Closed

[zOMG Loverly]

This is closed.

[Vicemage]

Yes. Good art is expensive. So to goes the real world.

Gaia gold is worthless. But to assign a worth to it... A current sealed envelope goes for $2.50 real-world money or 32,000 Gaia gold. That's a fair average, but let's be generous, and make the math easy, let's set the value of a sealed envelope at 25,000 Gaia gold.

That means you want good art for approximately $1.50 or less.

That's a bullshit price. A lot of time and effort goes into this stuff, and you want to hand over less than a dollar? And in worthless pixel gold, no less?

Where do you get off, anyway?

For a basic pencil sketch, of a maximum of two characters (or one complex one), I charge $10 in real-world money. The kind that can be used to pay bills and buy groceries. For a digital piece, the type most avi art is? I charge $40 as my base price. Remember the simple math above? To make an equivalent amount here, I'd have to charge 400,000 gold. Anyone charging less than 100,000 is honestly being charitable.

So shut up and work for what you want. Artists don't work for free, nor should they have to, but that's exactly what you're demanding people do for you.

[Ice Prince Yuki]

Well, I guess you get what you pay for. It isn't like Gaia gold is real money or anything.

[GenderlessManwoman]

I'll draw you some good avi art cool

[Kaiser-chan]

There are people with millions of gold on this site. Maybe you can't spare a million gold, but there are plenty of people who will plunk down a million gold for art or more.

You might work hard for your gold, but then, artists work hard for their art. The average avatar art I do takes me about 10 hours, but I've spent 20 hours on pieces before.

Yes, gold commissions are for one's free time, but then, so can real money commissions be done in one's free time as well. People who are working full time have a limited amount of free time, and there's little reason to work for fake money unless one genuinely enjoys receiving fake money. Contrary to popular belief, most people who are charging an arm and a leg in gaia gold actually can earn real money off their art. They're choosing to accept gold instead, and charging accordingly for their time.

You're asking for someone to take their time to do something they could very likely earn real money for, and for a pittance no less, and shocked that anyone would disagree? No one deserves professional quality art for less than a dollar's worth of fake money. That's just flat ridiculous. You aren't entitled to good avatar art any time you want it, at any sum you want it, any more than anyone is entitled to have you go do their lawn work every time they need it.

[Seijaku_Ishida]

Artists charge what reasonable people are willing to pay. Artists are taking time out of their real lives to draw you a custom image. While you might not consider Gaia to be 'real life', artists still live and draw in real life and real time.

I charge prices that you might call overly-expensive when I feel like taking Gaia commissions, but the majority of my commissions are real-money, and I'm not going to cheat myself or my real-money clients by giving someone the same thing for a lesser price.

[Vaveli]

If I'm going to be spending my free time drawing art for someone, I'm gonna expect a LOT in return, especially if I'm being paid in fake money. If you want to be cheap with your gold then expect cheap art in return.

[poodin]

heart CROWNED_CLOWN_3293 heart
IS PRETTY GOOD AT ART CHECK
IT ROCKS

[poodin]

Vaveli

If I'm going to be spending my free time drawing art for someone, I'm gonna expect a LOT in return, especially if I'm being paid in fake money. If you want to be cheap with your gold then expect cheap art in return.

I DONT HAVE MUCH NEVERMIND I GUESS YOU CANT BE AS GOOD AS CROWNED_CLOWN_3293

[Kotowo]

Uh, if you were able to bribe my friend, she`s pretty good.
I bribed her with a Dark Halo to draw me this in one night c:

[keiiii]

My art costs millions of gold per picture. Millions. And I still get enough people who are more than willing to pay my price. In fact, I only do auctions so my customers are the ones who decide how much they want to pay.

You work hard for your gold, but artists work hard on their art too. You say artists shouldn't charge a lot on Gaia because they're doing it on their free time? Well guess what, you're earning gold on your free time too. Kill more free time on your end if you want an artist to kill their free time on their end.

'Free time' is such a relative term for artists. An artist can either spend 5 hours of 'free time' on a Gaia commission, or they can spend it on a real money commission. They're essentially taking the time they could have spent to get $$$. The Gaia gold compensation they get in return had better be worth the $$$ they could have made using the same amount of time doing a real money commission.

And don't call it the lazy way when people use real money to buy Gaia Cash, MCs, etc. Maybe you get your money without having to work for it, but some people have to work to get $10 if they want to spend $10 on Gaia Cash. That's not lazy.

[Zenia Wulfe]

For this and this, I got a Radio Jack. The Radio Jack is currently worth about 500k, so if you half that, I got 250k per picture. If, using vicemage's example, a sealed letter that costs $2.50 is worth 25k (being generous) then I was paid $25 per picture (I think). If I was to do these pictures for real life money, I would have charged twice that at least. That is what I quoted someone on DA who asked for real life prices.

Sure you can get a pencil and paper for $1 or less, but what you are paying for is the artists time and skill, not just materials. It may take some time to earn the gold (but not much, since gold is so easy to get these days... I remember back in 2004, I was thrilled to get 1k per picture because I was saving for a weretail that cost 10k) but it takes time for artists to draw a picture, plus it took time and lots of practice to get however good they are.

When I open an artshop selling these for 100k and these for 10k, my slots fill up in less than a day and I usually open 20 slots, half 10k and half 100k.

[xi hou jun]

If it wasn't worth the fake gold, you'd be able to buy that $1 pencil and do it yourself. Good artists possess skills. They can ask whatever price they want for those skills. If you want their art badly enough, you'll pay. If not, you won't. Simple.

Or, as Kaiser-chan put it:

Kaiser-chan

You aren't entitled to good avatar art any time you want it, at any sum you want it, any more than anyone is entitled to have you go do their lawn work every time they need it.