# Whatevs



## nerdbat (Nov 11, 2016)

So, yep, everything is in the title - dunno if I posted the thread in the right place - if that's the case, my bad!
I'm not an uber-competent artist, but I do a lot of animations and like to experiment with stuff. I'm not really concerned about money that much, to be honest (I have a daytime job, I'm doing alright ), but one of my friends discovered my DeviantArt page with all those thingies and persuaded me to give it a try. In an end result, I want to do something of a YCH thing - create a customized base and put things there for a price. Here are some of my little animations: how much would you pay for them if your characters were there?
(pics are under the spoiler for your convenience)


Spoiler


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## nerdbat (Nov 18, 2016)

Whatever, this was a bad idea I guess.


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## Rant (Nov 18, 2016)

I like them! They've got this creepiness to them!


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## nerdbat (Nov 18, 2016)

Rant said:


> I like them! They've got this creepiness to them!


Thank you, that's very pleasant c: Though it's still quite devastating to see nobody giving a damn during the whole week - hoped for pricing advice or at least good "this is crap, improve on this and that for it to not be crap" criticism, but with how things went, I don't even know where to start (or if I even should anyway).


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## bhutrflai (Nov 18, 2016)

It probably just got lost in the shuffle. Maybe post a bump every other day or so. Just to keep it towards the top. 

I'm  kinda digging #2 & 5. And I agree that there is a creepiness to them, but in a good way.


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## PlusThirtyOne (Nov 18, 2016)

nerdbat said:


> Thank you, that's very pleasant c: Though it's still quite devastating to see nobody giving a damn during the whole week


Wait wait wait wait wait wait. Hold the phone!
i don't know if it was the blasé thread title or what but i spend more time in this subforum than anywhere else and i would LOVE to have been the first to comment but i never even saw it! LOL 


nerdbat said:


> Whatever, this was a bad idea I guess.


NO! BAD BATTY!! These are AWESOME! They sure as hell kick the shit out of the copy'n'paste YCH bases that are always on the front page of FA. Given the popularity of Undertale (i still haven't played it) and the artsy-fartsy avant garde pixel art, these would fit in and sell well methinks. To be honest, it wouldn't take a _whole lot_ of effort either...i mean given your proficiency with gif/pixel animation. All you'd really need to so is pixelfy a buyer's portrait and add basic animations to them. Trippy backgrounds, bobbing limbs a la Undertale, HUD elements, etc.


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## Rant (Nov 19, 2016)

See? Your post just got lost is all. It happens all the time. Im not good with pricing as most artists sell themselves way to short anyways but start small, then as demand builds bump up the cost with a snazzy new ych .gif and keep the new price. If anyone bitches tell them that its simply time to raise cost due to overhead and crap.


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## PlusThirtyOne (Nov 19, 2016)

But when i started graphic design work, this is what i did: i would estimate how long it takes you to whip a basic animation together by making some test templates and calculate an hourly rate, then HALVE that. Once you get some business rolling, then slowly raise the price to reflect the demand and quality. Your max price shouldn't be more than twice your average calculation, at least until you get serious business. ALSO CONSiDER DOiNG FREE WORK to get your art out there. Ask that your friends and freebie-receivers plug your art in exchange. You can also redesign your FAF avatar to reflect the kind of art you want to sell and advertise (for free) in your forum signature.


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## Tigers-on-Unicycles (Nov 19, 2016)

For future reference, enthusiasm is important. If you want to draw people in and have them look at your work, you have to sound enthusiastic about it, even if you aren't really. Your post might have gotten lost, but the title being what it is probably contributed to that. That being said, those are excellent animations, I'm just not really in the market to commission anybody and I know next to nothing about animation and what reasonable pricing would be.


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## nerdbat (Nov 20, 2016)

Wow, that's a lot of posts  First, thanks for all the responses - unlike many artists, I usually don't have any strong doubts about my skill and have enough self-awareness to appreciate my work to an appropriate degree (not bashing myself over yet-existing flaws, but also not sticking my head up my own butt), but it's still really cool to see folks liking my animations, so yeah, you're all cool  Second is that I surely overreacted a bit - a recent artblock, one dude I made a trade with and finished half of my part yet he doesn't respond to my notes for weeks and went to draw something else, and the situation with this tread kinda combined together and resulted in sense of disillusionment, so I got spiteful for a day or two. I'll try to be more level-headed next time, and yet again, thanks for encouragement. Now, to answering some individual posts...


PlusThirtyOne said:


> Given the popularity of Undertale (i still haven't played it) and the artsy-fartsy avant garde pixel art, these would fit in and sell well methinks. To be honest, it wouldn't take a _whole lot_ of effort either...i mean given your proficiency with gif/pixel animation. All you'd really need to so is pixelfy a buyer's portrait and add basic animations to them. Trippy backgrounds, bobbing limbs a la Undertale, HUD elements, etc.


With Undertale, there is already sort of a "competitive market" that revolves around making thematic GIFs, but I have a idea of making prolonged vids and even EXE "minigames" instead - it would take much more time, but I think there's a lot of money in it. Here's one char-related I made a year ago or so c:







PlusThirtyOne said:


> But when i started graphic design work, this is what i did: i would estimate how long it takes you to whip a basic animation together by making some test templates and calculate an hourly rate, then HALVE that. Once you get some business rolling, then slowly raise the price to reflect the demand and quality. Your max price shouldn't be more than twice your average calculation, at least until you get serious business. ALSO CONSiDER DOiNG FREE WORK to get your art out there. Ask that your friends and freebie-receivers plug your art in exchange. You can also redesign your FAF avatar to reflect the kind of art you want to sell and advertise (for free) in your forum signature.


Both the vid and scheme are very decent, actually, I think I can work with that. The only problem is that when I work with animations, I usually do it at more or less at my somewhat unstable pace - on the aforementioned Undertale vid I spent probably 6 hours or so, and in case of #2 it took me 9 hours to drew the whole thing, because I didn't rush myself and just did everything as sort of a relaxation. In other words, the whole "time = money" concept that's described in the video and the (otherwise useful) commission pricing thread on art exchange subforum hardly applies to me, since I can spend lots of time on something relatively simple. I guess it's my problem, though, and as a potential commission artist, I should just find the ways to optimize my work and probably cut some unnecessary corners.


Tigers-on-Unicycles said:


> For future reference, enthusiasm is important. If you want to draw people in and have them look at your work, you have to sound enthusiastic about it, even if you aren't really. Your post might have gotten lost, but the title being what it is probably contributed to that. That being said, those are excellent animations, I'm just not really in the market to commission anybody and I know next to nothing about animation and what reasonable pricing would be.


Initially the title was perfectly self-explaining - it's just that when I got pissed and changed it to whine-induced "whatevs", it ironically got some attention x) As for enthusiasm, at least as a somewhat reclusive person, I just tend to think there's a line between determination and being annoying - I got a bit shy to bump it up (and get some kind of a "Dude, calm down" response) and initially just let it sink, until, well, the whole stuff above. Welp, at least I hope I didn't annoy anyone, hehe


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