payment in terms of per item produced.  On the other hand I have seen posts that encourage artists to push for payment per hour spent on the work.  I can see that both sides simply are looking to protect there own interests and not get cheated.  There must be some middle ground that can be reached on this.

What is the industry standard pricing for contract art.

Since I think it would be hard to give any ballpark estimate for price/time ranges without any context.

I am looking for Isometric charecter sheets
8 direction movement.  The sheet would be mirrored and of similar scale and detail to disgaea.
2 diagonal direction attack animations for several weapon types
plus various poseses for special attack sequences

What other details would effect the cost and time?

[Atnas]

Hey there. c:

Per item and Per hour are both good ways to judge cost. However, per item is calculated with price per hour in mind. An artist will go by experience or do a test piece to see how long any given asset will take to do, and then charge accordingly. Sometimes hourly is cheaper because the artist will find a more streamlined process while they're working to pump out a specific kind of asset. If they need to revise a lot because their first drafts aren't satisfactory, then per item is usually cheaper.

For isometric, you'd definitely want someone who's done it before, because the perspective is something the artist needs to tackle first. For the attack animations and stuff you'd just need to look for someone with relatively strong animation skills, a good animator can adapt to many different angles.

You'll want to ask the artists if they work part time or full time, that will influence the time range heavily. From my own experience, working half the number of hours on something per day doesn't mean it will get done twice as slow, in fact it's maybe 3x slower, but everyone has their own working speeds and habits. Personally, longer days are more productive overall.

For a true ballpark estimate you'd need to be very specific about what it is you really need. Is it a template, are there different body types or races? How many characters do you need done? How many different weapon animations?

Industry standard isn't as standard as you'd think, because client budgets vary so much... Some freelancers will work for as little as $10/hour if they are desperate, $20/hour is more or less standard for in house jobs, and $30-$40/hour is for higher budgeted projects. Some companies pay per frame, for example Wayforward (and incidentally the team behind Skullgirls, but those are hi res drawings/paintings) will pay $8/frame or higher.

For a self funded project you'd want to think about offering $15-$20/hour for the right artist if you can afford it. Once the standing proportions are all worked out you're looking for someone who can do a 8 frame walk in around one hour. Otherwise they're likely charging too much for their abilities and you should take a per item go of it because they don't entirely know what they're doing and need to experiment.

Hope that helps!

[snow1wolf]

yeah actually that is quite helpful.  Answers about all questions and concerns I might have other than how to best make a first impression.

 As to the budget I am looking at spending 400 a month over a long period of course that is no where close to full time or even part time at those rates.  Since it is per month over long term guess it would leave it up to the artist for how to use his time.

Anway thanks for the response I need to draft up an email.

[Atnas]

You're welcome. C:

First impressions are important when hiring... But the most important thing is establishing that you are indeed going to pay, so sending even a small amount up front, maybe even a fifth, will strengthen the artist's faith. After they've done some initial work of course, maybe a standing frame, to verify they ARE who you want to pay for the job. If they have a portfolio and a list of projects they've worked on in the past, there's not a huge amount of risk in the up front payment, but for them any new client that doesn't show their ability to pay is a huge risk. Once you've both exchanged a small bit of work for a small bit of money, the larger amounts can follow steadily.