Commissions from a Commissioner's Point of View
One of the things I like to drop my money on is art commissions (that gallery is a mix of my commissions and various gift pieces from people, but you get my drift).
I also keep records of people I've done commissions with, how much I've paid, etc. To me, a big part of whether or not I will repeat-commission an artist is how easy they are to work with during the first commission. Especially since I have to give descriptions of my characters mostly in text, so things rarely translate perfectly in the first sketch.
I've commissioned mainly in two fandoms, Transformers and Avatar, with some random outliers of other strange things. I tend to commission fan-characters primarily. Sometimes I'll get scenes I've wanted to see or characters who I feel don't get enough fanart love.
The first artist I ever commissioned was Wayward Insecticon, and she has long been one of my absolute favorites. She is actually quite inexpensive for the quality of art she provides; here are her current rates. (I note that she will increase prices from those rates if you require either larger paper-size for her to sketch the picture, or if you require more than three but less than seven characters in a commission.)
Tip for artists, btw: Make your commission rates and status (open, closed, attacked by ninja-kumquats) easy to find. Wayward has a link in the footer of her dA journal directly to that page, and it's easy to find on her website.
Wayward also trades in kind for commissions, as well as accepting money. Specifically, she trades for Transformers toys that she can't get in Canada. Sometimes I've found that more convenient than paying her in cash, sometimes not.
Omega Supreme and Aerialbots by ~WaywardInsecticon on deviantART
This was my very first commission from her. It both has six characters on it and required a larger size of paper. According to some e-mails from the time, we worked out the agreed-upon price to be $60, three deluxe Transformers, or some combination thereof.
That's really quite inexpensive for such a complicated piece.
I contacted her via IM, incidentally. I described to her what I wanted, she estimated a price for me, then she finalized the price later on when she realized it would take more paper than she'd expected to do the sketch and fit everyone.
She gave me an initial concept sketch to okay and told me that was the time to request any changes. I liked the layout she'd come up with, so the next bit she presented me with was finished colors to okay. There, I believe I asked her to tweak Silverbolt's colors since his greys were blending in with Omega's arch-wings and Air Raid's head. She tweaked, I liked it, she posted it and sent me the high-res version so I could make myself a print if I wanted one.
Very smooth, very professional. Wayward is an artist I love to work with because of how easy and professional she is about doing work.
I've actually commissioned eight pieces from her. Not going to show off all of those, but I am going to look at one of my fan-character pieces from her since that was a slightly different process.
Fanchara - Arbiter by ~WaywardInsecticon on deviantART
Can't find the notes on this commission, but I probably paid $30 for this piece. Again, inexpensive for the quality and amount of work Wayward puts in.
I contacted her via IM again and described the character as in-detail as I could. For Transformers fan-characters, this has sometimes been difficult since I'll have worked out specific bits of what they transform into and how it looks in robot-mode while not having the whole picture. Arbiter here, I knew would have those heels, and I cribbed a fair amount from the Cybertron Ransack design but I really didn't like the way Ransack did his motorcycle front-half in robot-mode, so we went with Sideways's transformation scheme on that part. Then we gave him Ironhide's crest for his helmet.
(Seekers are so damn easy to do since their transformation-scheme is already designed.)
However, not only did she want descriptions of what the character looked like, Wayward also asked for descriptions of the character's personality so she could work out poses for him. This is something that's become a default part of giving out fan-character descriptions for me.
For characters like this, Wayward did a couple of character-design sketches first to hash out with me. Once she had a design I liked, she slapped some flat colors on it to show to me so I could okay colors.
Every time she does this, it's never hit quite what I've been visualizing, so we usually spend an afternoon in IM trading the design sketches and color swatches back and forth to get a pleasing color scheme that fits what's in my head.
Can you see why I love working with Wayward so damn much?
Then it was a concept sketch to be okayed, a final color set to be okayed, then posted and sent me a high-res version of the picture for if I want to make my own print. (This has been pretty much standard with her: I get the web-size version and I get a hi-res version. Very handy.) Nice, easy, and professional.
Wayward generally does fairly simple background to go with pictures. I've actually sometimes asked for tweaks on the backgrounds as well as on the characters. In Stunticons Coming at YOU, I had her make the road grungy rather than shiny. In this picture of Butterfly Effect and Iniquity, I specifically asked for a Decepticon sports bar with a menu, advertisements, and graffiti on the walls. In Choclatl, I handed one of my ficlets to her and asked her to illustrate based on that.
So, Wayward is pretty damn awesome and has unfortunately colored my perception of how commissioned artists are supposed to behave. Working with other artists has calibrated me about what is actually reasonable to expect, though. And what I expect is basic professionalism.
Which is why I will never, ever work with Grungewerx/the GEARSMITH again. I gave him a description of my character, paid him, didn't get a single sketch to look over before he finished a design and posted it to dA. Then when I said he hadn't gotten the design right, it took him six months to fix it.
Yeah. Don't do that.
I've only worked with Heatherbeast as an artist twice, though she's a good friend of mine. We have hung out muchly, and she has gotten me drunk. <3
Jetstorm Colors: Transformers by ~Heatherbeast on deviantART
Can't actually find the e-mail where we agreed upon the price because I apparently went on a delete spree through my late 2006, early 2007 e-mails for no explicable reason. However, according to her most recent commission rates, I likely paid $50 for it.
I think I kind of annoyed Heatherbeast a bit with this commission, because I kept asking her to adjust Jetstorm's pose. Given the way she works and does sketches, this was a lot of work for her. (And now I think one of the poses I said no on is much better than this one. LIVE AND LEARN.)
Again, the pattern was concept sketch until finalized, then colors. Heather works entirely in traditional materials, so we hacked out color-swatches well before she started coloring. Once it was done, I did have to get her to tweak Slingshot's head since she used Marvel colors but it was a very easy tweak.
Tip to commissioners: know your artists' mediums. Digital artists can tweak fairly easily. Traditional artists, much less so.
Since Heather works in traditional media, btw, she's mailed me the original of both this piece and the other one I've had from her.
The second time I worked with her was a) a gift from Ravyn so I didn't have to pay any money at all, and b) much easier since I just said "here is what the character looks like, here is her personality, amaze me". She did some character design sketches to get the character down, then proceeded to amaze me.
She also, as she comments in the description of the piece, did not follow my color descriptions exactly. On the other hand, the adjustments she made to the character look a lot better than the descriptions I'd given her would have.
Remember, you are hiring the artist for their skills. Don't be afraid to be flexible. Conversely, don't be afraid to rein them in if they're getting too crazy. (I've never had that happen, and I hope I never do. But it's a two-way business contract.)
I discovered mimi-na/Amy Mebberson through art Seanan McGuire (cadhla/seanan_mcguire) had done of some of her characters as Disney princesses. I loved the concept, so when Amy opened up commission slots, I pounced on one.
Amy is a professional artist these days, working for Boom Entertainment on Pixar comics. She used to work for Disney. (Her commission status is clearly stated in the footer of her journal, too.)
Commission: Dame Rumour by *mimi-na on deviantART
I paid in the range of $65-$75 for this piece. It was complicated, and it was an artist who is very aware of the value of her time and skill. It was completely worth it.
An artist's time and skill is worth money. If you don't think it's worth as much money as they're charging, don't commission them. Whining at them about their prices is incredibly rude and just makes you look like an entitled shit.
This is a Disney Princess humanized version of the Transformer from the 'Heather proceeded to amaze me' link, btw. I basically sent her a link to Heather's picture, told her I wanted a Disney Princess human-version of the character, and made a few specific notes like how I wanted her boots shown off because I loved her boots.
She sent me a concept sketch to okay, then colors. I've almost always had that with artists, and it works really well as a process.
Final version included both the web-size piece and a hi-res version for in case if I wanted to make a print.
Deathwind13 is quite a fun guy to work with. I heard about him via another artist I watch mentioning he was having a fire sale on commissions. I picked up four slots to give as Christmas gifts to various people.
Commission - Fleetwind by *DeathWind13 on deviantART
Three of those slots were single-character pieces like this. Because of the sale, they only cost $15 apiece.
These were also some of the easiest characters to do descriptions for because people had already done art of all three characters, so I could just hand him links to those pieces and describe the characters' personalities to him so he could come up with poses that fit the characters.
From him, I actually got final colors without a concept sketch. But a) these were pretty simple pieces, b) I'd provided him with pictures of the characters, and c) he was quite willing to tweak that piece. Bambi, for instance, did not originally have her proper arm-frills in place until I pointed out them being missing.
We communicated via a mixture of dA notes and e-mail on these pieces. I'm finding dA notes are quite useful to keep track of commissions, as I am less likely to randomly delete them.
Commish-Ichiro, Kouji and Yui by *DeathWind13 on deviantART
The fourth picture was a three-person piece. It was still discounted because of the sale so it was only $25.
This one required a _lot_ more description as none of these three had never been drawn before. This was also the first time I started putting together serious reference pictures. Piandao Org is a life-saver for AtLA reference shots, and I happily gave Deathwind a whole bunch to give him a thorough idea of the types of clothes the kids would be wearing. Additionally, since Puck had picked out some manga characters to play the manga-ized versions of the characters, I provided those with him.
Again, I got the final color version without previously getting a concept sketch. However, he hit the characters note-perfect to me so I didn't need any tweaks. Final version included both web-size version and hi-res version of the image.
Deathwind is quite quick about making adjustments as needed, though it helped a lot that I had so many reference pictures for him. I do kind of prefer getting concept sketches before we move onto coloring just so the artist doesn't have to waste time on coloring something I might not be happy with. However, I'm usually pretty darn easy to please.
I've done several commissions with Foxysquid.
Commission: Hahn and Krisuk by ~foxysquid on deviantART
Based on her commission rates, this was $23.
Straight-forward process: sent her a dA note to see if she had two commission slots open for me at the time. When she said yes, I actually described what I wanted, providing reference shots as needed. (Since these two commissions were almost entirely of canon characters for Avatar, they weren't much needed.) She sent me a concept sketch, I okayed it, she posted the final colored version directly to dA and linked me to that.
This caused a bit of trouble in some cases as I apparently did not describe LaS Sokka's scarring correctly, and she had to go back and fix that to the already-posted piece. However, Foxy has been really accommodating about making tweaks to posted works.
Ref Sheet Commission 1 by ~foxysquid on deviantART
The character reference sheets worked out to $30 per sheet. That's slightly discounted since I was ordering three at once. (However, my most recent reference sheet commissions from her are $22 apiece, but again, multiples at once and these sheets are only one character per sheet rather than two.)
The character sheets took a lot of description-writing and reference pictures since I was basically asking her to design six original characters for me. Generally, I've always found that asking for original characters requires a lot more description than asking for canons. Totally understandable.
Concept sketch to okay, okayed, final colors posted directly, tweaks from there asked by me. (Xin Wan looking older, Liu's scarf getting the colors adjusted.) Foxy was really accommodating and easy to work with on those changes, which I really appreciate a lot.
I note that Foxysquid is the first artist I've worked with who doesn't include a hi-res, print-ready version of the picture as part of the finale package for a commissioner. I've since found that this is standard practice in the Avatar fandom; neither Isaia nor Rin have provided them either, or have even had them. It's just the way they do their art.
Wingus is a good friend of mine, and since Wayward is a bit burnt out on commissions these days, I hired him to do an original character of mine. (WINGUS. Turn on embedding!)
I don't actually remember how much I paid for Ani Motormaster, but according to his commission prices, it was probably in the $20-$25 range.
We play on the same RP together, so communication for this one was done entirely via IM. Handy for immediate discussion, not-so-handy for pulling up details again later. Fortunately, I use Pidgin which automatically keeps logs for me.
I described Ani Motormaster to him, including some reference shots of the helm I'd based his on and halberds. He did concept sketches until we settled on a design I liked. He did a concept sketch, I liked it, he did flat colors, we tweaked until I was satisfied, he finalized colors and added a simple background.
The final package for me, he sent me all of the concept sketches, tweaked pictures, and the final versions. That was kind of awesome, and I've since saved them because I really do love that kind of thing.
When Isaia offered commissions, I pounced on a slot. She's the first person I've worked with who has a set form of information she wants with a commission, which I happily filled out.
Commish for Chaos2112 by *Isaia on deviantART
This cost me $25. Honestly, I would have paid more for it. (Honestly, these days, I'd pay more for everything Wayward has ever done for me as well.)
I filled out all of her form, she noted me back that she'd like to do the commission, I got her Paypal address to pay her, paid her half upfront and half on completion. Generally, I either do that or pay it all upfront, depending on my mood and my comfort-levels with the artist. The only time I've ever paid only on completion was with Wingus because he didn't have a Paypal account, and so I had to send him a money order. He, logically enough, withheld on sending me the big version and all the sketches of Motormaster until he got his payment.
And, I note, we only worked it out like that because he trusted me since he games with me.
Astalythe I found via the really great dA club hiredeviantARTISTS. She was having a sale on graphite character portraits, so I commissioned her to do Dai Li Haru.
That cost $28 total, $18 of which was for the art and $10 of which was for her to mail the original to me. 'Cause I love collecting the originals when I can. <3
Provided her with a description and reference shots of Haru and the Dai Li uniform since she's not a Gaangster. Got concept sketch, okayed it, got scan of final graphite piece, had her do a wee bit of tweaking, she posted it to dA and mailed me the original.
Nice and easy, and she was quite enjoyable to work with. I'd gladly work with her again if she was a) taking commissions, and b) I had something in mind more in line with her usual work. (Actually, Grungewerx is the only artist I've ever worked with that I wouldn't work with again.)
Avery Annarose recently had some $5 sketch commissions up for sale, which I pounced on like a pouncing thing. Now cheap sketch commissions are a whole different breed of animal from normal commission to me. They're basically 'provide description, get what you get'. No tweaking, no concepts, no nothing. But hey, $5 and presumably you're getting them from an artist whose work you like.
I do, in fact, like Avery's work a lot. She's actually done a major commission for me in the past, though I won it in an auction so the price has no bearing on what she'd reasonably charge. Neither does the process of how I got it.
Two of the sketch commissions: one with two canon characters and one with three OCs. Given how I work, you almost certainly know which one I spent the most time writing descriptions for.
Sunfreak/Rin only recently started offering commissions.
Avatar- Saiyan Urzai by ~Sunfreak on deviantART
This cost $35. Concept sketch, okayed, colored, posted. Communication: 'Saiyan!Ozai/Ursa, preferably with some tailplay'. Bada bing, bada boom.
My current commission statuses for those who are interested:
- one slot with Wayward outstanding (pic will likely be $30)
- one slot with Telophase outstanding (pic will likely be $35+)
- one in-progress with Rin ($45) plus one pitched idea that she hasn't finalized a price on
- one in-progress with Foxysquid ($22) plus two she hasn't gotten around to yet (both also $22)
- one in-progress with LaviRavi ($65)
- one in-progress with safelybeds ($12 but I will probably give her more)
So. I will tend to pay up to $75 for a commission, depending on the artist and what I am commissioning. I believe in giving the artist I am commissioning everything I can think of to make their job easier. I prefer to be involved in the process - give me concept sketches and colors. Please don't post it without giving me a chance to say if things are satisfactory unless you're willing to make changes right away if things aren't.
Make it easy for me to give you money. Seriously. The harder it is for me to pay you, the less likely I am to work with you. In fact, the harder in general it is to work with an artist, the less likely I am to bother and I'm certainly not going to do repeat commissions with a difficult artist.
So. Take all this as you will.
I also keep records of people I've done commissions with, how much I've paid, etc. To me, a big part of whether or not I will repeat-commission an artist is how easy they are to work with during the first commission. Especially since I have to give descriptions of my characters mostly in text, so things rarely translate perfectly in the first sketch.
I've commissioned mainly in two fandoms, Transformers and Avatar, with some random outliers of other strange things. I tend to commission fan-characters primarily. Sometimes I'll get scenes I've wanted to see or characters who I feel don't get enough fanart love.
The first artist I ever commissioned was Wayward Insecticon, and she has long been one of my absolute favorites. She is actually quite inexpensive for the quality of art she provides; here are her current rates. (I note that she will increase prices from those rates if you require either larger paper-size for her to sketch the picture, or if you require more than three but less than seven characters in a commission.)
Tip for artists, btw: Make your commission rates and status (open, closed, attacked by ninja-kumquats) easy to find. Wayward has a link in the footer of her dA journal directly to that page, and it's easy to find on her website.
Wayward also trades in kind for commissions, as well as accepting money. Specifically, she trades for Transformers toys that she can't get in Canada. Sometimes I've found that more convenient than paying her in cash, sometimes not.
Omega Supreme and Aerialbots by ~WaywardInsecticon on deviantART
This was my very first commission from her. It both has six characters on it and required a larger size of paper. According to some e-mails from the time, we worked out the agreed-upon price to be $60, three deluxe Transformers, or some combination thereof.
That's really quite inexpensive for such a complicated piece.
I contacted her via IM, incidentally. I described to her what I wanted, she estimated a price for me, then she finalized the price later on when she realized it would take more paper than she'd expected to do the sketch and fit everyone.
She gave me an initial concept sketch to okay and told me that was the time to request any changes. I liked the layout she'd come up with, so the next bit she presented me with was finished colors to okay. There, I believe I asked her to tweak Silverbolt's colors since his greys were blending in with Omega's arch-wings and Air Raid's head. She tweaked, I liked it, she posted it and sent me the high-res version so I could make myself a print if I wanted one.
Very smooth, very professional. Wayward is an artist I love to work with because of how easy and professional she is about doing work.
I've actually commissioned eight pieces from her. Not going to show off all of those, but I am going to look at one of my fan-character pieces from her since that was a slightly different process.
Fanchara - Arbiter by ~WaywardInsecticon on deviantART
Can't find the notes on this commission, but I probably paid $30 for this piece. Again, inexpensive for the quality and amount of work Wayward puts in.
I contacted her via IM again and described the character as in-detail as I could. For Transformers fan-characters, this has sometimes been difficult since I'll have worked out specific bits of what they transform into and how it looks in robot-mode while not having the whole picture. Arbiter here, I knew would have those heels, and I cribbed a fair amount from the Cybertron Ransack design but I really didn't like the way Ransack did his motorcycle front-half in robot-mode, so we went with Sideways's transformation scheme on that part. Then we gave him Ironhide's crest for his helmet.
(Seekers are so damn easy to do since their transformation-scheme is already designed.)
However, not only did she want descriptions of what the character looked like, Wayward also asked for descriptions of the character's personality so she could work out poses for him. This is something that's become a default part of giving out fan-character descriptions for me.
For characters like this, Wayward did a couple of character-design sketches first to hash out with me. Once she had a design I liked, she slapped some flat colors on it to show to me so I could okay colors.
Every time she does this, it's never hit quite what I've been visualizing, so we usually spend an afternoon in IM trading the design sketches and color swatches back and forth to get a pleasing color scheme that fits what's in my head.
Can you see why I love working with Wayward so damn much?
Then it was a concept sketch to be okayed, a final color set to be okayed, then posted and sent me a high-res version of the picture for if I want to make my own print. (This has been pretty much standard with her: I get the web-size version and I get a hi-res version. Very handy.) Nice, easy, and professional.
Wayward generally does fairly simple background to go with pictures. I've actually sometimes asked for tweaks on the backgrounds as well as on the characters. In Stunticons Coming at YOU, I had her make the road grungy rather than shiny. In this picture of Butterfly Effect and Iniquity, I specifically asked for a Decepticon sports bar with a menu, advertisements, and graffiti on the walls. In Choclatl, I handed one of my ficlets to her and asked her to illustrate based on that.
So, Wayward is pretty damn awesome and has unfortunately colored my perception of how commissioned artists are supposed to behave. Working with other artists has calibrated me about what is actually reasonable to expect, though. And what I expect is basic professionalism.
Which is why I will never, ever work with Grungewerx/the GEARSMITH again. I gave him a description of my character, paid him, didn't get a single sketch to look over before he finished a design and posted it to dA. Then when I said he hadn't gotten the design right, it took him six months to fix it.
Yeah. Don't do that.
I've only worked with Heatherbeast as an artist twice, though she's a good friend of mine. We have hung out muchly, and she has gotten me drunk. <3
Jetstorm Colors: Transformers by ~Heatherbeast on deviantART
Can't actually find the e-mail where we agreed upon the price because I apparently went on a delete spree through my late 2006, early 2007 e-mails for no explicable reason. However, according to her most recent commission rates, I likely paid $50 for it.
I think I kind of annoyed Heatherbeast a bit with this commission, because I kept asking her to adjust Jetstorm's pose. Given the way she works and does sketches, this was a lot of work for her. (And now I think one of the poses I said no on is much better than this one. LIVE AND LEARN.)
Again, the pattern was concept sketch until finalized, then colors. Heather works entirely in traditional materials, so we hacked out color-swatches well before she started coloring. Once it was done, I did have to get her to tweak Slingshot's head since she used Marvel colors but it was a very easy tweak.
Tip to commissioners: know your artists' mediums. Digital artists can tweak fairly easily. Traditional artists, much less so.
Since Heather works in traditional media, btw, she's mailed me the original of both this piece and the other one I've had from her.
The second time I worked with her was a) a gift from Ravyn so I didn't have to pay any money at all, and b) much easier since I just said "here is what the character looks like, here is her personality, amaze me". She did some character design sketches to get the character down, then proceeded to amaze me.
She also, as she comments in the description of the piece, did not follow my color descriptions exactly. On the other hand, the adjustments she made to the character look a lot better than the descriptions I'd given her would have.
Remember, you are hiring the artist for their skills. Don't be afraid to be flexible. Conversely, don't be afraid to rein them in if they're getting too crazy. (I've never had that happen, and I hope I never do. But it's a two-way business contract.)
I discovered mimi-na/Amy Mebberson through art Seanan McGuire (cadhla/seanan_mcguire) had done of some of her characters as Disney princesses. I loved the concept, so when Amy opened up commission slots, I pounced on one.
Amy is a professional artist these days, working for Boom Entertainment on Pixar comics. She used to work for Disney. (Her commission status is clearly stated in the footer of her journal, too.)
Commission: Dame Rumour by *mimi-na on deviantART
I paid in the range of $65-$75 for this piece. It was complicated, and it was an artist who is very aware of the value of her time and skill. It was completely worth it.
An artist's time and skill is worth money. If you don't think it's worth as much money as they're charging, don't commission them. Whining at them about their prices is incredibly rude and just makes you look like an entitled shit.
This is a Disney Princess humanized version of the Transformer from the 'Heather proceeded to amaze me' link, btw. I basically sent her a link to Heather's picture, told her I wanted a Disney Princess human-version of the character, and made a few specific notes like how I wanted her boots shown off because I loved her boots.
She sent me a concept sketch to okay, then colors. I've almost always had that with artists, and it works really well as a process.
Final version included both the web-size piece and a hi-res version for in case if I wanted to make a print.
Deathwind13 is quite a fun guy to work with. I heard about him via another artist I watch mentioning he was having a fire sale on commissions. I picked up four slots to give as Christmas gifts to various people.
Commission - Fleetwind by *DeathWind13 on deviantART
Three of those slots were single-character pieces like this. Because of the sale, they only cost $15 apiece.
These were also some of the easiest characters to do descriptions for because people had already done art of all three characters, so I could just hand him links to those pieces and describe the characters' personalities to him so he could come up with poses that fit the characters.
From him, I actually got final colors without a concept sketch. But a) these were pretty simple pieces, b) I'd provided him with pictures of the characters, and c) he was quite willing to tweak that piece. Bambi, for instance, did not originally have her proper arm-frills in place until I pointed out them being missing.
We communicated via a mixture of dA notes and e-mail on these pieces. I'm finding dA notes are quite useful to keep track of commissions, as I am less likely to randomly delete them.
Commish-Ichiro, Kouji and Yui by *DeathWind13 on deviantART
The fourth picture was a three-person piece. It was still discounted because of the sale so it was only $25.
This one required a _lot_ more description as none of these three had never been drawn before. This was also the first time I started putting together serious reference pictures. Piandao Org is a life-saver for AtLA reference shots, and I happily gave Deathwind a whole bunch to give him a thorough idea of the types of clothes the kids would be wearing. Additionally, since Puck had picked out some manga characters to play the manga-ized versions of the characters, I provided those with him.
Again, I got the final color version without previously getting a concept sketch. However, he hit the characters note-perfect to me so I didn't need any tweaks. Final version included both web-size version and hi-res version of the image.
Deathwind is quite quick about making adjustments as needed, though it helped a lot that I had so many reference pictures for him. I do kind of prefer getting concept sketches before we move onto coloring just so the artist doesn't have to waste time on coloring something I might not be happy with. However, I'm usually pretty darn easy to please.
I've done several commissions with Foxysquid.
Commission: Hahn and Krisuk by ~foxysquid on deviantART
Based on her commission rates, this was $23.
Straight-forward process: sent her a dA note to see if she had two commission slots open for me at the time. When she said yes, I actually described what I wanted, providing reference shots as needed. (Since these two commissions were almost entirely of canon characters for Avatar, they weren't much needed.) She sent me a concept sketch, I okayed it, she posted the final colored version directly to dA and linked me to that.
This caused a bit of trouble in some cases as I apparently did not describe LaS Sokka's scarring correctly, and she had to go back and fix that to the already-posted piece. However, Foxy has been really accommodating about making tweaks to posted works.
Ref Sheet Commission 1 by ~foxysquid on deviantART
The character reference sheets worked out to $30 per sheet. That's slightly discounted since I was ordering three at once. (However, my most recent reference sheet commissions from her are $22 apiece, but again, multiples at once and these sheets are only one character per sheet rather than two.)
The character sheets took a lot of description-writing and reference pictures since I was basically asking her to design six original characters for me. Generally, I've always found that asking for original characters requires a lot more description than asking for canons. Totally understandable.
Concept sketch to okay, okayed, final colors posted directly, tweaks from there asked by me. (Xin Wan looking older, Liu's scarf getting the colors adjusted.) Foxy was really accommodating and easy to work with on those changes, which I really appreciate a lot.
I note that Foxysquid is the first artist I've worked with who doesn't include a hi-res, print-ready version of the picture as part of the finale package for a commissioner. I've since found that this is standard practice in the Avatar fandom; neither Isaia nor Rin have provided them either, or have even had them. It's just the way they do their art.
Wingus is a good friend of mine, and since Wayward is a bit burnt out on commissions these days, I hired him to do an original character of mine. (WINGUS. Turn on embedding!)
I don't actually remember how much I paid for Ani Motormaster, but according to his commission prices, it was probably in the $20-$25 range.
We play on the same RP together, so communication for this one was done entirely via IM. Handy for immediate discussion, not-so-handy for pulling up details again later. Fortunately, I use Pidgin which automatically keeps logs for me.
I described Ani Motormaster to him, including some reference shots of the helm I'd based his on and halberds. He did concept sketches until we settled on a design I liked. He did a concept sketch, I liked it, he did flat colors, we tweaked until I was satisfied, he finalized colors and added a simple background.
The final package for me, he sent me all of the concept sketches, tweaked pictures, and the final versions. That was kind of awesome, and I've since saved them because I really do love that kind of thing.
When Isaia offered commissions, I pounced on a slot. She's the first person I've worked with who has a set form of information she wants with a commission, which I happily filled out.
Commish for Chaos2112 by *Isaia on deviantART
This cost me $25. Honestly, I would have paid more for it. (Honestly, these days, I'd pay more for everything Wayward has ever done for me as well.)
I filled out all of her form, she noted me back that she'd like to do the commission, I got her Paypal address to pay her, paid her half upfront and half on completion. Generally, I either do that or pay it all upfront, depending on my mood and my comfort-levels with the artist. The only time I've ever paid only on completion was with Wingus because he didn't have a Paypal account, and so I had to send him a money order. He, logically enough, withheld on sending me the big version and all the sketches of Motormaster until he got his payment.
And, I note, we only worked it out like that because he trusted me since he games with me.
Astalythe I found via the really great dA club hiredeviantARTISTS. She was having a sale on graphite character portraits, so I commissioned her to do Dai Li Haru.
That cost $28 total, $18 of which was for the art and $10 of which was for her to mail the original to me. 'Cause I love collecting the originals when I can. <3
Provided her with a description and reference shots of Haru and the Dai Li uniform since she's not a Gaangster. Got concept sketch, okayed it, got scan of final graphite piece, had her do a wee bit of tweaking, she posted it to dA and mailed me the original.
Nice and easy, and she was quite enjoyable to work with. I'd gladly work with her again if she was a) taking commissions, and b) I had something in mind more in line with her usual work. (Actually, Grungewerx is the only artist I've ever worked with that I wouldn't work with again.)
Avery Annarose recently had some $5 sketch commissions up for sale, which I pounced on like a pouncing thing. Now cheap sketch commissions are a whole different breed of animal from normal commission to me. They're basically 'provide description, get what you get'. No tweaking, no concepts, no nothing. But hey, $5 and presumably you're getting them from an artist whose work you like.
I do, in fact, like Avery's work a lot. She's actually done a major commission for me in the past, though I won it in an auction so the price has no bearing on what she'd reasonably charge. Neither does the process of how I got it.
Two of the sketch commissions: one with two canon characters and one with three OCs. Given how I work, you almost certainly know which one I spent the most time writing descriptions for.
Sunfreak/Rin only recently started offering commissions.
Avatar- Saiyan Urzai by ~Sunfreak on deviantART
This cost $35. Concept sketch, okayed, colored, posted. Communication: 'Saiyan!Ozai/Ursa, preferably with some tailplay'. Bada bing, bada boom.
My current commission statuses for those who are interested:
- one slot with Wayward outstanding (pic will likely be $30)
- one slot with Telophase outstanding (pic will likely be $35+)
- one in-progress with Rin ($45) plus one pitched idea that she hasn't finalized a price on
- one in-progress with Foxysquid ($22) plus two she hasn't gotten around to yet (both also $22)
- one in-progress with LaviRavi ($65)
- one in-progress with safelybeds ($12 but I will probably give her more)
So. I will tend to pay up to $75 for a commission, depending on the artist and what I am commissioning. I believe in giving the artist I am commissioning everything I can think of to make their job easier. I prefer to be involved in the process - give me concept sketches and colors. Please don't post it without giving me a chance to say if things are satisfactory unless you're willing to make changes right away if things aren't.
Make it easy for me to give you money. Seriously. The harder it is for me to pay you, the less likely I am to work with you. In fact, the harder in general it is to work with an artist, the less likely I am to bother and I'm certainly not going to do repeat commissions with a difficult artist.
So. Take all this as you will.