Artists salary

[AdamTierney]

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

[AdamAtomic]

per-piece or per-project pricing can also save both the artist and the client a lot of time and trouble, because if you go hourly it raises a lot of questions, concerns, paperwork, etc etc that you could otherwise avoid, and its pretty standard practice.  "hourly" in my experience is something you use to threaten clients, not get them

[MCNS]

I prefer the pay-per-project or pay-per-piece way, especially when you are just developing freeware.