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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:When someone asked him about this he reportedly explained that he was getting more money doing cheesecake pinups and porn commissions than he was being offered in the comics industry. I'm not surprised. I know an artist that does some amount of lewd work and it's almost certainly their top-paying work when it comes in. If an artist likes or at least tolerates that sort of thing, fetishists are willing to dig deep into their wallets to see their dreams on the page. DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Unless you're a Big Name Artist - and there are only a handful of those - comics pays poo poo for the quality they expect. Yep. I mean, I commissioned Omar Dogan - an UDON member did work on Exalted (you can see a lot of his work in Cult of the Illuminated, chiefly) - many years ago for a sketch, and it ran $200, the most I've ever paid for that kind of thing. It was a lot of money, but how often do you get a guy who's done sprite work for Capcom to do a sketch at that rate? Nowadays I know his going rate is probably above $600, and that's for a color sketch. I can only imagine what he'd charge for a full page. Granted, I imagine he doesn't make nearly that much when doing page work for the Street Fighter comics, but you get the idea of what his rates can run. Now, a comics artist will generally earn $100 a page or so if working for a reputable small publisher, or $300 a page if working for the Big Two. Now, that may sound like a lot, $300 x 22 pages x 12 months = $80,000 year if you're working for Marvel, but that assumes that you're on an ongoing title in an industry than cancels titles with clockwork regularity, and that you can keep to a book a month schedule, but most folks can't. Most comic artists will be earning half to a third of that a year. And if you can earn $300 for a sketch or illo, why bother? Granted, some top-name comic artists can actually earn up to $500-$1,000 a page working for the Big Two, but they're rare, and generally not doing monthlies. Now, when some RPG companies pay $10-$50 a pop for an illustration... the only way you get those kind of rates is by finding artists that don't know what they're worth, mainly. A lot of artists greatly undervalue their work, and it's unfortunate, but it's surprisingly hard to convince them otherwise. Usual rates from tumblr fan artists go about $20-$80 a commission. I don't know much about what your usual RPG artist earns, tho. I know Fabio Fontes, who does work for Level 99, generally charges $50-150 or so per illustration for commissions, but he's also crazy productive if products like Millennium Blades are any indication.
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Oct 31, 2015 17:18
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Now, when some RPG companies pay $10-$50 a pop for an illustration... the only way you get those kind of rates is by finding artists that don't know what they're worth, mainly. A lot of artists greatly undervalue their work, and it's unfortunate, but it's surprisingly hard to convince them otherwise. Usual rates from tumblr fan artists go about $20-$80 a commission. I don't know much about what your usual RPG artist earns, tho. I know Fabio Fontes, who does work for Level 99, generally charges $50-150 or so per illustration for commissions, but he's also crazy productive if products like Millennium Blades are any indication. I think a good way to look at it is to think in terms of wages. If an artist puts in 4 hours of work on an illustration, then it follows they should be paid for 4 hours of work. At minimum wage that's 29 USD. When I commissioned an artist I know to draw me a single-character-no-background-colour drawing, she gave me an estimate of 5-6 hours of work, but between a few changes I wanted done and her getting a bit over-enthusiastic about getting some details right, she ended up working for 10 hours. That's easily 70-80 USD. At minimum wage. For a single character and no background. Two characters would basically double the price. A full page "team picture" of some iconic characters for an RPG book I imagine could into the hundreds of dollars if people are getting paid minimum wage and aren't the fastest of artists.
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Oct 31, 2015 18:16
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Minimum wage in the United States is horrible and unlivable. I don't think you should be basing your argument around it.
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Oct 31, 2015 18:35
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Even with it being unlivable, it's still higher than most artists from the tumblr crowd are paid.
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Oct 31, 2015 18:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm not surprised. I know an artist that does some amount of lewd work and it's almost certainly their top-paying work when it comes in. If an artist likes or at least tolerates that sort of thing, fetishists are willing to dig deep into their wallets to see their dreams on the page. I get $300-$500 for covers.
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Oct 31, 2015 18:42
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GrizzlyCow posted:Minimum wage in the United States is horrible and unlivable. I don't think you should be basing your argument around it. His point isn't that you should pay artists minimum wage, it's that even if you do pay them the unlivable minimum wage (which you shouldn't), art is still expensive.
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Oct 31, 2015 18:43
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Well, don't I look silly now?
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Oct 31, 2015 20:03
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Terrible Opinions posted:Even with it being unlivable, it's still higher than most artists from the tumblr crowd are paid. Yes. I generally pay more than most tumblr artists ask for by a good measure and still feel it isn't enough. ravenkult posted:I get $300-$500 for covers. Sounds fair!
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Oct 31, 2015 20:07
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ravenkult posted:I get $300-$500 for covers. If you're an artist and you're posting in a TG industry thread, you should have a link to your portfolio in your user profile or link to it.
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Oct 31, 2015 21:47
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clockworkjoe posted:If you're an artist and you're posting in a TG industry thread, you should have a link to your portfolio in your user profile or link to it. I thought everyone knew me cuz I'm super famous and rich. Also I did the cover for Last Stand.
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Nov 1, 2015 02:31
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When selling books to gamers, a phrase I hear a lot is, "I don't buy books for the art." So there's certainly a market for people who buy books for mostly walls of text. (ApocWorld even comes in a version with little or no art.) One big problem with a lot of Kickstarter budgets is when the producers ask for thousands of dollars for a book that has little or no art assets. An example of this practice was Mike Nystul's CAIRN. Nystul got about $20,000 for that book, then wound up not producing it. (Googling the details is left as an exercise for the reader.) Fans picked up the slack, and the book came out with only about a dozen or so pictures in it. If the going rate for artists was $100/less per picture, that meant an art budget that was $2,000 or less. What was the other $18k used for? Writing costs? Certainly not printing costs, since the book was only delivered digitally. My own crowd-funding experience has been that putting a stretch goal of "we'll put in more art and better art!" hasn't been a big draw. Maybe audiences don't know how much art costs? Maybe art isn't a big draw? Maybe they want specific "big name" artists listed? (Given artists' schedules, it's almost impossible to get one to commit to "maybe draw some art if you maybe get the money.") Artistic commitment in tabletop RPGs has been sliding down-hill. Whereas D&D used to set the gold standard for RPG production, most of the art assets in D&D5 are left-overs from the video-game production. (Check the credits.) I haven't checked out this new Exalted, so others can tell me if the KS funds are on display.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:04
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The art was one of the primary reasons I bought the Guide to Glorantha books. e: They were meant as world building supplement/encyclopedia kind of thing, though, which is a completely different focus than rulebook.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:08
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Rafferty posted:One big problem with a lot of Kickstarter budgets is when the producers ask for thousands of dollars for a book that has little or no art assets. An example of this practice was Mike Nystul's CAIRN. Nystul got about $20,000 for that book, then wound up not producing it. (Googling the details is left as an exercise for the reader.) Fans picked up the slack, and the book came out with only about a dozen or so pictures in it. If the going rate for artists was $100/less per picture, that meant an art budget that was $2,000 or less. What was the other $18k used for? Writing costs? Certainly not printing costs, since the book was only delivered digitally.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:32
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Rafferty posted:Artistic commitment in tabletop RPGs has been sliding down-hill. Whereas D&D used to set the gold standard for RPG production, most of the art assets in D&D5 are left-overs from the video-game production. (Check the credits.) I haven't checked out this new Exalted, so others can tell me if the KS funds are on display. Ehhh. I don't play a lot of indie RPGs but this isn't true at all for FFG, Pelgrane, or Goodman Games. Hell, Goodman is adding more artwork to the fourth printing of DCC for free.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:32
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alg posted:Ehhh. I don't play a lot of indie RPGs but this isn't true at all for FFG, Pelgrane, or Goodman Games. If it is a 4th printing some minor revisions and added art would get a second buy out of some people.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:38
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Rafferty posted:When selling books to gamers, a phrase I hear a lot is, "I don't buy books for the art."
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Nov 6, 2015 18:38
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Asimo posted:These gamers are almost always lying, if maybe not consciously. Yeah, good art sells a setting far better than any amount of text.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:42
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Good art sells a book off a bookshelf. Good advertising, promotion, description, and game quality sells a book online, especially in a pre-order context like Kickstarter. Both are important.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:45
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Asimo posted:These gamers are almost always lying, if maybe not consciously. 100% agreed. The art is almost as important as the text for communicating what the game is going for.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:46
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Bad art will also turn people away from a book.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:48
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LongDarkNight posted:Bad art will also turn people away from a book. Bad art can be worse than no art. A spartan, clean, text-only layout organized for maximum legibility is preferable to something with, like, poser art.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:50
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Asimo posted:These gamers are almost always lying, if maybe not consciously. Yeah. There's a quote from a TSR employee in the late seventies that "people don't buy these games for the art", but history proved them painfully wrong. Name a top RPG series with a low art budget. Like, just one. TSR, Games Workshop, Palladium, White Wolf, Fantasy Flight... even a lot of the recent lo-fi indie productions of note have great art. The closest thing I can think of a major game series that got by without art was Cheapass Games in the '90s, and it's not like they were art-free, it's just that low production values were part of their gimmick. Of course, eventually they stopped doing that, and most games by James Ernest (their chief designer) are now full-color, high-quality productions. Why? My friend asked Ernest, and it's simply because the Cheapass gimmick wore off and they didn't sell anymore.
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Nov 6, 2015 18:57
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Leperflesh posted:Good art sells a book off a bookshelf. Good advertising, promotion, description, and game quality sells a book online, especially in a pre-order context like Kickstarter. Both are important. RiotGearEpsilon posted:Bad art can be worse than no art. A spartan, clean, text-only layout organized for maximum legibility is preferable to something with, like, poser art. Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah. There's a quote from a TSR employee in the late seventies that "people don't buy these games for the art", but history proved them painfully wrong. Name a top RPG series with a low art budget. Like, just one. TSR, Games Workshop, Palladium, White Wolf, Fantasy Flight... even a lot of the recent lo-fi indie productions of note have great art.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:04
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Rafferty posted:My own crowd-funding experience has been that putting a stretch goal of "we'll put in more art and better art!" hasn't been a big draw. Maybe audiences don't know how much art costs? Maybe art isn't a big draw? Maybe they want specific "big name" artists listed? (Given artists' schedules, it's almost impossible to get one to commit to "maybe draw some art if you maybe get the money.") Evocative art is a strong draw for me, but when I see more and/or better art listed as a stretch goal, I immediately wonder 'how much more?' and 'how are we defining 'better'?' It's definitely a benefit, but it isn't one that's as immediately quantifiable as fifty more spells or a couple of playbooks.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:08
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I used to think that I didn't care about the art, but I realize now how art communicates a lot about the overall style of the game, not to mention what kind of characters you play and what kind of adventures you have.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:09
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The FFG Star Wars art (especially of "This is the sort of character you might play" stuff) pretty much repeatedly sold me on the game and keeps doing so.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:12
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Asimo posted:Good art is pretty important for advertising and especially for Kickstarter projects too, honestly. I'd argue it's even moreso than for a book, since it's so much easier to build hype and give an idea of what the game is like than you'd get from the usual short blurbs about the setting and rules. Yeah, this is true. Scythe has made a kajillion dollars for its Kickstarter and I'm betting a good chunk of that has to do with its (admittedly gorgeous) art on display. Exalted 3E's $700,000 Kickstarter built a lot of hype by showing off art during the process. DCC4E has had two updates now that are nothing but "we're cramming even more art into this sucker." In general though I think the important takeaway here is that the market for utilitarian RPG books that are nothing but clean columns of text with no art whatsoever is vanishingly small. You can maybe get away with that sort of thing for mini supplements, like the 6 page .pdf deals people sell for a buck on Drivethru, but any for-serious RPG project really needs to consider the use of art.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:14
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Art can also be really useful in breaking up text and making certain bits of text tied to it memorable. It's a learning technique implemented a lot in Head First book series. Most of the "art" there is black & white photos of people with word bubbles or clip art and poo poo, but it works!
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Nov 6, 2015 19:15
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Kibner posted:Art can also be really useful in breaking up text and making certain bits of text tied to it memorable. It's a learning technique implemented a lot in Head First book series. Most of the "art" there is black & white photos of people with word bubbles or clip art and poo poo, but it works! Yeah, even literal textbooks of the sort intended for schools use art for this purpose. It turns out that when you hand someone a book that's nothing but endless columns of text for X-hundred pages that it all starts to run together in their heads and they wind up checking out.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:19
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Kai Tave posted:It turns out that when you hand someone a book that's nothing but endless columns of text for X-hundred pages that it all starts to run together in their heads and they wind up checking out. That's why they stopped selling books that don't have pictures anymore, right?
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Nov 6, 2015 19:22
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homullus posted:That's why they stopped selling books that don't have pictures anymore, right? Am I really going to have to explain that I'm referring to technical texts and not novels here?
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Nov 6, 2015 19:26
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homullus posted:That's why they stopped selling books that don't have pictures anymore, right? When was the last time you saw a textbook without a diagram?
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Nov 6, 2015 19:27
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And before it comes up, RPG rulebooks definitely have much more in common with technical manuals than fiction.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:29
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''More art'' as a KS stretch goal doesn't do anything because it's not quantifiable in any meaningful way. You already assume you're gonna get a book with some art, so who cares if there's more art or better art or whatever. Especially when some indie games just have 3-5 pieces for the whole book.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:41
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ravenkult posted:''More art'' as a KS stretch goal doesn't do anything because it's not quantifiable in any meaningful way. You already assume you're gonna get a book with some art, so who cares if there's more art or better art or whatever. Especially when some indie games just have 3-5 pieces for the whole book. More quantifiable and compelling versions include:
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Nov 6, 2015 19:47
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:When was the last time you saw a textbook without a diagram? Real answer: graduate school. I totally agree that pictures, diagrams, chunking of text, boxes, and screens make information more digestible. These are core elements of technical writing and (I believe) key elements of the future of RPGs. I also think good RPG art not only sells the game, but inspires the reader. Art matters for RPGs most in establishing setting and tone, rather than breaking up the text, in my opinion, since charts and sidebars and stuff also do that and are actual game content. I am sorry I made a joke about your imprecise language, Kai Tave. "More art" and "better art" don't mean much on their own, and I don't know that "better art placement" even makes sense as a stretch goal. I think paying a pro for layout in general absolutely makes sense, though, and we'd all benefit if that were standard.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:47
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I wouldn't bother with any of that. Just be like, No Art Chapter Art Chapter art + interiors.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:48
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homullus posted:Real answer: graduate school. Yeah, I realized that there ARE probably textbooks out there that eschew art, but I imagine it's almost always for upper-level stuff or maybe really niche areas of study.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:50
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And even there it's probably out of institutional habit rather than any actual functional benefit.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:54
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Sentinels of the Multiverse is a great example of terrible art that actively hurts the product. From what I can tell I'm the exact person it's designed to appeal to, but gently caress if I'm going to pay money for someone's gradeschool superhero doodles. And apparently the designer does the art himself, so good luck with a professional looking product ever happening.
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