How long do you take to create a piece of art?

[RunicV]

From sketch to finish, how long does it take for you to create a piece of art? Eight hours for a finished sprite? A week for a wallpaper?

I take around forever to complete my artworks. Around a month to even do a simple piece. >_> I was just wondering how much time does it take for some artists here to do their art. /random

[Daistarir]

About a hour for a sketch , then 1 hours for lineart , after that is fixing stuff 30 minutes , and another hour or two for coloring.
I am fast artist when I am not lazy so it's take me about 4 to 5 hours to design a sprites then 8 more to draw emotion, another outfits and color them -v-
Drawing BGs need a lot of time . I need about 5 days and still not done. Since my hard drive broke , I can't draw anything in the mean time.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

From sketch to finish, how long does it take for you to create a piece of art? Eight hours for a finished sprite? A week for a wallpaper?

I take around forever to complete my artworks. Around a month to even do a simple piece. >_> I was just wondering how much time does it take for some artists here to do their art. /random

It depends on the type of artwork I'm making. For my 3D stuff, it takes a long while:
1) 5-6 hours for concept sketching and reference collecting
2) 18 hours for sculpting
3) 10 hours to build a low res mesh
4) About 4 hours to unwrap everything
5) 2 hours to bake out maps
6) 4-5 hours to paint maps
7) 2-3 hours to light and render

It takes almost a solid work week to do a AAA game-ready character. It's the same process for other 3D models, but if they aren't organic, those times get cut in half or less.

For sketches, it depends on if anyone will ever see them or not (they won't ), but generally less than 3 hours. Full-blown photorealistic graphite drawings in large, traditional media? About 16-20 hours. Though I could shave that down if I abandoned my method of lightly building up value without leaving discernible pencil marks.

But 16-20 hours is a good barometer for most of what I do, be it digital paintings, colored pencils, gauche, or (shudder) charcoal. I can almost hit that time with clay sculpture if I don't include the time I spend building the armature or softening the clay.

Though the most reliable way I have to time an art piece is to take how long I think the artwork is going to take to create, then double that number. And then I'll be in the correct ballpark!

[Geckos]

Visual novel sprites aside (They suck down time like leeches) I generally spend an hour to 4 hours on a full body, painted image. (1 hour for very lightly painted, 4 hours for heavily so). I generally have issues spending more than 5 hours on art piece, but that's not necessarily a good thing, since it prevents me from making a very highly refined piece of art. I just get to a point where I don't know where to go next!

[Auro-Cyanide]

x + y = z

Honestly? Each time I do something it differs. Stupid things like a complex (or even mildly different] pose can throw me off, not to mention how tired I am and what type of mood I'm in or how much of an idea I have of what I'm drawing. Which is probably why I shouldn't really try and live off doing art :B

Roughly speaking... 4 hours for a simple sprite, 8 upwards for more complex ones. Backgrounds can range from 6 to 20 and I cheat with those. I'm not sure how long it would take me to do one from scratch at the moment. Everything else really depends on the complexity or number of characters. And how long I'm going to get stuck on a head angle or a hand >_>

In terms of what tends to be more time consuming, it's a around about from most time consuming to least time consuming sketching (finalised)>lineart>blocking>shading.

[Niki]

- accidental double post -

[Niki]

I am an awfully lazy artist It's one of the things I have to overcome but for some reason I cannot spend more than 3-4 hours on anything I do -- even if I take breaks in between. If I leave the piece and come back I'll get the urge to scrap it and start over, so I try to limit myself to finishing in 2-3 hours. Also I don't have much time to spend more than 3 hours on a piece.

I guess my process is something like:
Sketching - 10-30 mins (I don't do a clean sketch |D )
Lineart - 30 mins to 1 hour
Coloring - 1-1.5 hours

So sprites take me about 2 hours, CGs maybe 3. I don't do much painting/coloring outside of game-making, just clean sketches (an hour at most?). I wish I had the time and patience to improve ;_;

[RunicV]

@LateWhiteRabbit: ... ._. That takes a lot of dedication... So much to do. @_@ And all that in one week...?

x + y = z

XD I think that's how long I normally take. Best formula ever.

Everyone seems to work really fast. You guys are mostly hobbyists...? That's a hard gauge to follow. :U But thanks for telling me.

[nyaatrap]

Actually, time is style. When you determined your style, the minimum time required is automatically defined.
The sprites of my last game took 2~4 hours on each, because I've chosen "2~4 hours style".
Professional eroge artists spend 2~3 days for 1 image without complicated background - 16~32 hours.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

@LateWhiteRabbit: ... ._. That takes a lot of dedication... So much to do. @_@ And all that in one week...?

That's why I've said before that the big divide between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs get impatient and finish their art too quickly. Professional artists tend to spend a lot of time on a single piece, and build it up in layers and steps, for instance doing thumbnails and value studies before ever starting. Then, they still don't release the image unless they are happy with it.

Professional artists do tend to get a lot faster when drawing or painting something they've done many times before, for example, a concept artist that does a lot of fantasy art is going to be pretty fast churning out men in armor and weapons, etc. while a landscape painter who paints very similar landscapes can produce a new version without a lot of invested time.

I think that gives a lot of new artists an unnecessary frustration when they are comparing their work to a professional's and wondering why the professional's art is better. It's because you're comparing something that took you 4 hours with something that took them 20-40.

[Daistarir]

And you're working in 3D.
It's opposite to me since I only draw anime stuffs and traditional.

[Deji]

Anywhere between 3 and 14 hours, usually.

Simple sprites take me about 3 hours lately (half hour sketch, one hour linear, one - one and a half hours coloring), while more complex ones or ones I spend more "love" on take me 6-8.
A game CG takes me anywhere between 3 and 8 hours, depending on complexity.
Backgrounds I haven't done in a while, but they used to take me about 10 hours.

I wish I could spend 12 hours on a CG! But then again, none of my clients has the budget to hire me to do that yet ^^;

[CaseyLoufek]

LateWhiteRabbit is pretty much right. I'd long assumed I had no artistic talent because I couldn't churn out anything decent in a first draft. Then I was frustrated with the quality of the drafts our artists made. However as they've been developed the sprites have come along and I'm doing shading and clean-up and working on backgrounds myself. I'm not as fast as the artists but with programs like GIMP and Photoshop you can continue to improve a piece over time until it's up to par.

If you really look at the difference between some of the less well-produced art and the high quality stuff you'll see in a lot of cases the basic use of lines is very similair. It's that the high quality pieces have more cleaning, fine shading, attention to color, etc. Most of the stuff that doesn't look so great could be improved with additional time.

I was just talking with our art staff the other day about how all this is change in recent decades. I had just heard a recording of a jazz musician from awhile back talking about how in music you could refine and redefine a piece over time in a way a painter or sculptor can't. With modern technology that is no longer the case.

[15385bic]

HOURS QAQ
I can sometimes finish a sprite in a day but it's always hours >.> - i'm so slow
drawing them clothes is probably harder for me since i dont like drawing clothes digitally at all O_O

something with a background? Q__________________Q <--cant really do bgs. otherwise does not have much patience for them

[dramspringfeald]

Takes me anything from a few minuets to 5 or 6 days. depends on how hard and fast Art-block sets in. Usually it takes about 30 minuets because I don't really color anymore...