Rebirth 2: About Artists...

There's something that caught my attention a while ago by harmonic:

At first, I laughed because it's pretty true at some aspect then something hit me. I remember conversations I had with people and this is something that happens way too often, "I won't pay $20 for a drawing! I mean come on, it's just a drawing!"

Let's rewind for a bit. We spent years learning art, honing them to an industry standard level, and we don't deserve at least $20 for it? Art is like learning 5 languages at once, we spend years learning how to line, shade, color, anatomy and whatsoever, and not gaining the so called, mainstream skills that most people have. I want to do art for games and be a game maker for a living, not doing art for the living! There's a major difference!

What do I mean by this? I'll elaborate:

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We spend over 1-6 hours planning how your character should pose, act, anatomy issues whatsoever and whatever fixes you might want. Make that 12 hrs if you don't have a concept art or you don't even know what you want me to draw (This happens, ALL THE TIME).

Another 6-12 hours doing sketches and doing the lineart of your character. This depends on the detail but a simple character can take over 6 hours to get inked. Of course there's people who ALWAYS ask you to do fixes that will either just add an additional 30 minutes - 1 hour fix, or worse, another 6 hours of our time gone.

And finally, we spend another good 6-14 hours coloring the damn drawing. Ohh, if only blending colors were so easy and fast.

Alright so say if you took 20 hours for a drawing. That's $1 per hour: A terrible waiter who gets no tips at all and gets yelled at makes 3x or more than that!

And you're saying we don't deserve $20 for all the time we spent? We could've used that time on working on our own stuff, hang out with friends and family, having fun or studying for school. I could've just gotten a work agent and worked for a retail shop, since those pay more than I earn making assets for people!

And this is where reliability comes in. People, come on. Do you think that measly $20 can pay for our rent, food, college/student fees/books/misc.education fees, electricity/water/whatever debts, maintainance for our tablet/PC and/or buying art supplies. And there's also what we call hygiene.

Of course we'll take on as many jobs as we could in order to maintain a good amount called, $200. Yes, $200 is sooo hard to earn that it literally takes me 6 months of hard labor earning that or reasoning with my commissioner. There's also the problem that Real Life does get in the way! And of course most of them don't pay upfront!

It doesn't matter if we're not as skilled as X person or Y person. It doesn't matter if our art isn't as great as those commercial standards you see today. We take time, love and hard labor working on your stuff and drawing your characters that we probably wouldn't have seen until you brought it to us!

And that folks is why artists can be overly emotional and don't want to work on your games for FREE or even if it's paid. 

Also yes, I draw for people for $20 since apparently my skills aren't worthy of your 30-60 dollars.

Thanks for reading~

Rebirth 1: Cleaning Up

Ignis Gift Art by Tuyoki

I decided to clean up the blog. For the sake of a new start. There's an old archive link in the bookmarks section. You can still see the old stuff and I hope it will still serve as an inspiration for people. I will update this blog with much more positive and game-making related stuff as much as I could~ 

From Sketch to GUI

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First I make a Rough Draft in MSPaint.

Photoshop with Placeholders

Do icons and test in-game. I ask for feedback at this point in #shmup

After feedback, I test it with the real icons and an assumed art quality