So, a while ago, I had this thought of potentially starting commissions but I don’t really have any idea of how I want to tackle that project. 2022 will probably be the year where I’ll try to draw to make a bit of money to finance hobbies… In the end, though, it really depends on my skill, my free time and some planning.
In terms of skill, I think I’m quite good at emote designs and drawing. I’m not the best there is but the people that are subscribed to me enjoy using most of the emotes I made and I believe that I may be able to improve further as soon as I’m back home in my own four walls. I’d love to practice more and I’d love to try and draw more animals, humans, Pokémon and anime characters, just to get some of the more popular prompts/inspirations out of the way. A while ago, I did actually draw some emotes for friends for charity but I’m not sure if I’m 100% happy with those, especially as animal fur is incredibly hard for me to draw. I tend to put in too much detail into emotes when in reality it’s hardly visible. Similarly, my own OC is a bit too dark to work in emotes (especially on Twitch’s dark mode) which is why I’ll have to work on changing the design to make it work better. I’ll most likely go for a lighter grey tone instead of the black from the original Black Mage.
In terms of effort and free time, I’ll have to figure out how much each project should take and how many projects I want to take on at a time. University still takes priority and I don’t want to neglect other hobbies like blogging, reading or streaming. In the end, most of my own emotes took around two to three hours from start to finish plus several iterations and changes and re-designs and I’d argue that if I were to draw things for other people it would probably take longer.
And when we talk about effort, I’d also like to think about what the prices could be. I’ve seen people charge $25 per emote with a discount when you get 5 or 6 of them but I doubt that I want to charge that much to people. I’m not saying that they’re overpriced, btw, I’m just saying that my skills don’t justify such prices. The people that charge that much often have years of experience, an incredible repertoire of skills, and a huge portfolio. Hence, their prices are justified. An artist that I look up to is actually underpricing her work but she’s getting swamped non-stop, so I guess it works for her. Meanwhile, I’d like to find a balance of being affordable for smaller streamers while still managing to not underprice myself. I’d believe that 5-10 bucks might be alright in terms of pricing but I gotta ask some friends with more experience as to what they think about that. I once did some panel work for a friend who gave me a lot of advice and she paypal’d me money according to what she thought was appropriate. Hence, I think such a model would be cool for friends although I’d argue that most strangers would probably go for “free” aka no money aka “exposure”. I’ll have to think about that stuff.
Another thing I need to think about is: How do I promote such a service? If I really do end up taking commissions,… how do I get to people? How will I be able to promote the work I did? What are the terms and conditions that I should be aware of? All of that is stuff that I need to be aware of and hence, I’m still conducting research and asking around. Help and advice would be lovely btw. :3
Overall, I really want this project to work out but at the same time, I also have so many other projects planned. I wanna actually get good at animation and stuff. I want to start commissions… and I’ve got a blogging-related project planned that I’ll talk about tomorrow, actually. I’m looking forward to trying myself at a lot of this but it really depends on how much time and motivation I have and how bad my mental health will be in “2020: Part 3 Electric Boogertree”.
Cheers!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.
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