Alex

 

 

What you should do:

• If you are pointing out a flaw, give a solution or suggestion on how to fix that flaw
• Be helpful and encouraging, especially to newer artists

 

What you should NOT do:

• Post unhelpful comments like "the nose is weird" "the hair is funny"
• Act like a know-it-all

When giving critiques, you should be as helpful as you can!

Posting useless comments such as "it looks weird" isn't going to help anybody, especially the artist. The way you critique also reflects on your personality - if you're being lazy with a critique (such as posting a useless comment), people are not going to look up to you when they need help.

 

Additionally, there is no reason to get snarky or mean (or act like a know-it-all) when giving critique. There are many new artists here on this forum, and sometimes they just don't know something about a subject like skin or hair or the like. Treat individuals with respect as artists and as human beings with emotions.

 

Receiving Critique

 

What you should do:

• Thank the critic for taking time to help out
• Try to apply the critique to your work

 

What you should NOT do:

• Make excuse after excuse for flaws ("it's muh style!1!")
• Lash out on the critic for being "mean" (even if they were just being helpful)

 

Being Rude vs. Being Honest Example

 

Honest: I don't feel like the shadows on the face make sense because the light is coming from the same direction as the shadow.

Rude: The shadows on the face look stupid.. how can the light and the shadow be in the same place?? Don't you go outside??

 

Hitchhiker's Guide to Critique

 

 

✶ It is important to understand, before going to price others, how to price your own art.

Knowing how to do this means an understanding of the factors determining a price.
 This guide will not be giving average prices out for each "category" of art (DPs, drawings, pixels..),
 however, it will try its best to explain these previously mentioned factors and their relation to pricing and art. 

It aims for helping you reflect on the subject rather than simply telling you the price you should charge.

Factors to Consider

 

Experience is a major factor in pricing. Simply put, experience assures a certain level of work that tends to develop with the amount of time you have been practicing art (a varied relationship, depending on the individual: some people improving faster, slower... explained under). When one is paying for another's artistic services, they are not only paying for the immediate result, but also the time and effort put into improving and learning art which is what got them to their current.

 

 

Experience

The factor of time is to be taken in the sense of "the immediate time" you have spent on a particular image. This is different than the total amount of time you have been doing art - this is part of experience. It's important to value the amount of time you have DEDICATED to doing commissions and the time you take into completing each one one. This can be an important factor in differentiating the types of commissions you offer - things that take longer can easily be argued to have a higher price. 

However this is not the only time you can take it into consideration, as you will want to adapt your prices to your own schedule and make the time spent worthwhile. Of course, not everyone's time is worth the same amount. One spending an hour on a piece can sometimes charge more than someone spending several hours on a piece. This is because time spent is related to the next factor, quality.

 

Time

Often associated to the factor of "time" is the amount of effort put into a piece and the final overall quality of it. The quality of the final product is definitely important when deciding a price. 

This is the area where the "other eye" is important. Asking for a pricing in the critique forum, in general, will get a response that rests strongly on the individual's own reaction/taste/opinion/etc.
Do not use this as your only source of pricing.

"Public appeal" is better measured in form of a shop, and the amount of clientele or interest gathered by it. A final note is that YOU will always know best the efforts put into your work. So never factor that out of your own pricing.
 

 

Quality, effort and public appeal
Pricing can be directly related to your current situation. Do you have a deep need for money, fast? Are you doing art as a pastime? The situation/goal factor is one that probably fluctuates the most for the individual as one's situation is something that can change rapidly. This means that while the other factors may generally change or evolve in progressive, calmer ways, this one can be completely different in the space of very little time - or the opposite, completely stable. This directly affects your prices as it may cause you to lower to gather more customers if in deep need, or perhaps not even factor it in if you are in an un-pressing situation. 
This is a factor to be considered mostly by yourself.
 

 

Personal Situation/goal
This is about understand the market you are selling in, how it functions, and your competitors. This is not about comparing and adapting your prices to every person around you, but rather something to keep in mind - giving context to the whole act of selling art.
 

 

Context/Market

Do not lie to yourselves, this is an extremely important factor to be considered. The stability of your customer base and the value of your name is VERY relevant to: 

A. the amount of customers you have

B. the amount individuals are willing to pay for you art. 

THUS influencing one's own pricing very easily. This is very much linked to Experience, Quality and public appeal, aswell as your own self... which leads to:
 

 

Customer base + Name value

All of these factors feed into a sense of self value that is incredibly important if one wishes to price their own work, or even take pricings from others. Knowing you, your art, your situation, your position... all of those build up one's own sense of self valuing which should fight against both underpricing yourself and overpricing yourself. BASICALLY, being able to know what to do for your own self and giving yourselves the right prices. 

 

 

Links Between Factors

Experience links in with quality. Quality links in with time, effort and public appeal.
Public appeal links into name value and customer base, which in result links back to experience and quality. 
Personal situation links to market context and thus back to public appeal and customer base.
What is to be kept in mind is that the percentage of strength of each factor can vary immensely for very minute things.

Experience, Time & Quality

 

✶ One does not improve as fast as another, or one does not work as fast as the other, and vice versa.

It must be understood that and individual's relationship between the time they spend (both immediate AND in 
the long run/experience) and the quality of their work (again both immediate result and the long run progression) 
remain unique and differs easily from their neighbor's. 

 

Experience and Time

->The amount of time you have been practicing art and the overall experience you have of art

Time and Quality
->The amount of time you spend on a piece and the quality of the piece

Quality and Experience
->The overall experience you have of art and the quality of your work in a whole.

 

Effect on Pricing

All of these in mind, it can be determined that there are two situations for the individual to be in in terms of pricing and their art, in which the first situation tends to grow into the second as a progressive type of state.

One's amount of experience and time does provide the necessary quality, and thus in terms of pricing the RESULT, PUBLIC APPEAL and MARKET CONTEXT is much stronger of a factor than individual factors such as TIME, EFFORT and EXPERIENCE.

 

Situation 1
One's amount of experience and time provides the necessary quality, and thus in terms of pricing individual factors such as TIME, EFFORT and EXPERIENCE can be factored stronger than factors such as the RESULT and MARKET CONTEXT. PUBLIC APPEAL is embedded into EXPERIENCE at this stage, and thus new factors such as NAME VALUE and CUSTOMER BASE can appear.
 

Situation 2

Pricing your own art is not some kind of complicated calculation, but rather an accepted understanding that allows you to quickly decide on something reasonable. While many of these factors are present, the strength of each varies a lot for the individual and thus what I have explained above remains just a very general case.

Common Pricing Issues

Like I previously said, knowing how to price yourself is essential before knowing how 

to price others correctly. However, whilst you can be aware of these factors, some are just, 
by basis, better understood by the actual artist (personal situation, Time available, effort...),
 just like some are handy to hear of from an outsider's point of view (appeal/interest, quality).  

 

Exclusive Focus
In terms of others pricing one's art,the pricer focuses either too heavily on the market context or on their own personal appeal, whilst ignoring all other factors. A person approach to pricing is extremely useful as long as it is balanced with an understanding of what the artist has gone
 through or done in order to be at this point of experience, offering said art. This means... while it is nice to know what you would buy and how much you would pay for another's art, it remains an opinion and is merely a tiny factoring into establishing one's price.

Averaging of prices offered
Averaging the prices others have given you may seem like a good idea and can sometimes work out, but it relies completley on the other's eye - and a select handful at that. This could work out but some pricings can be very biased or flawed (see above). It turns out to be closer to others dictating your price than actually finding one suitable for you. That being said, I already mentioned it but this can work out, but in general I have seen this lead to underpricing "In moderation".

Chain pricing
Seeing what someone else has priced above, resulting in a chain of people pricing arounds of the same thing - being influenced by a price they have seen already, consciously or not.

Flawed exchange rates
Not taking into consideration what the artist actually receives from credit reselling - focusing on imvu exchange rates rather than reseller rates.