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[dumbmanex]

When I started a few years back, it was $15/h, and I've been ramping it up every job.  I'm at $30/h now.  I charge time for revisions so long as it wasn't my error.  I imagine the price a freelancer charges can also be related to how lucrative the companies they choose to work with are.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'd never hire anyone who would do their pixel art in ms paint, haha.

This coming from the guy who says he'd hire a guy who only communicates via morse code?

If the end result is the same, why should you care what they use? I feel like you're just trying to make claims to further strengthen your point, even though the claims are actually backwards to what you really believe.

I honestly don't care what an artist uses as long as they are fast and the work is good. Why should it matter?

I'm still failing to see the justification behind $800 a day though. Even with added costs of software (graphics gale is a whopping $20... is that still not good enough?) and hardware ($600 for 2 top end 27" monitors... $1000 for a great computer that could handle any pixel art... $1600 total) I still can't justify paying a digital artist $100 an hour.

Maybe it's just me... I mean I only know a few artist friends who make that kind of money and they are working for top animation studios... they definitely aren't freelancing.

Even people I know in the vfx/animation industry with lead freelance positions aren't making $100 an hour. More like $60-$80... and this is California where rates are generally higher than anywhere else. (hence why so much stuff is being outsourced)

sorry for the delay in reply, didn't see this until now

the thing is, the morse code won't actually show up in the game. it's just a way to communicate with someone among the team members. the ms paint art actually WILL show up in the game

ms paint simply lacks the variety of tools that other programs have. for instance, you can't make a background transparent in ms paint. you cant anti-alias the edges in ms paint. so even ignoring the inconvenience issues -- and just taking a look at the capability issues -- there are many things that my games need that ms paint simply can't do. old versions of it didn't even let you use full 32-bit color, they restricted you to 8-bit color.

but even if ms paint were somehow improved so that it could do those things, it'd still be a very inefficient tool. an artist of equivalent skill can get a lot more done in other tools than in ms paint in the same time frame. this is especially bad if you are paying by the hour or by the day. why would you pay someone to use the slowest, most inefficient tool possible? i'd far rather have someone use the dos version of neopaint than the modern version of ms paint, because even that 20 year old tool has more capability than ms paint does

but of course this depends on a game's style. if a game uses atari 2600 style then ms paint may be okay, since it can do everything you need (though even there i'd rather use something else since it'd be more efficient). but if a game uses modern 2d graphics, ms paint is just incapable; it's not just that it's less efficient, it's that it simply can't produce the same image files that other programs can

a similar thing would be like this: no matter how good you are with crayons, anything you draw with them will still look like it was created with crayons, not oils or acrylic. that doesn't mean the crayon user is less skilled, it just means that someone may not want their art to look like it was drawn in crayons

ms paint is often the first program an artist learns how to use (my first was mario paint but i'm older than most here). an artist who insists on using ms paint for all their art, even for art they're hired to do, implicitly tells you that they are uncomfortable learning new tools. that's usually a bad sign. a professional artist usually knows a variety of tools and uses the one that fits the job, they don't use the same tool for everything, so it makes a freelancer seem amateur if they insist on ms paint

i mean, let's say you're hiring a musician. would you go with a musician who insists on using MIDI music? he might say that MIDI music can sound just as good as other forms, and talk about how games don't need more than MIDI music, and say that he can convert his MIDI music to your needs by recording it as an .ogg or a .mp3 or a .wav for you (a digital recording of the MIDI music playing), so on, but in the end, it's still MIDI music, and that person is less likely to be hired as a freelance musician than someone who uses FL Studio or some other industry-standard tool. same thing with ms paint

also, in order to not sound like i'm being dogmatic about this, it's not like i'm saying they HAVE to only use programs X Y or Z -- i'm not saying photoshop only, for example. gimp is just as capable as photoshop, and many other programs are just as capable as those. i prefer cosmigo pro motion when creating pixel art, but others prefer other things. there's a variety of choices. but ms paint isn't one of those choices, just like mario paint isn't

[Conker534]

Paul I like all of your posts.

[MA-Simon]

i mean, let's say you're hiring a musician. would you go with a musician who insists on using MIDI music? he might say that MIDI music can sound just as good as other forms, and talk about how games don't need more than MIDI music, and say that he can convert his MIDI music to your needs by recording it as an .ogg or a .mp3 or a .wav for you (a digital recording of the MIDI music playing), so on, but in the end, it's still MIDI music, and that person is less likely to be hired as a freelance musician than someone who uses FL Studio or some other industry-standard tool. same thing with ms paint

Unfortunally there is not much going on without MIDI. It is still the base tool of every modern music-daw. But I do get your point! Lots of years ago, I would spend fun times playing the same MIDI file with different GM soundfonts and convert them to mp3, feeling very intelligent in the process.

When it comes to paying I guess the most important question is: What would you want others to pay you? Then: Is your project interesting enough for an experienced artist? If maybe not so much, what would you like others to pay you, to keep working on a project, you aren't that much interested in doing? Good artists are picky. That said... very good artists are also able to get the most out of "boring" projects or assist you in making your project less boring in the first place.

[Konidias]

ms paint simply lacks the variety of tools that other programs have. for instance, you can't make a background transparent in ms paint. you cant anti-alias the edges in ms paint. so even ignoring the inconvenience issues -- and just taking a look at the capability issues -- there are many things that my games need that ms paint simply can't do. old versions of it didn't even let you use full 32-bit color, they restricted you to 8-bit color.

The new version of ms paint has transparency, saving to PNG, and has anti-aliasing...

You didn't really specify a version of ms paint or anything. You were just making a sweeping generalization of a piece of software. Like this:

but even if ms paint were somehow improved so that it could do those things, it'd still be a very inefficient tool. an artist of equivalent skill can get a lot more done in other tools than in ms paint in the same time frame.

Say what? Even if ms paint were improved, it would still be inefficient? How could you possibly know this? Also who is to say how efficient an artist can be with a program? Maybe the artist has been using ms paint since its inception, and has 10,000+ hours training with it... and can paint pixel perfect representations of famous paintings using only the airbrush? Why do you scoff at this idea? Why *must* they use other software?

it's not just that it's less efficient, it's that it simply can't produce the same image files that other programs can

Examples?

a similar thing would be like this: no matter how good you are with crayons, anything you draw with them will still look like it was created with crayons, not oils or acrylic. that doesn't mean the crayon user is less skilled, it just means that someone may not want their art to look like it was drawn in crayons

This is a silly analogy. Crayons/Oil paints are physical mediums. Pixels are pixels. Regardless of what program they are being drawn in.

ms paint is often the first program an artist learns how to use (my first was mario paint but i'm older than most here).

Pencils are the first writing instrument most people learn how to use... does this mean that people can't create amazing sketches with pencils?

an artist who insists on using ms paint for all their art, even for art they're hired to do, implicitly tells you that they are uncomfortable learning new tools. that's usually a bad sign. a professional artist usually knows a variety of tools and uses the one that fits the job, they don't use the same tool for everything, so it makes a freelancer seem amateur if they insist on ms paint

Nobody said anything about the artist insisting on using the one tool. They could draw 90% of the art in ms paint and then do the final 10% in something else. I'm just saying that it's silly to rule out an entire piece of software just because you cannot personally create amazing works of art with it.

i mean, let's say you're hiring a musician. would you go with a musician who insists on using MIDI music?

Again this isn't a good analogy at all. Totally irrelevant. MIDI is a format. ms paint is not.