The only commodity that really matters...

[morsla]

I'm becoming more aware of time, these days. Specifically, how much time it takes to do specific things during the day - I know that lately I've been undercosting the time involved in painting, but I hadn't realised just how badly until I bought a little electronic timer to stick on my desk. I paint pretty quickly, but I forgot to factor in just how much I slow down when I'm bored...

There's been another heated debate on the Privateer Press forums about how much figure painters should reasonably charge for their work, with some fairly extreme views on both sides. While I'm happy to ignore the "I need cash now so I'll work for 50c an hour" arguments, and the "I couldn't possibly sell work for less than $150 a model" counters, someone mentioned charging extra when repetitive bulk work was required. I think it's a good idea - there is nothing more boring than doing the same task over and over again, and boredom slows you down. Slowing down pushes back other jobs in the queue, which pushes back getting paid for the work, which means you eat instant noodles for another week.

I happen to like instant noodles, but I do appreciate getting paid as well :)


In other news, I won the Cryx faction medal in Saturday's Warmachine/Hordes tournament. I think that makes five medals from the last four events... lots of shiny things :) The Liber Animus tournament is on next weekend, and after that it's high time I started getting ready for the National Open at GenCon.

Enough typing... back to the painting desk.

Comments

[harkon.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the bling.

Based on your painting practice, wouldn't the most fair pricing model be a flat rate? For jobs that are complex, cost increases due to more time spent on the fiddly bits. For the factory-line type work, cost starts off low but eventually becomes non-economical as productivity is consumed by brain numbing boredom. Maybe remove time-consuming, attention-cheap tasks (such as stripping) from the model with a simple per-model fee.

Finally got some use of those stupid Commerce subjects.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

I guess the main problem is when the complex models appear in factory-line quantities... which is what I've been doing for the last month or so. Generally I price the painting at an estimate of the time required (factoring in the complexity of the model and the colours required), and have a flat fee for assembly and basing.

A flat rate could be handy, but it would need room to accomodate the people who go, "oh, everything's the same rate so I'll get you to paint chequers and tartan stripes on these thirty 96-part models," without scaring off the people who just want half a dozen goblins painted in green and black.

[harkon.livejournal.com]

Oops, by flat rate I meant, flat HOURLY rate. So the Tartan and Chess Legion would probably cost them in $ what it would cost you in SAN while Mr "I want to compare the result of you painting miniatures in under 60 seconds and the basic DnD pre-paint" gets to conduct his little experiment as well.

[kashiichan.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! :D