1881 A Place On Earth.

They do say, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”… Or at least, somebody does.

I find the FF In a Nutshell series amusing, but not groundbreakingly funny. They do raise some good points about FF games as a whole (like how Kefka is basically the ONE FF villain to achieve what he set out to do), but some of the jokes have a tendency to fall flat because more than a few are based on opinions held by the creator(s). I personally found Gogo [VI] to be amazingly useful, since he can do everything else the others can, and I’m talking outside the Mime ability, since he can equip other peoples’ unique abilities (like Sabin’s Blitz or Gau’s Rage). Healing Rods are also very useful because it means you can save your magic for when you need it instead of having to patch up the team as often.

FF in a nutshell carries similar vibes to the whole Cinemasins thing. I sort of get what they’re going for with a fan-centric tongue-in-cheek review of the franchise but I do worry that what they create will grow into something mean spirited that far misses the point of the games.

It’s not a bad idea to charge just a little more than you think you can get. Helps you build a surplus for the leaner times.

I don’t know what kind of setup Mr. Jacques has going on (my budget is limited, so I only pledge to artists who seem to need the income). However, something to consider is the size of his fanbase. Gating Q&A might be a survival strategy as much as anything on his part. *shrug*

So, I have a *lot* of artist friends, some more successful than others. My two most successful artist friends do furry art, because apparently the furry community has buckets of cash to throw at people.

Of these two most successful friends, one has what I consider to be the highest quality art, but continually undersells. One piece – his best piece, IMO – he put in a couple months worth of effort into, and only got $600. He could have easily gotten a thousand out of it, and honestly could have gotten it done in a month or less if he didn’t have a day job. Honestly, his work is good enough that he could easily support himself JUST on furry commissions.

The second artist friend is just a smidge less quality than the first one (again, just my opinion), but consistently makes more money than the first one for less work, because the second friend goes out to furry cons, makes connections and commissions, and has no problem raising prices so that she has less work but (roughly) the same income. To be fair, she also has a day job (that makes her happy and a lot of money), which is part of why she raised her prices – she only has a limited amount of time available, and her time is very valuable. Plus her art is fairly niche – she does herp art (reptiles and amphibians mostly), so there’s less competition.

I don’t have a patreon account right now, because I have at least 3 more years of paying off student loans. Once I’ve got that taken care of, I can afford to throw money at artists. Therefore, I’m making the assuming – based on what I’m reading so far – that you’re offering each person that donates even just a dollar a month a portrait done in your style. If this assumption is incorrect, apologies, and feel free to disregard the following.

I feel like a dollar, or even a dollar a month for just a year or two, is way too low a pricing for something you spend even 10 minutes on. I would recommend removing the “I’ll draw you in my style” option from Patreon as a regular reward just for throwing a dollar at you, and add it as a “store” item, somehow. One time effort should get one time payment, in my opinion.

If it gives you the commericalism jeebies, feel free to disregard, or give a warning that it’s going away on , say a month or two from when you make the decision to make the change, so people have a chance to get in on the cheaper price while they can still afford it. New pricing should be at the VERY least minimum wage rate times the number of hours you put into the thing, with one hour being the minimum, and rounded up to the nearest half hour. With your skill level and fan base, maybe $100 would be too much for one single portrait. As others have mentioned, Jeph has a pretty massive fanbase, and only so much time, so he probably sets it high enough that he physically has time to do the portraits. I don’t know how big your fanbase is, but I don’t think $20 is too much to ask for a single portrait. In fact, I’d guess that $20-$50 would be right, depending on how much time you spend on the portrait. Maybe have options for a simple portrait, a standard portrait, and a complex portrait?

tl;dr you don’t value yourself and your skillset enough, charge more, it’s ok! You’re not charging for the materials, your charging for the time you’re spending on it and the worth of your accumulated experience earned over time.

On the point of Patreon … donations? I would call them “donations” because that’s how I see it since Patreon has basically replaced tip jars and wallets on a lot of comic artists I support.

I would say this – if I were you, I would go with the low tiers. However, say in the future you get a benefactor who wants to bypass the low tiers and give you a hundred bucks a month, you could allow that and gratefully mention them every now and then in your comic comments or something. Teach Me to Kill does that – the artist/author has a few people who have donated beyond, and she just gives them a shout-out every now and then (and mentioned they helped her improve her comic/Patreon by funding her new tablet). I think some people appreciate a small acknowledgement, some of us (like me, I am donating and I haven’t asked for a portrait or anything) that just want the comic to keep going without any other benefit or acknowledgement; and some are somewhere in between.

As for Final Fantasy, I started at FF5. I may be one of the very very few who enjoyed the plot of the eighth installment. Despite the protagonist being pretty … wuss at the beginning of the game, I liked all the characters and their insane abilities. I was able to follow the plot pretty easily, but then again, I like plots in plots in plots. I found FF9 to be very enduring, and the characters were very well done, but it had less depth than 8. I still liked it a lot as well. FF10 was okay, FF11 had BALTIER which is one of my favorite characters of all time (the depth of his character as it is revealed is awesome).

The one with Lightning … FF13? … was what I considered the least enjoyable foray into the series for me. It felt railroaded and the plot didn’t make me feel much for the characters. The Eidolons were cool, but you can’t base your entire game on a system of synthesis (timing) and summoned guardians.