Should we be encouraging?

[PyTom]

A bit off topic:
Should we make a "how to price your services" thread to help people that are just starting or confused, and for people looking to commission people?

I'm not sure there's advice that applies to everyone, other than "charge what the market will bear". I think it's tough to give advice that applies equally someone starting out, living with parents/at school/not having to support themselves, looking to build experience, reputation, and a portfolio; and someone who is a known name, has to support themselves on their services, and has more work than they can handle.

[Deji]

I went ahead and made a guide thing based off my own experience.
Let me know if you have critiques and comments on it

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sWM ... sp=sharing

[infel]

I went ahead and made a guide thing based off my own experience.
Let me know if you have critiques and comments on it

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sWM ... sp=sharing

I like your guide. From what I read it sounds really good. There is one problem though, what if the person lies about how many hours they worked? I know there are a good number of trustworthy people here, but as someone whose has a bit of a bad past with commissioning, I do have to ask this question?

[Anne]

The creator (you) retain the rights and can use it for whatever they deem convenient.

Is that really a default situation? I doubt any client will be happy to know you sold their commisioned work to other people.

[Razz]

The creator (you) retain the rights and can use it for whatever they deem convenient.

Is that really a default situation? I doubt any client will be happy to know you sold their commisioned work to other people.

Typically yes. Like music for example you pretty much need to specify if you want the rights to it, and there's varying tiers like (simplified):
They create music for you but they can sell it as stock later. Cheap price typically.
They create music for your game only, cannot be resold. Slightly more expensive.
They create music you get to sell. Full rights, usually pricey.

Now with art, I guarantee you no ones going to re-sell your OCs commission to someone else lol, but it's still broken into rights and usage like above. If you want a poster of the OCs to sell at cons then permission needs to be given, if you want so they cant post it online its the same thing. If you tell them the sprite is for the game "girl positive friendship game" and its really for "girl killer triple XTREME" then the artist has the right rescind any usage of the sprites to you.

So yeah thats mostly just pertaining to usage rights, not really that the artist is gonna have a free for all on a completed commission.

[Deji]

I like your guide. From what I read it sounds really good. There is one problem though, what if the person lies about how many hours they worked? I know there are a good number of trustworthy people here, but as someone whose has a bit of a bad past with commissioning, I do have to ask this question?

I think I did put a warning there? if I didn't I'll put it there asap
In my experience, working for hourly rate is only to be done with trusted clients or creators.
As a creator, I want to be sure that if I worked 10 hours, I get paid those 10 hours when I'm done! Just like when you trust a client you're okay with them paying you whenever: before you start working, in the middle, or after, or even negotiate payments after you're done, if you can afford it; it's the same principle.
As a commissioner, I don't want to get ripped off, so I'll probably pay after whatever is completed if I'm starting out or half upfront and half upon completion instead of just paying upfront... Unless I've worked enough with the creator to know they're trustworthy, ad/or have enough recomendations about how trustworthy they are from other respectable commissioners.

The creator (you) retain the rights and can use it for whatever they deem convenient.

Is that really a default situation? I doubt any client will be happy to know you sold their commisioned work to other people.

Like Razz said, it is! However, you can ask the creator to not use your commissioned work for profit themselves unless they ask you first, if that's okay. Most creators are okay with this, or they may negotiate a fee lower than that of commercial work.
I personally always ask a commissioner if they're okay with me posting their commissions around on my personal websites, out of politeness

[Anne]

Like Razz said, it is!

But don't the commisioners have rights to their original characters?
*I'm not talking about using the images for the artists portfolio*

That also said, what about fanart commissions? (an artist does fanart for some characters and sells prints / other merchandise with it, can they? or just doing paid commissions for characters from well-known series, is that fine from the legal point of view?)

[Caveat Lector]

What if we're not entirely sure how long it takes us to finish something in a certain number of hours? I have days where I could knock off, say, a 1000 word section in just under an hour or two, but other days where, for whatever reason, it could take a bit longer. How do you measure it?

[papillon]

Like Razz said, it is!

But don't the commisioners have rights to their original characters?
*I'm not talking about using the images for the artists portfolio*

That also said, what about fanart commissions? (an artist does fanart for some characters and sells prints / other merchandise with it, can they? or just doing paid commissions for characters from well-known series, is that fine from the legal point of view?)

Fanart commission legality is a whole other kettle of fish that probably shouldn't be gone into in this thread. There's no single standard solid answer, it's complicated.

[Deji]

What if we're not entirely sure how long it takes us to finish something in a certain number of hours? I have days where I could knock off, say, a 1000 word section in just under an hour or two, but other days where, for whatever reason, it could take a bit longer. How do you measure it?

I think with writers is a bit more complicated? I'm not well versed on how to calculate things in that case, sorry ^^;
I hope writers with more experience freelance can come and answer this and help me polish the non-artists rates on the doc

I personally don't think a writer should charge per hour, though, but per word; then again that's just me as an artist!
Now, if it was me, I'd take a week or two weeks of time, see how much time I actually spent trying to write and see how much I got done on those two weeks and get an average.
Random example: So let's say I take a reference of two weeks. I wrote 6k words those 2 weeks, and my writing sessions in total amounted to 8 hours. So it'd ve safe to say my average is around 750 words per hour. Now I can always go back and measure myself again and start averaging the numbers I get, just like I'd do with art, to get a more "historical" number of words per hour of writing session.

[Anne]

Fanart commission legality is a whole other kettle of fish that probably shouldn't be gone into in this thread. There's no single standard solid answer, it's complicated.

Alright, what's with the first question? (as it's obviously much more interesting to me as a commissioner and is linked to what Deji suggests in her guide)

[trooper6]

If a person is going to charge per hour (rather than per word or per piece of art or per minute of music or whatever), then I think it behooves the artist (I mean that in the larger sense to included composers, writers, etc) to spend time learning their average times and learning how to best estimate their time to complete things.

Now, when it comes to freelancers who charge by the hour, generally speaking my experience in other realms of freelance hiring (I've hired music transcribers through elance) is that the freelancer provides an estimate of how long it will take. If it takes less, then I pay less. However, in the contracts I signed as commissioner, I wouldn't be charged for anything more than 10% above the estimate. This means that it behooves the artists to learn how to estimate well. But it also means that the commissioner has a price range they can agree to or not before the work starts and there are no unpleasant surprises.

[Deji]

Fanart commission legality is a whole other kettle of fish that probably shouldn't be gone into in this thread. There's no single standard solid answer, it's complicated.

Alright, what's with the first question? (as it's obviously much more interesting to me as a commissioner and is linked to what Deji suggests in her guide)

IANAL and I have never dealt with using art I've drawn for other people of their original characters in a commercial thing.

In my limited understanding, it would mean that the right to reproduce and use a work commercially stays with the creator and NOT with the commissioner, and if the commissioner wants to use the work commercially at any given time, they need to purchase those rights from the creator; owning the commercial rights of your commissioned work the rights doesn't *necessarily* mean that the artist *will* sell your commission of your original character as generic stuff for other people to use or as prints or whatever.
Again, this is just my limited understanding.

[Anne]

The fact that the commissioner doesn't have commercial rights means just that they can't use that work for commercial purposes, whether an artist can or cannot use that work in any way has nothing to do with it (the opposite is also true - getting commercial rights does not necessarily mean exclusive - take for example stock images), this is all a matter of what you agree upon (contract). If you don't have a contract things get a bit unclear (and sure in the cases we discuss noone is actually going to try and sue anyone anyway), still it seems to me that "The creator (you) retain the rights and can use it for whatever they deem convenient." is not 100% true (I'm not a lawyer or anything so I hope someone who knows better comes and clears things up a bit but I did a quick Google search and Gaiman vs McFarlane's case seems to be similar to what we're discussing) and most certainly using that right is not a "nice" thing to do. Now, I've never heard of anyone actually doing something like that, still the idea is a bit troubling.
What I want to say is that I'd probably rephrase this section of your guide.

[Deji]

@Anne: I see your point!
I rewrote that part now

The creator (you) retain the commercial rights, meaning that if the commissioner wants to make money off your work at any given time, they need to buy those rights from you. You also have the right to distribute and showcase the commissioned piece and in some case make money off it as well. All this SHOULD be discussed and put down in a contract beforehand if you are unsure what your rights as creator or clients are over non-commercially commissioned work.