rpanons | Preserve your precious virginity

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Helloooo.

Keeping in mind that you're making your OC icons in a visual novel style, the majority of the legwork involved is in colouring and drawing the base, and then adding the expression layers is the quicker part. That definitely makes it trickier to price, because you'll probably want to make that base pay for itself, but you don't want icons to cost so much that you're basically doing full commissions and sending off massive drawing psds. (Which was a problem I fell into when I started and it was miserable and sucked piles of asses.)

What I did and what's worked out pretty well so far was putting down a minimum number of icons before an order can be placed. That covers the value of the base and makes sure it gets a suitable amount of mileage for the work involved.

Because if you don't set that limit and a person orders 3 icons for 3 different characters (3 unique bases), you're doing an awful lot more than if a person asks for 1 character (1 unique base) and 3 icons, even if both situations entail creating 3 icons. Also, if you charge every icon at the same cost as the base's worth, you're saying that both of those situations are valued the same, and they just wouldn't be; someone's paying an acceptable amount, and someone's being charged more than the work involved.

So setting a minimum icon order for a single base as well as a maximum icon order is a pretty good place to start, however you choose to structure your prices.

(You really do lovely work, by the way! :) Your colouring is completely stunning!)

I actually did think about this because I do actually do sprites for VNs! (none of them's released though....), but I didn't think about people ordering for different characters so thank you for bringing it up!

I'm not settled on things yet because it's a lot to think about, but my main line of thought on it is charging a lot like my sprite work base + a certain amount of expressions (around 5~10) + smaller fee for additional expressions? I'm pretty iffy about charging if I change the position of the icons instead of keeping it completely static but I'm thinking about it if there's a lot of icons.

And since I also have different styles of coloring/working, the base price will change on that too? I was thinking of offering lineart / cellshade /softshade / painted(lineartless). This is also a part of the reason I'm taking so long to decide on things haha. I feel like I'm maybe overthinking things but I always do.

Thank you! :D This was also very helpful and I'll definitely refer to this a lot as well~

I think that works. I charge a flat rate for a base with 10 icons, and then each additional icon is a very minor value because at that point, the major work is done and it encourages a larger purchase which means more icons for your commissioner which is nice for them, and you make a little extra too without burning yourself out.

I'm not much help on the colouring style because I... only have one way of doing it and it's not a patch on what you're doing here, but I've used different styles of drawing and I generally charge the same for them because the difference in effort isn't worth the hair-splitting. Charge according to your comfort zone. If you know it's going to take you hours to do something semi-realistic versus a cartoonier look, gauge whether it's going to be worth the extra expense you'd need to charge to justify it and either include that stipulation, or write it off and stick to what you're happy/confident doing.

I think colour is a similar deal. The difference in time and effort between the styles you've shown there is probably pretty vast, so charge according to what's realistic - and also, what's not going to burn you out if you get more than one or two orders of it. I do painterly colouring in my spare time but I wouldn't make icons for it personally, because the amount of time it takes me to make anything look saleable is just appalling. Charging as much as I'd have to for a 100x100 image isn't worth it to anybody. If they'd like an icon, they can just commission a full picture and then icon it - because then I'm getting paid a reasonable full-commission amount for what would probably be the same volume of work, and commissioner gets a full image for what they're paying instead of a sad little squashed version.

So it might be the case where you say "Okay, I can see these colour styles being worth it to icon, but these styles takes me a long time and I might lose a ton of detail in a thumbnail and would have to charge a stupid amount for a set, so I won't make it an option." Some things are just better cut out for fully-fledged commissions than icon sets.

It might seem like you're shaving your abilities down, but it's mainly about streamlining your range into what's best value for money for you and the commissioner.

Gotacha~ Mmm, I do worry about making it hard on myself, so that is something I'm going to think about a lot. Thank you for the time you've taken to talk to me about it! It's really nice to have someone with experience give advice. :D I'll mull over it and worse comes to worse I can adjust prices accordingly after I see how the workload gets to me.

No worries; I'll be glad if any of it's useful. Good luck with your work!

sorry for being wildly OT, but i remember your giovanni (/you) from LJ and just wanted to say that i really enjoyed the way you played him! DOGS fandom seems pretty small on dreamwidth, but i also liked your fanart for the series -- and major props for the oyasumi punpun characters. AND.... YOUR ICONS ARE REALLY PRETTY.

ok i'm done goodbye forever

WOAH HELLO ANON. Holy shit, this is an amazing thing to wake up to, and it's really nice to thank anyone would remember me (in a good way!). We are a small fandom though, for sure.

Hey. If you have a plurk and we're not friends already, would you consider hitting me up? Sorry if that's weird to ask out of nowhere, but anyone who likes Punpun and DOGS is someone I'd like to be friends with.

i sent you a friend request on plurk! :)

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