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winterdyne wrote:
The kit price is irrelevant; especially if you work on a range of manufacturers. The only thing that matters is time.

These units are a good example of my bottom end tabletop level:



The kit price on that is under £10 per unit, including the bases and movement tray. And the metal models in the men at arms.
Probably about 15 hours per unit average from sprue to photo table - those are what I charge at about £125 - £140 each.

It's interesting that you commented with the kit price - I do sometimes see new painters saying they charge kit price on top and it really is a recipe for disaster in my opinion.

TO ME, or maybe a buyer who has never used commision painters. This is really top notch work. I wouldnt expect this to be "tapletop" but after being on here for a year or so the phrase "tabletop quality" has lost all meaning

Yeah, I get that a lot, but I don't like numeric grading. At the end of the day I paint stuff to game with (the above), stuff to display or push things a bit, and stuff pulling out all the stops.

It really is a very subjective thing, which is why I have many, many photos online. :-)

text removed.

Reds8n

You might have missed the bit where I said I've been doing this full time for around 6 years now?

It suits me pretty well and although the money is relatively poor it allows me to pursue other businesses and work my own schedule. Certainly considering the near-breakdown that I ran into doing IT consultancy and the cesspool that the games coding industry is, I'm happier where I am.

Mate, I'm a plumbing and heating engineer and I get the same thing all the time.

Some people just have unrealistic expectations, don't let it bother you. My price is reasonable and yours seems that way too, so if someone is willing to do it cheaper then let them.

They'll either go out of business or else they're just stating up and are not confident in their own abilities. If the customer wants a cheaper price then they can take the risk of a potential cowboy and that's up to them. My price comes with the guarantee of experience, a proven track record, professionalism and aftercare, as I'm sure yours does, and there are plenty of people out there willing to pay for that.

He'll be back, or he won't *shrugs*. In the meantime I'm not willing to exchange my labour for slave wages and I don't have to.

kb305 wrote:

maybe stop playing with toys and try getting a real job. im just sayin. commission painting is best left as something to do for fun on the side and try not to get too caught up in it. and if people dont want to pay your price, feth them, it's for the best because thank god you dont have to glue and paint their junk for little money. leave that to the sweatshop studios.

Ok, take a chill pill dude. That's condescending to the max.

winterdyne, you deserve to rant and vent some steam, that situation looked incredibly frustrating and considering how you said no names, no nothing, it was not something of poor taste to do.

Your work is nothing short of amazing and like you already showed, your "bottom" is what the "top" is for others. I can't really add much to what has been said already but agreeing about how right you are, that level of perfection DESERVES to be properly paid.

Oh, and I find it lovely you too "escaped" from the IT consultancy life. I can relate

Ok I think this thread has somewhat reached the limit. I believe we all somewhat agree with winterdyne, and at the end of the day he deserved not only to rant but to inform maybe those of us in the community that do not realize the time and patience that go into commission.

As a rule of thumb folks, and this cannot be stressed enough, expect to pay for your goddamn commission. If you need to refer back to my earlier post about how teachers get paid do so, but at the end of the day these guys are quite literally assembling (to perfection, meaning sanding/taking off the nubs/flash) and painting these models. If anything think about how much you would want to get paid per hour on the same project. even if its $10 an hour, a commission that takes month is going to go into the thousands of dollars. Now that being said - start saving money!!!! Just put away $200 a month and WABAMM you got yourself your commission.

fidel wrote:
Now that being said - start saving money!!!! Just put away $200 a month and WABAMM you got yourself your commission.

Or, instead of whining about how much professional work costs, get a better job and be able to afford it!

 Polonius wrote:

fidel wrote:
Now that being said - start saving money!!!! Just put away $200 a month and WABAMM you got yourself your commission.

Or, instead of whining about how much professional work costs, get a better job and be able to afford it!

Or lease your mineral rights like I did on my property get payed 3k a acre and hope they hit Utica gas.. I enjoy the 17% royal laity check coming in every month. Nothing like a gas/oil boom in your small village

Johnson & The Juice Crew wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
The kit price is irrelevant; especially if you work on a range of manufacturers. The only thing that matters is time.

These units are a good example of my bottom end tabletop level:



The kit price on that is under £10 per unit, including the bases and movement tray. And the metal models in the men at arms.
Probably about 15 hours per unit average from sprue to photo table - those are what I charge at about £125 - £140 each.

It's interesting that you commented with the kit price - I do sometimes see new painters saying they charge kit price on top and it really is a recipe for disaster in my opinion.

TO ME, or maybe a buyer who has never used commision painters. This is really top notch work. I wouldnt expect this to be "tapletop" but after being on here for a year or so the phrase "tabletop quality" has lost all meaning

True, I was more thinking gw who charge upwards of 20 for one HQ in foot in roughly standard size.

Ie so absolutely no less than that, for very basic, and more for anything but a base coat and a clean up. No I've never used them as yet,

For example, I'd say anything under 100 for a primarch or HH character, is stupid cheap and your asking for trouble, 200 + probbly for a real nice neat and tidy job ie low high lights, and gradients but neat and clean. and even higher for showcase, show off levels

Johnson & The Juice Crew wrote:


I'm a mobile mechanic by trade for the last 4 years. I'm vat registered and all my work has a warranty. I have 2 vans, both sign written and 1 paid staff member for bigger jobs with uniforms for both of us. I have a standard hourly labour rate and I now have enough experience to give a figure on the spot of how long it will take regardless of if the job runs over. I used to have a heavy presence on Facebook as there's a lot of potential clients on there. I now stay mostly quiet because people would be asking for a 4 hour job and were insulted by my pricing. They would rather some random hobbyist come and do the job for pittence who will turn up with an assortment of basic tools, will only be paid in cas without providing receipt or invoice. I eventually just stopped and post an advert for myself every now and then.

I have ended up going to customers and fixing/finishing the jobs from cowboys. I can't understand it. If you want quality work, you're going to have to pay quality prices. You want it done cheap by a non professional then don't come crying to me asking for help when not 1 week earlier i was called out as a rip off merchant.

I have a friend who makes his living off of doing custom cabinetry and furniture, and the expectations that people have are just bizzarre. "I want a beautiful table, and since I can get A table at Ikea for $100, this should cost me $50, because you're not a big company."

And then exploding in wrath because reality doesn't remotely fit what's in their head.

I swear, other peoples' children...

kb305 wrote:
text removed.

Reds8n

Like I said...

Winterdyne, just out of curiosity how much would that list of models have cost if done to your lowest level and do U have any pics of Tau at that level?

I'm curious because your bottom end tabletop looks like the sort of thing I would pay for and put on display

Johnson & The Juice Crew wrote:
Winterdyne, just out of curiosity how much would that list of models have cost if done to your lowest level and do U have any pics of Tau at that level?

I'm curious because your bottom end tabletop looks like the sort of thing I would pay for and put on display

I wanted to ask that too - I was browsing and said... damn.... thats his low stuff...... I wonder what his shigh stuff looks like

But to quote the words of a famous philosopher Winterdyne, and I HOPE you head this message:

"Because the players are going to play, play, play
And the haters are going to hate, hate, hate
Baby, I believe I am going shake, shake, shake
Shake it off, Shake it off"

If you love what you do keep doing it.

Right now I make about as much as a P/T job would pay, but I don't have to put up with management and coworkers.

It would be very easy to get a F/T job, but I know that unless it involved sculpting I would hate it.

As for prices, everyone wants something for next to nothing. That won't ever change.

There might be longer periods between commissions, but if people like your work word gets around and they'll come to you to have it done.

At my 'basic' level I reckon about £3,500. No pics as I've never painted a Tau.

my other post was mostly in jest, you said it was a rant thread so i gave a mini rant of my own.
it is impressive that you've made it six years. Trying to do it as a full time job really is brutal, people are cheap. Ive seen beautifully painted minis sell for 30 bucks on ebay.
Ive seen stuff from polish masters sell for only 100 bucks, a mini that probably took them 20 hours or more. I think you do have to take on the starving artist mentality.

Atleast you're in the UK where people pay more for it. I suspect it is even worse in North America.
Your price is accurate for how long it takes but that does not mean very many people will actually pay that much.
Including the minis, all in, that guy is looking at what? my guess is $6 - 7k US. That's enough to rent a room somewhere for a full year or buy a nice used car. yes, people do take it seriously but at the end of the day it is still just toys.

the average GW gamer seems to only care about how much over the top "detail" something has. for people like you that have standards and actually paint those details, it means that your painting time will keep going up. and gw appears to be losing more and more customers, the company is not growing. so im guessing less and less people will be interested in commission as time goes on. maybe it is time to take a step back and reevaluate it if this is actually frustrating you.

It's a global market; I'd say 90% of my private commissions go abroad. Plenty of customers, plenty of work.

Luckily, I do commercial work for companies other than GW, so their demise should it come, won't hit me as bad as all that, in fact it may even be beneficial. Given that 99% of my private work was GW, and 99% of that a space marine of some sort, if I wasn't actively putting myself out in other sectors, it'd be brutal, and I'd have to spend some time and money putting forward my work in another field; railroad modelling (especially engineering) for example is lucrative, if you have the contacts and reputation.

The summat for little mentality is something I come up against in my job almost daily. I can sympathise thoroughly.

Not painting, but as part of my work I make custom embroidered stuffed animals - prototypes and original works. These can take 20 to 45 hours. Sometimes longer. I get parents emailing me about the photographs on my site, asking me to make a toy for their child. I charge a flat £7/hr plus fabric...
"How much?? I could go to [store] and buy a teddy for £10!!!"
Feth off and do that, then. £10 wouldn't cover postage.

There's a lack of understanding, and I can tolerate that. But week in, week out, it wears me down.
Nowadays I tend to answer the commissions from people who don't ask price in the initial inquiry, but ask timescale. I stack the rest up and reply at the end of the week, knowing full well I'll get a slew of "omg!!!" replies. I always make sure to do so when I'm relaxed, as being an ass to someone's mother doesn't exactly help anything.

Winterdyne, I thought GW had in-house painters?

In reading the post, I believe he means that he paints GW & non-GW models and not that he paints FOR GW, specifically.

Eric

More precisely, that the majority of the work I do is on gw models, but that I do work specifically for other manufacturers and as they grow I'm likely to get more work from them. So what I lose in one hand I'll hopefully gain in the other.

All I can say really is, you get what you pay for. You pay peanuts, you're going to get monkeys.
Your work is amazing and I'm very jealous of it. There will be plenty other people who admire your work and are willing to pay for it, so don't let one or 2 idiots get you down!

.mispost

winterdyne wrote:
It's a global market; I'd say 90% of my private commissions go abroad. Plenty of customers, plenty of work.

Luckily, I do commercial work for companies other than GW

I apologize, this part of your post made me think GW had been using freelance painters. They do have a job opening for freelance artists, so I didn't think GW using freelance painters sounded unusual.



Maybe people think commission work is too expensive because of the impression that it isn't a real job and painting/sculpting is something that's done in the freetime you have when you aren't at your real job.

I can't say for painters, but most of the sculptors I know don't have other jobs. Sculpting is their job and they need to make a living wage.

The closest gw have come to using freelance painters is a one-month rolling contract for warhammer world displays. They seem to like to keep things in house and their standard employment contract includes an nda iirc. Most other places just use an nda. Actually I don't even have an nda with mantic, just an informal agreement.

winterdyne wrote:
In this case, we're looking between 500 and 650 working hours, depending on schemes, running in at north of £4,000 - £4,200 ($6000+).

500-650 hours is 1/3 to 1/4 of a year. Your annual equivalent pay is $20-25k USD annually?

You're obviously not doing this for the money.

Or rather, you're not trying to get rich off someone else's dime.

Minis painting doesn't pay well for the skill and time required.

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
It's a global market; I'd say 90% of my private commissions go abroad. Plenty of customers, plenty of work.

Luckily, I do commercial work for companies other than GW

I apologize, this part of your post made me think GW had been using freelance painters. They do have a job opening for freelance artists, so I didn't think GW using freelance painters sounded unusual.



Maybe people think commission work is too expensive because of the impression that it isn't a real job and painting/sculpting is something that's done in the freetime you have when you aren't at your real job.

I can't say for painters, but most of the sculptors I know don't have other jobs. Sculpting is their job and they need to make a living wage.

For any artist in whatever field it's pretty much going to be their job it's a skilled trade. The only ones i know of doing private commissions only are students who are doing some work on the side to fund their studies. Anyone with that sort of opinion probably doesn't know many artists it's like thinking a plumber does another job and does plumbing for fun. Most of an artists jobs will be professional contracts for companies but since delivery of said work takes time there are gaps in cash flow. Private commissions can be a great way to plug some financial holes since you can take on a bunch of smaller jobs and finish them between delivering a big contract job. Except that it's pretty much going to be a handshake agreement which leads to all kinds of mess with private clients. Also on the other end when you get these cowboys messing things up vanishing then using the lack of any legally binding agreement to get out of it.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
In this case, we're looking between 500 and 650 working hours, depending on schemes, running in at north of £4,000 - £4,200 ($6000+).

500-650 hours is 1/3 to 1/4 of a year. Your annual equivalent pay is $20-25k USD annually?

You're obviously not doing this for the money.

Or rather, you're not trying to get rich off someone else's dime.

Minis painting doesn't pay well for the skill and time required.

Not, but from the very limited sampling of people I know who pretty much do this as their full time thing, while their never going to have their own private island, they're getting paid for something they enjoy doing, and it's a nice supplementary income to what their spouse is bringing in. Also, getting to work from home, and not have to wear shoes if you don't want to.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
In this case, we're looking between 500 and 650 working hours, depending on schemes, running in at north of £4,000 - £4,200 ($6000+).

500-650 hours is 1/3 to 1/4 of a year. Your annual equivalent pay is $20-25k USD annually?

You're obviously not doing this for the money.

Or rather, you're not trying to get rich off someone else's dime.

Minis painting doesn't pay well for the skill and time required.

If I press myself, I get more than that, if I coast, yeah about that before expenses. The trick with self employment is to know your entitlements and how to file your taxes properly (so you pay as little as possible if any to the tax man). After that it's a case of getting paid for work done; work hard and you get more money. Ease off the work and you get more family time. Good scheduling of deadline jobs is important there. I get crunches in March/April and September with salute and golden demon stuff. That said, I did nothing for golden demon last year and didn't really miss it.

But no, I don't do this for the money, I do it because it's a lot more personally rewarding than IT work.

winterdyne, I was self employed for awhile not painting but tying fishing flies. I tied for several fly shops in my home state of PA as well for a couple in outfitters in Florida and Alaska. Was living the dream after college traveling around the States fly fishing, teaching tying classes at a University, taking clients fishing. Money was alright had to bust my butt during the year, then I realized I need Heath care and a pension to fall back on. Got a horrible job at a state prison as a guard but it had some benefits. Would teach the inmates how to fly tie and if they had a off grounds pass I would take them steelhead/trout fishing. About 4 years ago I was hurt bad at work an inmate attacked me with a weapon. Suffered a bad brain injury but doing much better now. Decided this year Iam going back to following my dream, have a fly tying seminar scheduled this June. I applaud you for following yours.