Bartertown.com

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/po ... 05838.page

This is terrain I'm working on for myself (as i don't yet have a proper table) but I was just wondering what everyone thought. I've had several people tell me, both online and off, that I should really look into doing commissioned work.

Unfortunately, my perfectionism forces me to spend a LONG time working so whoever commissioned it would have to have the patience of a saint. Just wondering what those of you thought and how much you think work like mine is worth....

I dont know how much you should ask if you'd go into commission work. but I do know one thing. That is definitally a lot nicer than some of the crap people try and sell. Some stuff people try and sell look like a 5 year old made it. Atleast yours is very well made, and definitally would make any table look nicer, instead of crap!

I think its commission worthy. As someone who barely gets his models painted, having nice, semi-realistic looking terrain is a plus.

for it to be worth it though it must be affordable. I find alot of good terrain is unafordable for most folks.

The thing about commission work is you have to make sure that you put the right amount of time in for the price you charge.

Most people do this in levels. I, II and III. Obviously what you have in that link is very much a level III and takes some serious time and energy as well as product. If you aren't charging enough then it's not worth the time.

When I did commission work back in the day, I would take the amount of cash/product credit coming to me, divide that into the time and product it took to do the project and come out with a number. If the number was too low then I wasn't charging enough for my time.

Another thing is I had to let go of my personal perfectionism and realize that some people are literally looking for assembly + prime + base coat and a finished base. I had a hard time NOT highlighting and shading the way I would with my own models. I found myself getting angry at the level of finishing I was producing, but that's the level that the client wanted. Anything over that level would be 'free' to the client.

Secondly, terrain is a whole different ballgame. Usually no two tables are ever alike therefore it's hard to set a price guide for it.

If you were doing a table for a client like the one you have in that link you would be looking in the hundreds of dollars. No less than 5 bills. Each piece is it's own little part of the "story" of the table. Each piece is being finished to a degree that would make any store owner drool at how it would look on their tables.

What I would do is try to find a level guide on your own. Find out what kinds of pieces you can do for the usual level system. Also look for pieces that you can "mass produce" or obtain ample product for. The more you do the same or similar piece the quicker you can get making those pieces worth more to your bottom line.

Example:
Level 1 (per piece) 2-3 components, basic assembly and priming with a basecoat of colors and a bare bones basic base. $10-$20 per piece for a table. Each piece would be a size of a soda can-fuel pump to a small building or copse of trees.

Level 2 (per piece) 4-8 components, assembly with gap filling, primed with a basecoat and maybe a highlight or two with an ink wash. Based made to fit the table style (urban, grass, rocky, city etc) $40-$50 per piece. Multi-level buildings, larger bases of trees, monuments, race specific terrain pieces.

Level 3 (per piece) basically what you are doing now. No less than $50 per piece depending on size. Obviously the bigger the better and more expensive. You can also at this stage make several pieces combine into a single large piece (like several hive buildings connected by separate catwalks/pipes. etc)

You need to make sure that you aren't LOSING money by doing it if you choose to do this as a commission based practice, that's the big thing. Remember that product can be cheap but people need to pay for YOUR time. If they wanted to do it themselves they would spend their time on it rather than their money.

Keep a log for each piece, log the time, $ amount of product etc and at the end what you sold it for. This will help give you an idea.

Ancient... I've been trying to get a chance to look at that thread forver, it seems.
I've seen it on Dakka from work but, as the various image hosting sites are blocked, I never could see the pics.
It wasn't until last night, coincidentally, that I finally got the opportunity to get there from home (and remembered) and took a look at it.

You should, absolutely, NOT do this by commission.
Why?
It's too good.
Morlock has the right idea, but he's undervalued your pieces... and that's the problem.
Almost nobody will pay you what you deserve for these.

If you want to do it to make a few extra bucks, and have the time to spare in order to earn 3 or 4 bucks profit an hour for making terrain... Cool. Go for it.
Somehow, though, I doubt you'll find your precious spare time to be worth such a paltry sum.

If you want to do it by commission, I'd suggest investing a hundred or so bucks in supplies.
Get enough GENERIC supplies to make some cool looking, BASIC terrain pieces. NO major add-ons.
Then, cast these in resin, either as one piece, or in sections (I suggest sections).
Make your pieces all based on a few certain resin casts (like Forgeworld does), then make & assemble the resin casts, add on some bits, and paint them up.

It'll give you a fast (and relatively inexpensive) base to work from, while allowing you to provide a degree of individuality to the models, and still keep a certain level of cohesiveness.
Plus, if you make the individual wall casts from each building right, they could be interchangeable... allowing you even more flexibility.

Eric

ebay it rather than commision.

IMO, doing ebay is even worse than commission.
If you put a price low enough to attract bidders, you risk practically giving it away.
If you price it at what it's worth, you risk scaring bidders off.
There is no happy medium on ebay (especially with their recently increased fees).

Eric

I would have to say that I agree with Matt and Eric here. You would have a VERY hard time finding customers who could pay for how much those pieces are worth. If you did decide to go into commission work, you would have to lose the perfectionist side of it. Which could be hard to do.

It is beautiful work. Maybe Eric's idea of casting is good, but that seems troublesome too. I think their is a guy here on Bartertown that sells Drop pods that he has cast and the problem with castings is that people start to get cheap if they see that you can just produce more of the same.

I think every gamer dreams of having a table with the kinds of terrain you have there, but very few of them would be willing to pay the price for the work that it entails.

Thanks for the pictures though. I think I might open up my Imperial City box and start some work on that. Ah, inspiration...

Karl

i think it looks f'ing awesome. i'd spend a good 200$ on fantasy terrain if you were able to do in an undead theme. drop me a line sometime and maybe your talent can benefit us both, as im too busy to make my own terrain!

IW

I agree with everyone else - the terrain's quality is too good for commission work. Perhaps if you were to specialize in making smaller or simpler pieces, you could find customers willing to pay a fair price for your time and effort. For stuff of the caliber you're currently doing, that's highly unlikely.

JF

Morlock has the right idea, but he's undervalued your pieces... and that's the problem

Now now I wasn't actually undervaluing anything. I will clarify now, I was suggesting that he not go lower than $50 per piece, if at all. I actually said that a table with the pieces he's doing not go under 5 bills. I also suggested that attempting to do this at the level he is doing now would NOT be worth it as Adunaphel said, "he wouldn't get a good price".

What I posted was a general guideline as to how to attempt the valuing of commission work, certainly not a guideline as to how to attempt the valuing of his current pieces.

Wow Eric.... that was close enough to us agreeing that I believe Satan is shovelling snow. but I am sure you have a link for that too.

Now now I wasn't actually undervaluing anything. I will clarify now, I was suggesting that he not go lower than $50 per piece, if at all. I actually said that a table with the pieces he's doing not go under 5 bills. I also suggested that attempting to do this at the level he is doing now would NOT be worth it as Adunaphel said, "he wouldn't get a good price".

Actually, though not with malicious intent, you were undervaluing it.
Not if you look at the current "market." If you look at the "market," you were putting him in the high brackets of what pieces go for... Which would be appropriate if you were just comparing it to what is currently available for immediate sale.

Thing is, though, my buddy has a game table made by the same Italian company who makes terrain for the GW Museum (can't recall their name). It set him back over $4 grand... and that was well over 5 years ago (it would be in the neighborhood of $8 or $9K to buy it now). It's an "outdoor" table, and not a CoD one.. but AS's table looks almost as good as my buddy's (taking the unpainted part into account).

If AS paints this terrain to the level that he's created it, you're looking at a table worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 to $4K. That's at fair market value, as opposed to what he'd get on ebay or what most people would want to pay for it.

This is, of course, just educated opinion.

What I posted was a general guideline as to how to attempt the valuing of commission work, certainly not a guideline as to how to attempt the valuing of his current pieces.

I saw that. Again, though, my point wasn't about your prices so much as it was to point out how much better the market should be and how much better his pieces are.

Wow Eric.... that was close enough to us agreeing that I believe Satan is shovelling snow. but I am sure you have a link for that too.

Well, first off, I didn't realize we found ourselves in disagreement very often.
That being said, I still think we do agree that his stuff is great, worth more than he could get for it, and we hate him a little bit for it. LOL
My disagreements weren't really with you, necessarily. I was simply using your post as a reference on how badly the market undervalues terrain.

By average sale prices, your post was quite generous and placed him -rightfully- in the top margins. Unfortunately, though, your (correct) assessment of what the top margins get for their pieces is still too low for his stuff. That was, essentially, the gist of my posts.

Eric

Thanks everyone for all the input. I've certainly been mulling it over since last week when I found out I'm being laid off on Aprill 11th, so it looks like I'll have some free time!

IronWarriors83: Drop me a PM and let me know what you're looking for. At $200, you probably won't be getting something as intricate as the table I currently working on but perhaps we can come to an agreement on things.

Well, first off, I didn't realize we found ourselves in disagreement very often.

Only when it came to your LINKS No I probably won't EVER forgive you for mr man boobs... retinas are a delicate thing and you sir trampled all over mine, not once but TWICE.

Reality speaking we never did disagree but I make jokes that make no sense to anyone but me. Like that one time at band camp with the peanut... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA hilarious.

But yea I guess you can say I undervalued it but again it has been a long time since I did commission work so I agree that the current market probably changed and that's where I coulda/shoulda/woulda not attempted to place a dollar amount on it.

Ancient, your work is insanely pleasing to look at.

Either way I was trying to show what kind of levels there are, usually, and how difficult it can be sometimes to paint UNDER what you want to do.

Adunaphel wrote: It is beautiful work. Maybe Eric's idea of casting is good, but that seems troublesome too. I think their is a guy here on Bartertown that sells Drop pods that he has cast and the problem with castings is that people start to get cheap if they see that you can just produce more of the same.

Karl

That would be me. Though Darksoul does casting as well. Ancient, if you are at all interested in hearing or discussing the details of casting pm me, and Ill be happy to give you a call.

There is one thing I have learned in the business world. People can be and are cheap! I am too, I have learned that people will only pay for what they think your services are worth. I do make the droppods, but its taken alot of work to be able to make them regularly, as well as some capital (ask me about my $1500 pressure pot some time).

Why do I do it?

Im not a big fan of a certain game company and think my product is a much more affordable alternative. Not to mention its cool to see my pods all around the world.

It takes me an hour to make 2 pods. So Im not raking in the dough

If you value your time, then you may not want to pursue making terrain, as I can only imagine how much time it takes you to make a custom piece. Can you make a profit from casting? Sure, but I personally dont think there is enough market out there for it. How many terrain companys are there out there? Not many, I think its because the money isnt out there to be made from it.

Though you could always do FW or better work and take away thier business, just beware the wrath of FW and GW.

PM if you want.

nick