Article About Freelance Artwork Pricing

[barking_frog]

I'm not certain this is the most appropriate forum to post this in -- it's more about people generating creative work than a piece of creative work itself -- but this is where the Seeking Talent thread that it most directly refers to is, so I'll go out on a limb and fly it here.

http://www.mearnsworld.com/blog.html#070210a (February 10th, 2007 entry)

In late September thru mid November I was posting ads on this forum and elsewhere, looking for an artist to illustrate my comic scripts.

I received an enormous response -- approximately 115 inquiries. Enough that I could recognize a handful of very general patterns in price, geography, price vs. quality, geography vs. quality, professionalism in attitude, etc. In an attempt to be useful primarily to writers seeking artists, I've outlined my observations in an article named "Informal Price Analysis of Art Labor for 'Self-Publish' or Small Press Comics".

Catchy, eh? I know I have you excited, now.

Despite being writer-oriented, small-press artists may also find my observations useful in recognizing what the competition is doing, and also seeing what things look like in the labor pool from the writer's perspective.

The article is freely available to the public on my blog page starting at [ http://www.mearnsworld.com/blog.html#070210a ] (February 10th, 2007 entry) (in April '07 it will be moved to [ http://www.mearnsworld.com/blog2007-1.html#070210a ]).

Cheers!

[Paul Render]

Intersting article there, good advice for all beginners who are really serious about getting some good comics done. But what about letterers and colorists, any knowledge about their price ranges?

[barking_frog]

Not really -- the way things worked out, by the time I had a couple of pencilers hired, I'd had a letterer contact me based on my pencilers ad whose quality was good and prices were reasonable, so I looked no further.

As for colorists, at first I was having someone who'd answered the pencilers ad but also did colors do colors on my project, but then he had a family illness he had to leave to deal with and I ended up hiring someone I'd met in an IRC channel and someone else one of my pencilers recommended.

For inks, my colorists both pretty much fill in inks where they feel they're necessary to bring out foreground elements as part of what they consider to be their responsibilities, so I've found no need for a separate inker. That seems to be more common these days -- I think I noticed in Immortal Iron Fist that an 'artist' and colorist are credited but no inker, and I'm not sure if that just means the penciler did the inks, or if inking has become considered often a part of the colorist's job.

So I never did the exhaustive advertising for the 'subsidiary' positions that I did for a penciler, and therefore don't feel I've accumulated enough raw data to draw any kind of conclusion -- once it became known I was looking, it seemed I just had either letterers/inkers/colorists contacting me directly, or ended up hiring professional acquaintances of pencilers who'd answered my ad.

Sorry I can't offer more help!