NounVerb
To sum up:
Including, but not limited to NSFW art.
I’ve been wondering this for a long time, and it occurred to me that this would be a good place to ask. The search function didn’t yield the kind of thread I was looking for.
It’s kind of long, but it’s thorough.
I can see someone commissioning something like a cover to a story, maybe even some big impressive landscape that’s worth being sold as an official poster, but not single images like you often see around here. Not character busts. Especially not random bits of NSFW stuff.
Frankly, I’d have to be very, very, invested in something to pay $20 for it. Making images or writing music takes time. I understand that. The problem is that it’s usually only people who have plenty of money to throw away who can afford to commission single images like this. Historically, artists’ creations were funded by a wealthy patron. That’s the way they were able to create as a full-time job.
Selling prints of already-existing images, I get. Selling installments of an on-going episodic series with crowdfunding, maybe with a timed release schedule where an inferior low-res version is released for free as an incentive, I can kind of get. Selling the creation of single images to a single buyer where the image is delivered digitally is something that just doesn’t seem sustainable on a large scale unless you get some kind of personality cult mixed with people who have more money than sense. You know, the stereotypical upper-class shut-in with money from their parents who supports starving artists who have similar politics as them. It’s not a flattering idea, but I have a sense that that’s where the lion’s share of the direct commission economy happens.
It’s hard enough for me to justify spending an extra $15 on lunch in a food court, and other average people are supposed to commission $45-$130 single images often enough to support that kind of economy? It doesn’t seem to work out.
I’d have an easier time understanding buying an already-drawn compilation or doujin that’s printed, but something with a marginal cost of about $0 is a hard sell for me.
The question I’m trying to get over is “There’s plenty of porn that’s free and freely available. What would make this hypothetical single page be worth infinitely more money then all the other stuff?”. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was obsessed with this specific theme, there was literally no other place on the internet to get it, I knew exactly what I wanted to see next, and knew I’d find an image of it more fap-worthy than the idea in my head. Absolutely everything would have to be aligned in the image for me to even consider it. Any deviation from what turns my crank would be met with a “I’m paying good money for stuff I don’t care for! Ripoff!” (Stylistic flairs or off-model screw-ups might be just slightly off-putting when the image is free, but that gets a lot more important when you start asking money for something). It’s probably too strict a criteria to reasonably expect from someone, so I’d put my money almost anywhere else.
Never mind that the thing about the images that I was considering commissioning an extra page for is still kind of vague for me. I don’t think I’d be able to explain it exactly enough for someone else to understand.
So, part of what would need to happen for me to consider spending money on commissioning an image is knowing exactly what I want to see. Exactly which elements to emphasize, themes to display, characters to include, and acts to depict.
I think I’d probably be better off practicing writing some smut. If only to get practice fully understanding what I want to see happen.
I’ve been wondering this for a long time, and it occurred to me that this would be a good place to ask. The search function didn’t yield the kind of thread I was looking for.
It’s kind of long, but it’s thorough.
I can see someone commissioning something like a cover to a story, maybe even some big impressive landscape that’s worth being sold as an official poster, but not single images like you often see around here. Not character busts. Especially not random bits of NSFW stuff.
Frankly, I’d have to be very, very, invested in something to pay $20 for it. Making images or writing music takes time. I understand that. The problem is that it’s usually only people who have plenty of money to throw away who can afford to commission single images like this. Historically, artists’ creations were funded by a wealthy patron. That’s the way they were able to create as a full-time job.
Selling prints of already-existing images, I get. Selling installments of an on-going episodic series with crowdfunding, maybe with a timed release schedule where an inferior low-res version is released for free as an incentive, I can kind of get. Selling the creation of single images to a single buyer where the image is delivered digitally is something that just doesn’t seem sustainable on a large scale unless you get some kind of personality cult mixed with people who have more money than sense. You know, the stereotypical upper-class shut-in with money from their parents who supports starving artists who have similar politics as them. It’s not a flattering idea, but I have a sense that that’s where the lion’s share of the direct commission economy happens.
It’s hard enough for me to justify spending an extra $15 on lunch in a food court, and other average people are supposed to commission $45-$130 single images often enough to support that kind of economy? It doesn’t seem to work out.
I’d have an easier time understanding buying an already-drawn compilation or doujin that’s printed, but something with a marginal cost of about $0 is a hard sell for me.
The question I’m trying to get over is “There’s plenty of porn that’s free and freely available. What would make this hypothetical single page be worth infinitely more money then all the other stuff?”. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was obsessed with this specific theme, there was literally no other place on the internet to get it, I knew exactly what I wanted to see next, and knew I’d find an image of it more fap-worthy than the idea in my head. Absolutely everything would have to be aligned in the image for me to even consider it. Any deviation from what turns my crank would be met with a “I’m paying good money for stuff I don’t care for! Ripoff!” (Stylistic flairs or off-model screw-ups might be just slightly off-putting when the image is free, but that gets a lot more important when you start asking money for something). It’s probably too strict a criteria to reasonably expect from someone, so I’d put my money almost anywhere else.
Never mind that the thing about the images that I was considering commissioning an extra page for is still kind of vague for me. I don’t think I’d be able to explain it exactly enough for someone else to understand.
So, part of what would need to happen for me to consider spending money on commissioning an image is knowing exactly what I want to see. Exactly which elements to emphasize, themes to display, characters to include, and acts to depict.
I think I’d probably be better off practicing writing some smut. If only to get practice fully understanding what I want to see happen.
To sum up:
- How is this economy structured?
How many super-popular artists rolling in dough versus people who are just as skilled who can’t get enough commissions to justify super-high prices.
Who commissions most of the work? By money spent, by volume of files produced, and by number of jobs. Are they groups of nonspecific people on patreon or single bidders dealing directly with the artist?
What’s the distribution of money for jobs? Are most jobs in the $15-35 range, or are most of the jobs more expensive?
How many people trying to do commissions honestly have the drawing skill and talent meaning applied interest, of course to be considered professional, vs how many are just people sort of learning the basics, but are still clumsy enough with things like anatomy and perspective that they wouldn’t be accepted in the industry?
Comparing pre-made prints sold at a web store or conventions to direct commissions, where is most of the money and profit made?
How does this economy grow and get more commissioners in it? How does someone who’s used to seeing thousands of images of all kinds online for free get convinced to spend money on single images?
- To those who do commission stuff:
Why do you do it?
How often do you do it?
What’s the average price?
What kind of images do you commission? (Covers for stories, scenes you’d like to see depicted in the show, installments of a comic, etc.)
What is the size of an average commission? A single, one-off image? A set of images of a few characters at a time? Or a full-on multi-page story comic that takes months to be finished because of all the frames in it?
How do you justify the price or afford it? It’s hard to find enough extra money to comfortably allow for a meal out once every few months for a lot of people. Budgeting several books worth of money for a single one-off image when google exists seems hard to understand.
Knowing that in the absence of direction, artists will usually draw whatever interests them, and that they’d have to be interested in the subject matter to bring that special touch of passion in their work, and that there’s already probably a lot of stuff out there that fits what you might want to see, what is it about commissioned work that makes it infinitely more valuable than stuff that’s on Google?
