Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thresher" data-source="post: 631966" data-attributes="member: 9983">Well, comming from someone who spent 3 years at university majoring in painting and drawing, after spending many thousands of dollars. I found myself pretty much hopelessly unemployed. (But I did have a lot of time to play games so it wasnt all bad)Like most of lifes losers, I ended up in IT <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Sure its souldestroying, mind numbingly boring, makes me hate all living things after dealing with computers, LAN's, WAN's, stuck in a room with lots of flashing lights and kept away from the normal people....But I digress, it pays bills, keeps a car on the road and a roof over my head. Something I just cant do with art.I would like to do all that with art.But I cant, so being something of a realist I do the art I want to do in my own time and no one pays me for it, why? Because its fun. People sort of ask from time to time "want to do some pieces for my fan-mag?" and I'll say "ok, how much is it worth to you?"Usually your looking at well under 100 US bucks for a couple of simple black and white pics to bulk up the blank bits in between the writing and to be honest, its just not worth my time.For 1 picture, a relatively high detail, photo-realistic one I have to-Build it up a 3D model in Poser or 3DSM, figure about 5-70hours work there, depending on how complex the character is.Texture mapping (shudder) will probably consume the better part of another 10hours on average just to scrounge up something and then go back in and do the transparencies, fit it all in, screw some of it up and then have to redo it. Add about another 5hours of going nuts getting it perfect.Righto, so I have a character standing there with his arms out looking for all the world like he needs a cross, so we need somewhere to stick him...Time to do up a background, sometimes its easy if I can use a few of them cheap background generators and hack something out in Photoshop over an hour or 10 there and maybe mutilate some landscape photos or something.By this stage I hopefully have some idea for a composition...Yes, composition.With any luck I wont cop-out and do some cheesy fantasy scene of some semi-naked gimp/gimpette standing around in a desert sunset with a big sword, loincloth or chainmail bikini looking either hardcore/sexy/stupid or all 3. (but most likely the latter because theyre stuck in a desert with nought but a big sword, mostly naked and no water bottle. But hey, they look hardc0re! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> )So, assuming its a good day, you wont get "gimp in the desert lookin ruff n tuff" and I actually might make something with form and flow that could pass bearably as "art" and use it to terrorise lecturers at uni or make people actually notice it. Composition takes time, not to mention I'll probably have some other characters running around in there too, either doing what real adventurers do-A) Beating the crap out of orcsB) Passed out dead drunk under a treeC) Just dead, under a nice tree, or maybe a nice runaway carthorse.So, add a few more hours there, lets say I spend 12hours going nuts trying to work it all out too.Now lets see, probably looking at about 60-150man hours work there, assuming I was getting paid the same as my day job (HAH! MORE PEANUTS PLEASE!) that could get quite expensive. Real expensive...Well, maybe not expensive if your Bill Gates or regually throw away 1000's of dollars on a whim.Assuming of course you reaaaaaly want something unusual and is going to be covering the costs of my program registrations, buying another uberghz PC just to run it all.Who here has bought 3d modelling or art software lately?/puts hand up/crysI still got one more kidney and 2 working lungs for the next version of Photoshop.Yep, costs that and a bit more.If someone is nice enough to spend 2hours knocking you up a nice picture of your character with pencils, inks, paint, pastels or whatever.THENHave the nerve to charge $50!They really are doing you a good deal in my opinion.If it was me, I'd ask for your loveliest daughter as a downpayment, then you'd really have something to cry about... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

Verification