Commission Types

This is in no way saying what all people should charge for these services! This is not me telling you how to charge your things. This is just what I price for these commission types, and my reasoning behind it. You are free to use this as a ‘jumping off point’ or baseline for what you may want to charge for these things. All of my examples below, I am using a full body example as full body work takes the longest.

Sketches: ½ Of what you charge for lineart. (Example: Full lines for a full body is $20, a full body sketch would be $10). The thought behind this is it should take you no longer then 30 minutes to produce a sketch. Quality of the sketch plays a good part in this as well. If you want to do just a base sketch that takes less then 30 minutes, then charge less time. But if you want a more ‘refined’ sketch, then charge a bit more/what you would for full lineart.
Lineart: I go with full body lineart should take no more then an hour in total. (This is HIGHLY subject to change from person to person. And even more so when you’re just starting out and figuring out your own style. Speed comes with time. It’s easier for me to sketch a dragon in 10 minutes because I’ve been doing this for 20 years rather then the person that just started drawing last week.) From sketch start to end of the lineart phase. Since we promised ourselves we would charge no less then minimum wage for an hour of our time, then charge what you would want for 1 hour of work.

Flat color: This is subject to change as well depending on your color style as well as the complexity of the character! This! This is where prices start to get a little weird. Always list your base prices, but make a note in your TOS (Terms of Service) that you may charge extra due to character complexity. Color should take no more then an hour as well (For a single full body piece.) So if you’ve done linework along with flats, you’re looking at around 2 hours of work. So if you charge $8 for lineart, then you should charge around $16 for full body, lined, and flat colors.

Shaded: And then we get into shading. Everyone shades differently. For example, I use a cel shading style but some people do full on soft shading with highlights and the works. I go with around another hour of work for this. So at this point, you’d be looking at 3 hours of work, so you should be charging 3 hours of minimum wage at the very least for your time and effort.

Again, this all changes depending on; your style, how fast you work, your skill level, and what your target audience is. Here is a further breakdown on common commission types:

Full body: The full character, from tip of tail to top of head! My rule of thumb for myself is to do a full body lineart in 1 hour.
Half body: This various from artist from artist. I’ve seen people do from thigh up to head, or even midsection up to head! This should be half of what you charge for a full body.
Bust: Or a headshot~ This is just the neck up and I charge around a half hour or less for this depending on character complexity.

You have liked this post!

Real world examples

I’ve been doing this for years now and have a few examples I can share with you all on various situations.

-- I once had a line of dog adoptables here on Lioden. I would sell them from 1 to 5 GB and they would sell out quickly. As soon as I would post a new adoptable on this base, it would sell within an hour. By the end of the week I had recolored something around 10-15 of these dogs and had also modified their linework. What does this tell me?
1. These were in high demand. Because of this I could have, and should have, charged more.
2. This was good for me getting my name out there, just because of the amount of people buying these adoptables. I could have opened up an art shop on the side and gotten a few extra side jobs because of this.
3. I made back the money and more of the original lineart. ($15 for full body lines, but it was a base so I could resell 15 at 2 GB each and make up the cost of the original lineart. It works out in the end. Though I still lost time/money because of how complex I was coloring these adoptables.)

-- I had an art shop for a little while here. I charged pretty average for my skill level at the time. So I was still making a profit but I wasn’t bringing in a lot of new clients and I would get a lot of ‘I love your work! I just don’t have this much money to spend!’ comments. What does this tell me?
1. I was charging enough to have a steady stream of income, and would have repeat customers. However if I wanted to bring in more, new, people I could have charged less. I had no intention of charging less, however that was an option.
2. I started to think I was overpricing myself because of these comments. While well intentioned, they aren’t entirely…nice? Some artists call it rude, but I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just people saying they love my work, but they don’t have the money for it. While that in its own needs to be stopped, it should never make you think you’re charging too much. You are selling art on a pet sim site, after all! A good majority of the userbase may not have their own income IRL so they relay off of site currency. If you want to charge full price, look at other sites that are just for art. c:

-- I’ve seen a lot of art ‘stalls’ or shops that don’t look nice. The user does not take the time to make their shop user friendly. There are no links to examples, the user makes a shop and tells you to ask them for examples, or worse case, there are no examples at all anywehre. My thoughts on this:
1. Why should someone buy your art if you’re not even showing off what you can do? Why are you making your customer work for trying to hire you on? You want them to hire you, so you should make their life as easy as possible and have all info upfront. C:
2. People don’t take the time to research how to code images into their posts, which makes it harder for the client to see examples. While copy/pasting links are nice, it’s easier for the client to simply click a link, and even better to see posted examples somewhere on the page.
3. You need to have examples ready to go when open a shop. If you don’t have any, draw some of your own characters! c: It’s easy, because you’re working for yourself, and you’ll have examples to show to potential clients!

You have liked this post!