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Hi, I've got a few character models and I was thinking of getting siege studios to paint them. Slightly annoyingly they list no prices on their website, so if anyone who's had dealings with them before could give me a rough estimate of what a silver level space marine character costs with them, I'd be grateful.

I was quoted £225 for a silver level Eldar character about 5 months ago so i imagine it would be similar costs to that. Give them an e-mail, they responded very quickly to my request and were very courteous and helpful.

They also broke down the cost so you saw exactly why you were paying what you were paying.

Based on current exchange rates, looks like it would roughly work out around $320 then add on postage

Hope that helps

Thanks, that's quite steep for me, guess I won't be going to them.

 Paull wrote:
I was quoted £225 for a silver level Eldar character about 5 months ago so i imagine it would be similar costs to that. Give them an e-mail, they responded very quickly to my request and were very courteous and helpful.

They also broke down the cost so you saw exactly why you were paying what you were paying.

Based on current exchange rates, looks like it would roughly work out around $320 then add on postage

Hope that helps

...What kind of character? Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious: they look like they do some excellent work, but I'm very surprised by the price.

There's quite a few painting services to choose from here on dakkadakka, including me : https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/612233.page

Also, before you rule them out, you should just shoot them an email asking for a quote.

Some of the guys working through Siege can do some very, very good work indeed. Expect to have to pay for it.

Conversely, they can also do lower end work to suit more limited budgets. As above, give them a mail and see what's what.

How long do you think it might take to paint?
Say 5 hours.
Now they have to pay tax on that & if part of a company with rent to pay let alone bills.
Think how much do you think they should get paid a year £25K? That works out as about £12.5 per hour. Double that to cover the rent, taxes, heat & power, materials etc = £25 per hour. So in all 5 hours work would cost about £125.
However I would reckon 5 hours is very light. So 8 hours? You can see how such a high price can be easily achieved.

I just looked at their silver level paintjobs. Jebus, what the heck, 225 for such a gak paintjob? For a single character? Madness.

 CragHack wrote:
I just looked at their silver level paintjobs. Jebus, what the heck, 225 for such a gak paintjob? For a single character? Madness.

Money aside, it's a quality of painting I'd be proud to be able to produce myself. Not the greatest in the world but of their 4 levels it's only the 2nd.

Note that display quality for a single piece is NOT going to be the same as display quality for an army piece.

It's partly that reason that many commission places work on a quote basis rather than a la carte pricing. The cost depends on the job, and the job varies a lot.
]

I used them earlier in the year for a character and a few squads, they came back to me really quickly and the quality of the work was brilliant!

They are one of only a few companies which are professional and the quality of the work is just like GW box art.

For a good paintjob you have to pay, too many cowboys and "pro painters" on the scene!

At the end of the day you're paying for peoples time and experience which cost money!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Exactly this, people dont appreciate time at all!

 bubber wrote:
How long do you think it might take to paint?
Say 5 hours.
Now they have to pay tax on that & if part of a company with rent to pay let alone bills.
Think how much do you think they should get paid a year £25K? That works out as about £12.5 per hour. Double that to cover the rent, taxes, heat & power, materials etc = £25 per hour. So in all 5 hours work would cost about £125.
However I would reckon 5 hours is very light. So 8 hours? You can see how such a high price can be easily achieved.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Paull wrote:
I was quoted £225 for a silver level Eldar character about 5 months ago so i imagine it would be similar costs to that. Give them an e-mail, they responded very quickly to my request and were very courteous and helpful.

They also broke down the cost so you saw exactly why you were paying what you were paying.

Based on current exchange rates, looks like it would roughly work out around $320 then add on postage

Hope that helps

...What kind of character? Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious: they look like they do some excellent work, but I'm very surprised by the price.

It was an Asurmen model, it also included purchasing and basing the model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bubber wrote:
How long do you think it might take to paint?
Say 5 hours.
Now they have to pay tax on that & if part of a company with rent to pay let alone bills.
Think how much do you think they should get paid a year £25K? That works out as about £12.5 per hour. Double that to cover the rent, taxes, heat & power, materials etc = £25 per hour. So in all 5 hours work would cost about £125.
However I would reckon 5 hours is very light. So 8 hours? You can see how such a high price can be easily achieved.

This is how they worked out the cost.

Silver Painting:

15 x Silver Level Character Hourly Painting Charge @ £15.00 per hour = £225.00

It's worth whatever someone wants to pay for a commission i guess. As @bubber says, these guys have bills to pay, materials to buy and need to make a profit to stay in business.

But at the same time most commission services offer above tabletop for an infantry HQ at around £50.

Which means they would have to paint it in ~2h, max 3 hours to be even financially sensible for them. If they spend more than 5 hours question is why on earth they spend time on painting when they could be getting more money on regular job.

Of course if they can do equally good quality in 2-3h as Seige in 15 then good for them.

15 hours at 15gbp seems excessive from the pictures on their website of their quality. It's not bad quality, but it's also not "15 hours of professional painting" levels of good. I would have guessed more like a day's worth, maybe less for someone really quick.

Granted I usually defend high priced commissions because people often don't think about how long it actually takes to do stuff... but in this case I'm just not seeing 15 hours of above average wage worth of work - and I think if you're charging above average wage you should also have an above average quality vs hours worked ratio.

If you're UK based, it's worth pointing out that these guys do a weekend painting course that they tour around the country and I've heard a lot of good things about.

it's £120 for the weekend so half the price and you can take those skills and paint your own Asurmen.

Rik

I got a quote from them for my Van Saar gang.
They quoted 500 ish all in and wanted to spend 15hrs on the leader. They said the leader is a character and the lowest level is silver

I couldn’t justify it because it’s a small model with not a lot of detail

 Rik Lightstar wrote:
If you're UK based, it's worth pointing out that these guys do a weekend painting course that they tour around the country and I've heard a lot of good things about.

it's £120 for the weekend so half the price and you can take those skills and paint your own Asurmen.

Rik

I recently did that course & can't recommend it highly enough.

It sounds like I'm undercharging

Seriously though from my experience I usually spend a good 4-8 hours on a single infantry sized character and paint it up to, what I consider to be, a good tabletop level most folks would be pretty happy with - depending on the model's complexity, colour scheme and what techniques I choose to use. I am finding models today are far more complex than when I first started, so they can take a lot of time to paint up even to a basic standard. Painting is really time consuming and time is money.

I have considered applying to work for Siege as my commission work is patchy at best and ebay can be pretty volatile, so I tend to end up doing quicker jobs to limit the time/money risk, however there's quite a few areas I need to improve on first as I can't currently offer all services clients may want (NMM, freehand, advanced weathering) to a high enough standard for me to feel comfortable offering them. If all their artists are capable of producing display quality stuff then I think £15 an hour for that kind of skill level is fair.

At the end of the day if people are happy enough paying their prices and are equally happy with the work they receive then fair play to them.

@Rybrook: I hope they'd be flexible enough on that to paint up the leader to the same level as the gangers - for me there's hardly any difference in detail within the new Necromunda minis.

 warspawned wrote:
It sounds like I'm undercharging

Seriously though from my experience I usually spend a good 4-8 hours on a single infantry sized character and paint it up to, what I consider to be, a good tabletop level most folks would be pretty happy with - depending on the model's complexity, colour scheme and what techniques I choose to use. I am finding models today are far more complex than when I first started, so they can take a lot of time to paint up even to a basic standard. Painting is really time consuming and time is money.

I have considered applying to work for Siege as my commission work is patchy at best and ebay can be pretty volatile, so I tend to end up doing quicker jobs to limit the time/money risk, however there's quite a few areas I need to improve on first as I can't currently offer all services clients may want (NMM, freehand, advanced weathering) to a high enough standard for me to feel comfortable offering them. If all their artists are capable of producing display quality stuff then I think £15 an hour for that kind of skill level is fair.

At the end of the day if people are happy enough paying their prices and are equally happy with the work they receive then fair play to them.

@Rybrook: I hope they'd be flexible enough on that to paint up the leader to the same level as the gangers - for me there's hardly any difference in detail within the new Necromunda minis.

4 to 8 hours sounds reasonable for their silver quality, the 15 that people have been saying here sounds way over. Flicked through some of their silver images and they look to be 4 to 6 applications of paint to each area (a shade of two, a mid tone or two, a highlight or two). That sort of level of painting doesn't really sound like more than 1 day's work for a single character on foot, especially not for someone who's a professional and doing that work all the time.

Their high end work looks nice but I guess it depends what you call "display quality".

I am not a very efficient painter. It takes a lot of time to paint.

With all aesthetics quantaties and qualaties I suppose it is up to you if you wanne pay for it. A sort of gak or get of the pot. Perhaps try to find a new pot.

I just know from almost all other branches of artistry the people who have little experience with commisions often find it expensive. To witch they often reply that you can just do it yourself.

If you earn enough money and you find it easier to trade working time for commision as opposed to do it yourself just order a commision.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
[Their high end work looks nice but I guess it depends what you call "display quality".

From what I've seen, almost everything about painting depends on what you call display quality (or tabletop standard).

It's like how the main discussion on old hammer boards is "what is old hammer"

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Hi, I've got a few character models and I was thinking of getting siege studios to paint them. Slightly annoyingly they list no prices on their website, so if anyone who's had dealings with them before could give me a rough estimate of what a silver level space marine character costs with them, I'd be grateful.

Having done Commission Painting... at the most one can do is give a very general "estimate" based on perhaps tiers of both model detail and paint level. The problem of doing that is people then mistake that for the hard price, which it isn't. Each model is going to cost differently based on it's particular nuances and the desires of the customer.

This is ART, not automotive mechanics. A hard model will cost more than an easy model, but what is hard and what is easy? Certain models are highly detailed but that detail is easy to make look good. Some have low detail and it is very hard to make that detail look good and it takes a lot of very fine work, so detail level is not a base method of judgement.


Art Commission work in the real world is done by quote request. This is true of cities and wealthy individuals who put out quote requests in the blind to known artists with the listing of requirements and desired outcome/size/etc. The artists then submit quotes. Prices are rarely listed in advance. I know this because I've also done mural work for private businesses, homeowners, and city governments.

True, and I was only asking for a rough estimate, and of course the sites which list prices are actually listing rough estimates. But if someone's offering to do a character for 50 vs 225, I just can't justify it, especially when I don't want anything better than tabletop, I just don't have the time. I once had a y'varha done by den of imagination for about 300 quid. That's 70 for the model and 230 for the paintjob. Only level three, so just tabletop, but it's a rather larger model, something of a centrepiece, and with the same price it feels like siege are asking too much. If people are happy to pay, great for them.

The thing for guys like Siege Studios is that they are getting to be pretty big and they can't now afford to do work below a certain standard without damaging their brand.

This is especially true as the team has expanded quite a bit lately. They clearly aren't struggling for customers, so for them it's better to turn away business than to lower their standards.

Rik

To be honest I don't see much difference between their Silver, Gold and Platinum levels. In fact the Silver example is better than the Gold imo. They seem to peak at very high table-top, not sure I'd call it display quality and certainly wouldn't say it warrants as much iof a premium as they're quoting.

If they're not sturggling for business, though, then fair play for making it work.

 warspawned wrote:
It sounds like I'm undercharging

Seriously though from my experience I usually spend a good 4-8 hours on a single infantry sized character and paint it up to, what I consider to be, a good tabletop level most folks would be pretty happy with - depending on the model's complexity, colour scheme and what techniques I choose to use. I am finding models today are far more complex than when I first started, so they can take a lot of time to paint up even to a basic standard. Painting is really time consuming and time is money.

I have considered applying to work for Siege as my commission work is patchy at best and ebay can be pretty volatile, so I tend to end up doing quicker jobs to limit the time/money risk, however there's quite a few areas I need to improve on first as I can't currently offer all services clients may want (NMM, freehand, advanced weathering) to a high enough standard for me to feel comfortable offering them. If all their artists are capable of producing display quality stuff then I think £15 an hour for that kind of skill level is fair.

At the end of the day if people are happy enough paying their prices and are equally happy with the work they receive then fair play to them.

@Rybrook: I hope they'd be flexible enough on that to paint up the leader to the same level as the gangers - for me there's hardly any difference in detail within the new Necromunda minis.

tneva82 wrote:
Which means they would have to paint it in ~2h, max 3 hours to be even financially sensible for them. If they spend more than 5 hours question is why on earth they spend time on painting when they could be getting more money on regular job.

Perhaps they enjoy painting more than they would enjoy a "regular" job?

@Rybrook: Those character prices are a touch insane - even charging more for putting him together when he's no different to the rest All the other prices are reasonable though - £20 to £28 per model is about right. I know the Goliaths I painted up took a good 3-3.5 hours each from start to finish including assembly and they were in my good end which I guess is comparable to their Silver level.

Meatybtz

Having done Commission Painting... at the most one can do is give a very general "estimate" based on perhaps tiers of both model detail and paint level. The problem of doing that is people then mistake that for the hard price, which it isn't. Each model is going to cost differently based on it's particular nuances and the desires of the customer.

This is ART, not automotive mechanics. A hard model will cost more than an easy model, but what is hard and what is easy? Certain models are highly detailed but that detail is easy to make look good. Some have low detail and it is very hard to make that detail look good and it takes a lot of very fine work, so detail level is not a base method of judgement.

This. With the variety (in both aesthetic and quality) of minis and details out there it can be difficult to even put a rough estimate together and a lot depends not only on the model but on the colour scheme as well. I'd love to be able to offer a single price on things but it's just not practical. I do feel guidelines are as best a compromise as you can get with regards to pricing and many services I looked at before starting my own offer them.

 War Drone wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Which means they would have to paint it in ~2h, max 3 hours to be even financially sensible for them. If they spend more than 5 hours question is why on earth they spend time on painting when they could be getting more money on regular job.

Perhaps they enjoy painting more than they would enjoy a "regular" job?

Would have to enjoy it a lot to accept so much worse hourly rate...plus painting for fun isn't same as painting for work