Nyeng!

I’m a professional.  Now, there are some hobbyists out there that do absolutely stunning work, so stunning that it’s almost criminal that they aren’t being paid to do what they do.  In fact, there are plenty out there that could whoop my ass without trying too hard.

A key difference between hobbyists and professionals is experience - a hobbyist would love to make a decent wage off their work, but they most likely lack the experience needed to back up their demands.  A professional, on the other hand, has the experience, and so is in a much better position to negotiate.

I feel like pointing this out because of an odd misunderstanding, that’s been festering in my mind for the past day or so -
I’ve never been asked to do an art-trade before, but I assumed I knew how it worked, just from the wording - two artists exchanging pieces of art, which I also assume are created with roughly equal amounts of effort.  Maybe these artists normally do commissioned work, but agreed to a trade just to make things easier.  Maybe they simply admire each others work, and/or want to make connections.  Maybe they’re both just really nice people.  Whatever the case, I imagine it’s meant to be a reasonable exchange.

But suppose one of them were asked to produce a 3D render, with custom-built characters, full texturing and lighting, etc., while the other does a traditional, pencil & paper sketch…   call me crazy, but that isn’t anywhere near reasonable, it’s insulting.  I don’t care how talented the guy doing the sketch may be, or what their usual rates are.

A sketch can take anywhere from minutes to hours to draw, depending on the complexity.  Maybe a day or more if it’s super-detailed, or requires a lot of thought.
In 3D, posing a character can also take minutes or hours.  Setting up the lights can take hours more, and the actual rendering can take several hours or even days.  And that’s on top of the MONTHS that it can take to build, rig, and texture each character in the scene.

Even if I just happened to already have all the characters and objects built and ready to be posed, the time it would take to produce a decent render would still be more than it takes to produce a sketch.  And using those characters to fill anyone’s request would also depend on the subject matter - if I think the subject is inappropriate, insulting, or just flat-out wrong for my tastes, then I’m not going to do it.

That’s not to say I’m not open to requests, just as long as I don’t have to build anything that I normally wouldn’t.

And commissions…  just be warned that I may charge an industry-standard hourly rate.  And for an image of two custom-built characters interacting in any sort of environment, the final cost could easily be that of a new motorcycle, or even a small car.