Concept: Portrait Art?

This is my first post here at SL's forums, only been around a lil over a week. I was debating which forum to put this in, as it could prolly survive in serveral..but the only one that seemed suitable enough was General. Now, if its better off somewhere else please do tell me.

Im a bit of an artist..nothing uber fantastic, but on occasion Ive made a little ingame moolah in games before doing sketches/etc of avatars. Now, I guess the question would be is there a market for such a thing in SL?

I have my doubts, as with SL you can pretty much customize your avatar up the wazoo and just take a screenshot. But Im drawing a picceh to upload for use in my profile (It looks like it'll be resized down..but mreh), and got to thinking perhaps others would like a similar service.

I searched the forums, but didnt come across anything particularly identical to what Im talking about. A commision type deal where you chose how involved the picture will be, recieve preliminary sketches for expensive works. And so on.

I dunno- thoughts/criticism...?

I think it's a good idea.

Try it!

People love art, and I've seen lots of it in their homes.

Screenshots just don't do justice to the range of expression that avatars have; you could bring them to life with your sketches.

I've been trying to talk a friend into doing this precise thing, for a while now.

Selling avitars is a big business in SL.

:edit:
Oh I misread I think. You make art using other avitars?
That sounds cool. I've seen a few profiles with some detailed art done with their avie's. And I saw a new in-world photo studio someone is selling with lots of features.
Modeling as in modeling clothing, objects, anything, is done a lot. There are established businesses in SL that do things like that but it's all about the look people want.
What you offer might be what some are looking for. It might take a little while for word to travel but that's how it goes with everyone. Except those who spend tons on advertisment maybe.

There may be a market for this, but don't expect people to pay much for it in terms of RL money.

I've been trying to represent a fairly good furry artist here, as his sales agent in SL, since I came here. He creates traditional or 3D original art depicting Avatars, and provides the work as 600 DPI or higher files, ready to print, or as 8x10 color prints. I've been showing samples of his work around, seeing if people would commission him. I get consistently positive responses to the quality of the work that he can do, but have found no one at all who is willing to pay the equivalent of $30 USD and up for a high-res portrait, which is what Porter easily gets for the art he sells at furry cons and on other RP forums.

I think you hit the nail on the head. In SL, a person can just buy a modeling pose and take a screenshot of their Avatar, and they have a portrait. So it probably doesn't seem worth it to most Players to pay very much for portraits. It's not like in a text-based RP forum, where a portrait might be the only way to 'see' the character, or someplace like Furcadia where the 'avatars' are very low-res, generic looking sprite characters.

Still, I have seen some very talented artists in SL who offer portrait work, and who don't charge much for it. Better something than nothing, I guess.

Thanks for the opinions thus far.

Ceera, thats one of the problems Ive been grapling with; pricing. I havent really sold anything irl..just given gift art to friends and such..and the only experiences in other games all have vastly different economies..usually that have no transfer into irl currency.

I could prolly just generally say most of what Id sell 'high-end' would go for $5-10..but even that is 1.5-3k in SL currency. It just doesnt seem realistic of me to expect there to be people willing to pay that much for art.

Yes. What I seem to recall for the few artists who sell portrait art in-world is that they only charge L$500 (About $1.75 USD) or so, for stuff that an average artist in the real world would sell for $30 to $75 USD, at a minimum. It's sort of depressing, from the artist's standpoint.

What I might suggest is that you learn how to design and create avatars and or skins. Merchants in SL get L$500 to over L$1,000 for custom avatars (like furries), and I've seen fancy 'skins' that sell for as much as L$6,000. And there, you are looking at a potentially repeating sale, if you design something that potentially has wide appeal, rather than a one-shot custom item. My artist friend recently joined SL, and he's going to go into Building and Avatar design, rather than trying to sell his portraits here.

Myself, I mostly make custom textures, and I design clothes. I don't get much per texture, but when sold in bundles of ten associated textures, they do seem to sell well. I'll occasionally get a request for very customized clothing designs. If I think I will be able to resell it to others, then I'll usually do that for a fairly reasonable rate. But if I don't think it will be in demand, or if the customer wants exclusive rights to that item, then I'll either charge more, or will decline the work.

1.5-3k sounds really reasonable if not cheap for good, original, comissioned art. Maybe another way of looking at the pricing would be to ask yourself what you want out of it - potential RL subsistance? then ask RL rates - otherwise, look at the L$ you'd get in term of their "buying power" in-world, or as an offset for tier costs and do the portraits more for art's sake and enjoyement than for the monetary reward.

Anyway, I really like your idea. Give it a try, you can always slash prices if it doesn't work

Hrm. Well, dispite the drawbacks I think Ill give it a go anyway. Most of the time Im more rewarded by positive reactions to my work and being able to practice drawing and learning from the experience.

Ill prolly end up setting up a forum/site instead of lurking 24/7 here in the SL forums. Any clue where a post pointing to such a place would most be appropriate? Services or Fansites in the Classified?

...anyone want some free art? Just two/three for display purposes as examples of quality. Id just post some of my existing stuff, but most of it is old or doesnt fit within the context of SL. PM me I guess. Maybe even get some feedback from some people on what they'd pay for certain qualities once I have examples up.

I used to do commissions for drawings of Avatars but stopped after a while for a lot of the reasons listed.

It's crappy pay and a lot of work. But if you want to try doing just profile pics it might be easier, I drew full page pictures and coloured them.

I would say, for a fully coloured and drawn profile pic of the avatar's head and shoulders (maybe torso but you have to keep in mind the box is only so big), that you should charge anywhere between 2000-4000L$

Keeping in mind that i've seen outfits sell for that much and this is a piece of custom art work.

It's not a whole lot of money but drawing profile pics isn't a whole lot of work either.

Best way to do it is by word of mouth, otherwise you can use classified ads but that costs you a bit of money. And definately have some examples of art to show what your style is and how well you can draw, ink, and colour a drawing.