Drawing for Games

[lemonfruitpie]

Recently someone has approached me about drawing art (on a paid basis) for an online pet game. Should I ask for pay like it was a regular commission (i.e. one time fee)? If anyone has had any experience with this, I'd love to hear about it. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Comments

[nainami]

Seems like a contract position - I'd definitely ask them what their preference is but it's most likely going to be like you said a 'per image' sort of thing.

However, I would note on your contract a 'per hour' fee for each commission instead of necessarily a flat fee depending on the complexity of the work. You don't want to get $20 for something that took you 500000 hours to do. So "For a fee of $50 per image creation taking under 2 hours. Any image taking more than 2 hours or having more than ____ corrections will cost an additional $20 per hour!"

Also remember technically if you were filing taxes on this (I don't imagine it would be over $1000, but if it is you'll need this) you will have to keep a good 25% for taxes and file quarterly. Also keep in mind, the average graphic artist bills out at $30 - $90 p/hr.

One small thing to keep in mind - if this site will be continually making money off your images, you should keep the copyrights and ask for royalties on money they make using your images. (Standard is 15% for authors at least after 'overhead' costs for company. So if they make $50, they spent $25 on server fees or what have you you'd be entitled to 15% of the remaining $25) Otherwise, you can sell the copyrights to them at another fee - otherwise they really will be making free money off you!

[lemonfruitpie]

Wow thanks for the advice nai! It helps a lot<3 :] And yea lol I doubt it'll hit over $1000.

[nainami]

:) :) :) I'm just anxious to see lemon's art all world famous :D