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Hi all ^^

I've recently decided to start commision painting and modeling as my painting has improved tenfold over the last few months and need to make a little extra money, but i have no idea where to start

Most of what i need to know is things such as how much to charge and how to go about setting this all up.
Any help that people who know about this can give would be brilliant.

And before anyone asks my painting is not perfect, i paint to a good standard, but what will be an affordable one for people who can't or don't like painting and wish for someone who can to paint their models for a small price.

Thanks,

LazzurusMan

I start at around £50 per character, £9 per foot troop (ish). I've been doing commissions full time (and arrange work for a fair few others) for the last 2 years. Been painting for over 20, and have previously done museum pieces etc.

I wouldn't expect a decent level of commissions till you're painting to at least GW cabinet level. Less than that and folks would generally rather paint it themselves. Looking at your gallery, I have to be honest and say I think you've got a way to go yet before you can expect to charge more than a couple of £ per mini for the work you're doing.

Pictures too need to be much, much better. Print yourself a gradient backdrop sheet, invest in a tripod and a strong daylight lamp and you'll find that the better photo setup leads to better painting (it's somehow easier to spot things to fix in a picture).

So where to start? The photography. Get that sorted, then do a few units or a small army for sale on eBay. You won't make your money on them, but if they're up to standard you may well get follow on commission work (in fact this is pretty much how my business got going). If they're not up to par but sell at a profit (over the model cost), then you can do a few more. If they don't sell (or go for less than the model cost) then your work just isn't good enough and you need to improve.

agreed with the above i paint commesion at my local store my quilty is very very high table top but not pro painting or anything like that if you rly want to do this make sure you can do it in the time frame that you give them and dont overload ur self. you should alrdy know the more you paint the better you become well hope that is a lil bit of info best of luck to you

Thanks guys ^_^
I'm sure my painting level is up to a good standard as my painting has improved alot and my gallery pictures do not give me credit.

Well your best way is to put up some great pictures. I'm not going to pay a penny until I see images that do do you justice.

A nice idea might be to get the ball rolling by doing some free commissions under your belt. Treat them as a paying customer and see if you're cut out for it.

Maybe you could give us a sample of your work...

winterdyne wrote:I start at around £50 per character...

Please, sir, I would LOVE to see a paint job on a single miniature that would cost EIGHTY dollars.



Ghidorah

sluggaslugga wrote:Maybe you could give us a sample of your work...

Here is his cmon gallery:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/winterdyne

His stuff looks better than mine...

Lord Scythican wrote:

sluggaslugga wrote:Maybe you could give us a sample of your work...

Here is his cmon gallery:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/winterdyne

His stuff looks better than mine...

Ooooh... He's that guy


I'd say about 25£ per IC and anything with a 60mm base.
30£ Per Vehicle (Including Super Heavies (Don't make them spend too much money on big things that expensive (Super Heavies))).
5£ Per model on 25mm base.
15£ Per model on 40mm base.
30£ per anything on a larger base than 60mm.
50£ Per model on a large custom base 60mm-200mm.
100£ for a Titan.

It's expensive I know, but they get the right to brag about how good they paint, and it'll give a more professional feel to it...
You also could charge for time. Let's say you have 2 weeks to finish the models...

Example:

10 Vostroyan Firstborn Imperial Guardsmen must be painted in 1 week.
You charge lets say 10£ for each day spent, so... you do the math. This method may be cheated easily, so you could put a minimum time limit let's say 3 days, so you get a minimum 30£ for the models, and let's say every 3 models increase the minimum by 1 day, so 10 vostroyans would be done in 1 week, and you would get 60£ (ignore the extra 33.33333333333333333333...pence, but if there is 11 models then make the cost 60.50£ not 60.6666666666666666666666666666666...£. it'll make things easier).

Got it?

(this comes from a 14½ year old )

Edited for a mistake.
Edited for another mistake .

Tek wrote:Well your best way is to put up some great pictures. I'm not going to pay a penny until I see images that do do you justice.

A nice idea might be to get the ball rolling by doing some free commissions under your belt. Treat them as a paying customer and see if you're cut out for it.

Actually painting stuff for a mate works, too. Just make sure you're doing what your mate wants, not painting for yourself. Get used to painting for others' tastes.

I still stand by my first response though - you need to get the photography up to par - pictures sell, promises don't.

BTW that was for winterdyne's gallery. I linked that because I thought Ghidorah needed an example of a £50 character.

Lord Scythican wrote:BTW that was for winterdyne's gallery. I linked that because I thought Ghidorah needed an example of a £50 character.

It was?... I knew that



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I searched his Gallery of Images and found this.

The description says it's half-decent.

sluggaslugga wrote:
I searched his Gallery of Images and found this.

The description says it's half-decent.

Didn't look bad, if a little dark. My advice to OP concerning pictures is to mount the camera on a mini-tripod in front of your lightbox and set macro on, then play with the shutter speed settings until you can get the mini to look a little brighter. If it starts to look over-exposed, then speed your shutter back up and get a brighter bulb.

LazzurusMan wrote:Thanks guys ^_^
I'm sure my painting level is up to a good standard as my painting has improved alot and my gallery pictures do not give me credit.

you really weren't kidding, my advice for you!!

create a blogspot account for you to display you work and even possible post updates on you current commissions (when you get them) you could easily put a pricing table on there along with all of your contact information, the best part is its free and can look professional! I hope this helps good luck!

sluggaslugga wrote:
10 Vostroyan Firstborn Imperial Guardsmen must be painted in 1 week.
You charge lets say 10£ for each day spent, so... you do the math. This method may be cheated easily, so you could put a minimum time limit let's say 3 days, so you get a minimum 30£ for the models, and let's say every 3 models increase the minimum by 1 day, so 10 vostroyans would be done in 1 week, and you would get 60£

Got it?

(this comes from a 14½ year old )

The problem with being 14 though, is that you think £10 a day is a good wage. It's good if you're 14, sure - please don't think I'm trolling you - but for an adult that's an hour's wage, not a day's. Commission painting always seemed like a mystery to me - I charge anywhere between £100 and £250 a day for what I do (it's not commission Warhammer painting BTW!), and I can see the value in the product I offer for that price (as can my clients), but I do not see the value in paying someone something similar to paint my Warhams.

People say £50 sounds like a lot to pay for an IC. If it took as long as I think it'd take (two days), then a realistic charge would be more like £500.

Tek wrote:

sluggaslugga wrote:
10 Vostroyan Firstborn Imperial Guardsmen must be painted in 1 week.
You charge lets say 10£ for each day spent, so... you do the math. This method may be cheated easily, so you could put a minimum time limit let's say 3 days, so you get a minimum 30£ for the models, and let's say every 3 models increase the minimum by 1 day, so 10 vostroyans would be done in 1 week, and you would get 60£

Got it?

(this comes from a 14½ year old )

The problem with being 14 though, is that you think £10 a day is a good wage. It's good if you're 14, sure - please don't think I'm trolling you - but for an adult that's an hour's wage, not a day's. Commission painting always seemed like a mystery to me - I charge anywhere between £100 and £250 a day for what I do (it's not commission Warhammer painting BTW!), and I can see the value in the product I offer for that price (as can my clients), but I do not see the value in paying someone something similar to paint my Warhams.

People say £50 sounds like a lot to pay for an IC. If it took as long as I think it'd take (two days), then a realistic charge would be more like £500.

Well... If you do this as a profession and not to earn pocket money, then the prices you wrote would be better...
The idea is good though... Right? Right!?

Oh the idea is sound, no worries. Like I said though, I personally wouldn't be able to see the worth in doing it.

Tek wrote:Oh the idea is sound, no worries. Like I said though, I personally wouldn't be able to see the worth in doing it.

You dont see the money in commision painting? Ok a single IC would and will take an hour or two to paint if you paint solid throughout. Thats £25 and hour. The reason why people take weeks too give it back and so on is because they're doing so many commissions that they're always doing a different one. The way people make money out of it is from batch orders IE a massive squad or from ICs and Tanksm Titans and Superheavys rarely male the money back but people take them on because your in short getting a titan too paint what fun.

InquisitorVaron wrote:

Tek wrote:Oh the idea is sound, no worries. Like I said though, I personally wouldn't be able to see the worth in doing it.

You dont see the money in commision painting? Ok a single IC would and will take an hour or two to paint if you paint solid throughout. Thats £25 and hour. The reason why people take weeks too give it back and so on is because they're doing so many commissions that they're always doing a different one. The way people make money out of it is from batch orders IE a massive squad or from ICs and Tanksm Titans and Superheavys rarely male the money back but people take them on because your in short getting a titan too paint what fun.

Your math is WAY off here.

A single IC worth charging 50 for is a paint job that took at least 10 hours, solid painting the entire time, depending on your skill level.

I used to do commission painting, it is generally far below the pay of a minimum wage job, it was a nice extra income while in college though. And that being said, I had single IC's pulling 50-80 USD on ebay, so I wasn't too shabby of a painter.

InquisitorVaron wrote:

Tek wrote:Oh the idea is sound, no worries. Like I said though, I personally wouldn't be able to see the worth in doing it.

You dont see the money in commision painting? Ok a single IC would and will take an hour or two to paint if you paint solid throughout. Thats £25 and hour. The reason why people take weeks too give it back and so on is because they're doing so many commissions that they're always doing a different one. The way people make money out of it is from batch orders IE a massive squad or from ICs and Tanksm Titans and Superheavys rarely male the money back but people take them on because your in short getting a titan too paint what fun.

No. Wrong on pretty much all counts.

Unfortunately, the reality of the commission market is that you can't charge a decent hourly rate unless you're working for a commercial entity or a collector that is fully aware of the value of the work. The bulk of the market is for private individuals wanting something reasonable to put on a gaming table. We therefore need to fit into their disposable income bracket, with a service that's e

For private collectors, very high end (competition standard) commission work can fetch around £150 - £200 per single character (such as the Librarian pictured above). These are not painted in 2 hours. The librarian had a total working time of around 30 hours. Similarly, character commissions don't generally lend themselves to multitasking - you get set up with a particular palette or airbrush progression and stick with it, before starting another. Otherwise you actually end up wasting a lot of time in setting up new mixes, cleaning everything up etc.

Single characters are often (among the guys I work with and myself) used as break pieces - if we're doing a large army, getting burnt out doing the same thing over and over is a real danger - having a change is as good as a holiday they say. It's true. Sometimes another piece seems like a good practice (eg the Mordheim freelancer I did was an exercise in layering and blending in preparation for the OSL on the Space Hulk Librarian) so it's done as a warm up.

Squad level and army level work can be turned over pretty quickly using airbrush and production lining techniques; tedious and repetitive work - here's where you can get the time per miniature down - I think it works out I spend about 2.5 hours per miniature to high-end tabletop level on a simple single-colour scheme, assuming working on batches of at least 5. Including basing and assembly work. Burn out is an issue, so break pieces are usually put in, which extend the turnaround but do keep the interest (and therefore quality) up.

Larger models can be much more work - I wouldn't consider a (warhound) titan for much less than around £600. And that's probably undercharging, mostly 'cause I'd like to do one as a challenge. I've painted large resin models before, and you don't take them on 'for fun'.
For comparison, a Land Raider done with full internals runs to about £350 - to 'high end tabletop' level. That does include all the relevant conversion work to make the internals visible (hinging / magnetising sides and sponsons), but still you see the point. And takes me around 40 solid hours work including assembly. By the time you factor drying / setting times in, the turnaround slows massively.

lets take a spave marine IC now this should take me between 8-10 hrs to do to a good {high tabletop/display standard } so even if you only charge £7 ish a hr {min wage or there abouts } and then take into effect paint cost you want to be chargeing £70-80.

and that is over double what people are willing to pay . which is why i now normaly paint for my mates for free/cheap and just raid there bits box for stuff i want .

i would start off doing free work for your mates or local store as it is very differnt to paint for otheres as you have to rather than painting for yourself . i say this after painting a 4000pt skaven army that i didnt realy want to do and burning out for 2yrs :[

get some well photographed minis up for people to check out and spread the word around your local store / club that your looking to do it but your just starting up and see if theres any takers .
good luck

Wow, thanks for the amazing input guys, and my painting has improved beyond the chaos sorceror you were on about.

I plan on starting with free or very cheap local commisions and if it goes well i'll do commisions on here.
But i may have to take a bit of a break as i'm planning to open my own hobby store XD
I'll try and get some pics of my latest models up on here soon in better quality.
Thanks again
LazzurusMan

Actually... I could start commision work too... After the Armies on Parade, and Finecast painting competitions
because, my painting has also improved alot lately.

Anyways, you should start commision work on let's say, 1£ per model, 2£ per IC and 5£ per tank... Then you can start taking it more seriously.

Best of luck on your business

Lord Scythican wrote:

sluggaslugga wrote:Maybe you could give us a sample of your work...

Here is his cmon gallery:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/winterdyne

His stuff looks better than mine...

who's Mini's are those? Not the OP of course. I looked around in his dakka folders and pretty sure that not same person. Thats much better than what I am capable of even and I been doing this for like 2 years now lol. Maybe in another two years I can paint that well but not right now.

That's one of mine, and is a higher end commission piece.

I have a horrible time with pictures but From what you have seen what do you think I should charge per model. Mind you that what I would most likely be doing is whole armies etc.

I am thinking a dollar a model for small ones unless its like Orks than I would do a bundle package where its like 50c a model etc.

Field Gen wrote:I have a horrible time with pictures but From what you have seen what do you think I should charge per model. Mind you that what I would most likely be doing is whole armies etc.

I am thinking a dollar a model for small ones unless its like Orks than I would do a bundle package where its like 50c a model etc.

If you are looking for pocket money, yes, but if you are thinking of it as a profession start with 5 dollars per model, 10 dollars per tank, 7 dollars per IC...

I am probably still about a year or so away from making it a profession. AT least 3 years until I could be good enough for Golden demon.

Right now I can do a good quallity table top army for ya! Need something that will look good and able to play day after day is what I can do well.

But thanks. I willl keep those prices in mind.