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Hi folks
Just a short and maybe even stupid question: what can one charge for a sculpt?
Sure, that depends on how good you are, what exactly is going to be sculpted and so on, I understand that. But these things usually are factors rather than indicators.
So - if I agreed to sculpt a 28-mm-"heroic" scale miniature (similar to a citadel space marine) for a hypothetic client, had average modelling skills and the whole affair took me, say, 24 hours total.
What would be a good price?

I read that other sculptors charged up to 400 dollars, starting from 100 pounds. And some of them were not what I would consider "good". On the other hand, I guess that 40 pounds is way too little for all the effort. Would do you guys say?

A good rule of thumb seems to be about $15 to $20 per mm, for a decent quality job. Decent sculptors are not cheap. Depending on the estimated time taken the quote for the job may be more or less.

If you're thinking of 24 hours solid work, I wouldn't look to charge less than around £200. Much less than that and it becomes an insulting rate for skilled work.

I imagine that if you work closely with your client and give them exactly what they want, people would pay up toward three or four times the cost of a 'stock' mini, but once you go down the skill scale and perfection of product that price will drop rapidly. Say a special character is £15, I wouldn't mind paying double that for a customized version, triple if it was superbly done and really captured what I saw in my head beforehand. For four times the price I'd have to be speechless and wet myself when seeing it.

Your time spent on a commission shouldn't change the price of the product, it should rather determine if it's a viable enterprise. If I want to buy a figure there's a limit to what I'll pay, no matter if you spent an hour on it, or three weeks.

I mean for £100 I wouldn't buy a customized 28mm figure, I'd rather grab the 150mm marine from Forgeworld.

Perhaps you could sculpt something and make a poll on here with different price options, see what people think it's worth qualitywise.

 Johnno wrote:
I imagine that if you work closely with your client and give them exactly what they want, people would pay up toward three or four times the cost of a 'stock' mini, but once you go down the skill scale and perfection of product that price will drop rapidly. Say a special character is £15, I wouldn't mind paying double that for a customized version, triple if it was superbly done and really captured what I saw in my head beforehand. For four times the price I'd have to be speechless and wet myself when seeing it.

Your time spent on a commission shouldn't change the price of the product, it should rather determine if it's a viable enterprise. If I want to buy a figure there's a limit to what I'll pay, no matter if you spent an hour on it, or three weeks.

I mean for £100 I wouldn't buy a customized 28mm figure, I'd rather grab the 150mm marine from Forgeworld.

Perhaps you could sculpt something and make a poll on here with different price options, see what people think it's worth qualitywise.

I've done many customised 28mm minis. They're not cheap to do. As a simple piece of advice NEVER DEVALUE YOUR TIME BELOW WHAT YOU THINK IT IS WORTH. A commission is business, and customers can either afford it, or not. If you can cast up your work (copyright issues aside), then you can split that working cost over the number of pieces you cast, but for one-offs or exclusives, the entire production cost needs to be met by the client.

A second piece of advice- never do 'mates' rates'. Your friends should either value your time as you do, or you should give it freely and just charge material costs if that. That way there's a never a 'you did it for that much before' argument.

winterdyne wrote:
I've done many customised 28mm minis. They're not cheap to do. As a simple piece of advice NEVER DEVALUE YOUR TIME BELOW WHAT YOU THINK IT IS WORTH. A commission is business, and customers can either afford it, or not.

You're right winterdyne. Perhaps I phrased myself a bit clumsily, I was aiming at a thought/view about a balance between quality/time/cost. Either way I haven't delved into commissions enough to be giving actual advice, so take my personal views with a grain of salt.

I agree with both replies above, even if they seem to contradict each other. (EDIT: 1st post of winterdyne & Johnno, respectively)

The real question is: How much is your time worth? That should be your main indicator. And that really comes down to questions like quality of sculpt, do you want to live from this or not and what the market is ready to pay.

On the one hand, if you just do it as a hobby, you should probably follow Johnno's advice. There is a limit as to what the average nerd will pay for a custom mini, and that is effectively your limit if you want to sell non-commercial sculpts. I have not heard that any of the big sculptors could make a (decent) living from only non-commercial commission work.
In fact, for most professional sculptors, their additional commercial jobs finance their living, because their own miniature ranges do not generate income to live from it. At least Kev White was pretty open on that (or rather Sally) on their own forum.

On the other hand, if you wanted to make a living out of it, or get a FAIR price, for the time you said you needed (24 hours), 200 GBP, or 250 EUR would be appropriate. That boils down to 8,50 EUR / hour + material costs. It is just not very likely that anyone non-commercial would pay that price!

There ARE some serious collectors out there who will pay a lot more than the average nerd, of course. But your sculpting skills would need to match their tastes, and even then, you will be hard-pressed to make a living on the occasional serious collector. Otherwise Kev White, Felix Paniagua, or all those wicked Frenchies would be rich people by now.

@ everyone: Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I spent some time thinking about what I'd like to charge for such a miniature and started working before we actually agreed on a price. Of course not because I think I could improve my position by showing him exactly what he wanted and then telling him to give me an incredible amount of money, but simply because I got carried away at the idea of what the client wanted to have.

If you don't mind, I'd like to share what I've done so far (the miniature is not at all completed yet!).
It's supposed to be a female inquisitor in TDA, but mind you, she lacks hands, feet, detail and and and.



Also, we're about to agree on a price. I'll let you know as soon as the miniature is finished and the client received his parcel.

By the way, I know she's not perfect, but he seems to like her that way, and this is the most important thing to my mind.

Well just remeber long term ..time is money ..
and you will have more invested in time than money in this mini