Just out of curiosity, imagine someone was willing to pay you to make a 100% complete resource pack. (images wise, not sound or anything)
What is the minimum amount of money you would accept?
Interesting question.
It really depends on the style they want as well as the resolution. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm doing a 16x pack in a similar style to "Sanity" since that's what I'm most comfortable with.
Minecraft has 715 graphical assets in vanilla as of 1.4.7.
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume this hypothetical person doesn't want a font. Let's also assume that they don't want any animations since those are a pretty massive time-sink all things considered.
Each block takes me about 10 minutes, on average, to do. This accounts for things like wood being recolors and other shortcuts. Obviously if the person commissioning me wanted every block unique, it would take longer. For simplicity, though, let's assume that I'm allowed to take those shortcuts and thus each block takes me about 10 minutes.
For items, I'm pretty fast. I can do most items in about 2-5 minutes. There aren't many recolors possible with items (besides armor and tools), but let's say that each one is unique and takes me on average three minutes to do.
GUIs take me about a half-hour each. This assumes that I can share certain assets (like the hotbar) between different GUIs. If each one had to be 100% unique this would take me longer, but again let's assume that I can keep a consistent style by sharing some elements between them and as such it averages to a half-hour per.
Entities are a real wildcard. I can hammer out a sign or a chest in five minutes... but the Ender Dragon is an hour's job easily with the horse being about two hours or more. For simplicity's sake, let's assume it averages to about an half-hour per entity.
Paintings are another real wildcard. Depending on what this hypothetical person wants it could take hours or minutes to do a single painting. There are 26 paintings in total. To make this a conservative estimate, let's say that the person who hired me was a fan of minimalist artwork that I could do pretty quickly in vector, rasterize, and then copy over. Say, about four hours for the whole thing.
Particles are pretty easy, but there are a lot of them. Let's guess about an hour for this.
There are also a few other bits and bobs like the pack.png, so let's say all of those take me an hour.
Given these estimates and averages blocks will take about 58 hours worth of work, Items will take about 11 hours, GUI elements about 16 hours, entities around 44 hours, and paintings at least another four. Adding another hour for other stuff, this brings me to a conservative estimate of 134 Hours worth of work minimum for a resource pack.
For my professional graphics work, I generally charge about $20 per hour.
This brings my very conservative minimum estimate, which assumes a lot of cost saving stuff, to a whopping $2,680!
Kinda puts things in perspective when you realize that most of us give these things away for FREE!
Did I mention that this was a very conservative estimate?
As for your cost, yea, that's about right. If I were taking my time to ensure quality or working at a higher resolution I'd probably be right in there with you. I can hammer out most blocks in ten to fifteen minutes... but the quality isn't always perfect. The topic asked for a minimum estimate, not necessarily a realistic one.
With higher HD blocks/items taking hours each (not including CTM).............i'll be adding a number of zero's to that rather conservative calculation Al Even at lower res thats nothing compared to if you were being paid for you time as an artist in a team production.
Mobs are the most time consuming they can take days. Horses about a month lmao *joke*
Unless its a company/games team with a good budget you will be hard pushed to get a private commission to pay anywhere near the value of the work involved even on lower res work.
You would really just have to give most of it away for free and accept enough to be happy with. Had a number of offers for CH and none were remotely close to work done on an hourly rate for 5-8 hrs a day for a year so far, so no thank you.
If you are being asked about a commission Goodlyay look at what you would accept for your time not the actual value of the work/time involved as the two will be miles apart
Yeah you´re right, I added a paragraph to my post. I might probably get an acceptable texture done in half an hour done, but no matter how you look at it, you would never actually get what your work is worth.
I like your added paragraph and, for a long-term project like this, I completely agree with you.
Provided you're super-confident you can get the project done by that deadline, that is.
And yes, you can get what your work is worth. I've had people pay me for my time to make textures for their servers and whatnot, and they generally pay me my asking price. I've never had anyone pay me for a full pack, though, so in that case I'm inclined to agree with you.
I'd say that for a pack with 100% of all textures, plus every extra feature that can be done without bloating the pack (such as conservative CTM, sounds, shaders, models (when they're added), etc.), the pack being inspired and unified, with unique style and lore, I'd say
$1,000,000
That's a high number, why you ask?
This assumes that a significant amount of time is spent on the pack, years. You won't be doing textures 1 time here, try redoing it 4 or 5 times just to get it right.
This counts time spent practicing and learning, and growing as an artist. Also, schooling, for like, a future.
This counts inspiration, such as music, movies, TV shows, games, books, and art, which you would legally purchase, to feel more "inspired" to create better art yourself.
This counts housing, food, drink, and everything else you need to live. Also counts as reimbursement for hardware used to create the pack.
Plus, I've heard (probably old now) that it takes about 1 million USD to raise a child to 18. I suppose a good pack will seem like the artist's child. Maybe it's a bit high of an estimate, but $50/hour would be pretty good, and assuming you work on it until it's perfect you'd probably reach that and still be working on it.
Kinda puts things in perspective when you realize that most of us give these things away for FREE!
This isn't exactly true. We do give away our packs to use for free, but we make them for ourselves. So congratulations Mr. Smarty-Pants, you owe yourself about $3k if not more, but I think you'll work something out with yourself (or die trying). I doubt anyone has ever made a 100% complete pack for anyone else, especially considering people are usually like "he can u mke ma a tester packe with gunz plz i need it 4 my server kthankzbye". Even if someone did take up the endeavor they would likely not complete it unless they had the feeling that they wanted to complete it.
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"I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly.
It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out.
I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from:
being forced to choose to stay outside.
My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead.
Every now and then you find yourself in a different place."
-George Carlin
This, unless it was possibly a commercial game project with a budget assigned to art assets with the understanding of how long this work can take.
That depends. Sometimes companies try to underpay for art work justifying it by the extra exposure you get or whatever. You want a company that actually appreciates their art team rather than just looking at them more like a piece of office equipment that prints art assets.
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Tis far better to be a witty fool than a foolish wit.
This isn't exactly true. We do give away our packs to use for free, but we make them for ourselves. So congratulations Mr. Smarty-Pants, you owe yourself about $3k if not more, but I think you'll work something out with yourself (or die trying).
HA! I've probably spent ten times as long, at least, on Sanity as I would have on my hypothetical super-conservative minimum estimate. At this point, I owe myself a yacht!
But I know what you mean. Our packs are, first and foremost, gifts to ourselves. Very expensive gifts, by the look of it. The fact that other people also enjoy them is just a nice bonus and if we make a little of that "expense" back then all the better. Still, any time you enjoy "wasting" is still time well spent.
But I know what you mean. Our packs are, first and foremost, gifts to ourselves. Very expensive gifts, by the look of it.
If you look at things that way, sleep is a super expensive luxury, as are all of your hobbies and recreative activities to a lesser degree.
But that only really makes sense if you assume you would be earning income if you weren't texturing. In reality most of us would be doing some other entertainment/relaxation activity instead of texturing. Quite a few of those possibilities actually cost money, so you can more validly look at texturing as a very affordable recreation.
Of course, if i was doing a complete pack for someone according to their specifications, i would charge a lot.
If you look at things that way, sleep is a super expensive luxury, as are all of your hobbies and recreative activities to a lesser degree.
But that only really makes sense if you assume you would be earning income if you weren't texturing. In reality most of us would be doing some other entertainment/relaxation activity instead of texturing. Quite a few of those possibilities actually cost money, so you can more validly look at texturing as a very affordable recreation.
This is why I ended my post with the phrase "Any time you enjoy "wasting" is still time well spent."
Of course, if i was doing a complete pack for someone according to their specifications, i would charge a lot.
This is where the question really comes from, isn't it? It's one thing if you're doing something because you want to. It's an entirely different story if you're doing it for someone else with the expectation of compensation.
This assumes that a significant amount of time is spent on the pack, years. You won't be doing textures 1 time here, try redoing it 4 or 5 times just to get it right.
Very much this. My personal pack ive been working on (well off and on) for the past ~3 years. Ive reworked textures 6, 7, maybe more times before i settled, but even that isnt set in stone. I recently redid my stone texture, and now i need to redo ores to fit the new stone. Ive reworked GUIs several times and now i have 4 variations. Not to mention mod texture adaptions. God, Industrial Craft GUIs are the bane of my existence...
This isn't exactly true. We do give away our packs to use for free, but we make them for ourselves. So congratulations Mr. Smarty-Pants, you owe yourself about $3k if not more, but I think you'll work something out with yourself (or die trying). I doubt anyone has ever made a 100% complete pack for anyone else, especially considering people are usually like "he can u mke ma a tester packe with gunz plz i need it 4 my server kthankzbye". Even if someone did take up the endeavor they would likely not complete it unless they had the feeling that they wanted to complete it.
Indeed, we start making packs because we are making something WE want, first and foremost. At least that is what I hope people start with. I've only released my pack because i want to share what I've created. I don't even use Adfly or any sort of donation system because I personally find that against the spirit of modding. Ive gone against what people have suggested because I wanted to go my way, but I still value the opinions of others in regards to criticism.
So what would I value my pack at? Priceless. Because I made it for me.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cast aside your festive doylaks: dragon stuff is about to happen.
Multiplayer is lonely once you understand how it actually works.
What is the minimum amount of money you would accept?
It really depends on the style they want as well as the resolution. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm doing a 16x pack in a similar style to "Sanity" since that's what I'm most comfortable with.
Minecraft has 715 graphical assets in vanilla as of 1.4.7.
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume this hypothetical person doesn't want a font. Let's also assume that they don't want any animations since those are a pretty massive time-sink all things considered.
Each block takes me about 10 minutes, on average, to do. This accounts for things like wood being recolors and other shortcuts. Obviously if the person commissioning me wanted every block unique, it would take longer. For simplicity, though, let's assume that I'm allowed to take those shortcuts and thus each block takes me about 10 minutes.
For items, I'm pretty fast. I can do most items in about 2-5 minutes. There aren't many recolors possible with items (besides armor and tools), but let's say that each one is unique and takes me on average three minutes to do.
GUIs take me about a half-hour each. This assumes that I can share certain assets (like the hotbar) between different GUIs. If each one had to be 100% unique this would take me longer, but again let's assume that I can keep a consistent style by sharing some elements between them and as such it averages to a half-hour per.
Entities are a real wildcard. I can hammer out a sign or a chest in five minutes... but the Ender Dragon is an hour's job easily with the horse being about two hours or more. For simplicity's sake, let's assume it averages to about an half-hour per entity.
Paintings are another real wildcard. Depending on what this hypothetical person wants it could take hours or minutes to do a single painting. There are 26 paintings in total. To make this a conservative estimate, let's say that the person who hired me was a fan of minimalist artwork that I could do pretty quickly in vector, rasterize, and then copy over. Say, about four hours for the whole thing.
Particles are pretty easy, but there are a lot of them. Let's guess about an hour for this.
There are also a few other bits and bobs like the pack.png, so let's say all of those take me an hour.
Given these estimates and averages blocks will take about 58 hours worth of work, Items will take about 11 hours, GUI elements about 16 hours, entities around 44 hours, and paintings at least another four. Adding another hour for other stuff, this brings me to a conservative estimate of 134 Hours worth of work minimum for a resource pack.
For my professional graphics work, I generally charge about $20 per hour.
This brings my very conservative minimum estimate, which assumes a lot of cost saving stuff, to a whopping $2,680!
Kinda puts things in perspective when you realize that most of us give these things away for FREE!
As for your cost, yea, that's about right. If I were taking my time to ensure quality or working at a higher resolution I'd probably be right in there with you. I can hammer out most blocks in ten to fifteen minutes... but the quality isn't always perfect. The topic asked for a minimum estimate, not necessarily a realistic one.
Mobs are the most time consuming they can take days. Horses about a month lmao *joke*
Unless its a company/games team with a good budget you will be hard pushed to get a private commission to pay anywhere near the value of the work involved even on lower res work.
You would really just have to give most of it away for free and accept enough to be happy with. Had a number of offers for CH and none were remotely close to work done on an hourly rate for 5-8 hrs a day for a year so far, so no thank you.
If you are being asked about a commission Goodlyay look at what you would accept for your time not the actual value of the work/time involved as the two will be miles apart
Provided you're super-confident you can get the project done by that deadline, that is.
And yes, you can get what your work is worth. I've had people pay me for my time to make textures for their servers and whatnot, and they generally pay me my asking price. I've never had anyone pay me for a full pack, though, so in that case I'm inclined to agree with you.
This, unless it was possibly a commercial game project with a budget assigned to art assets with the understanding of how long this work can take.
$1,000,000
That's a high number, why you ask?
This assumes that a significant amount of time is spent on the pack, years. You won't be doing textures 1 time here, try redoing it 4 or 5 times just to get it right.
This counts time spent practicing and learning, and growing as an artist. Also, schooling, for like, a future.
This counts inspiration, such as music, movies, TV shows, games, books, and art, which you would legally purchase, to feel more "inspired" to create better art yourself.
This counts housing, food, drink, and everything else you need to live. Also counts as reimbursement for hardware used to create the pack.
Plus, I've heard (probably old now) that it takes about 1 million USD to raise a child to 18. I suppose a good pack will seem like the artist's child. Maybe it's a bit high of an estimate, but $50/hour would be pretty good, and assuming you work on it until it's perfect you'd probably reach that and still be working on it.
This isn't exactly true. We do give away our packs to use for free, but we make them for ourselves. So congratulations Mr. Smarty-Pants, you owe yourself about $3k if not more, but I think you'll work something out with yourself (or die trying). I doubt anyone has ever made a 100% complete pack for anyone else, especially considering people are usually like "he can u mke ma a tester packe with gunz plz i need it 4 my server kthankzbye". Even if someone did take up the endeavor they would likely not complete it unless they had the feeling that they wanted to complete it.
"I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly.
It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out.
I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from:
being forced to choose to stay outside.
My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead.
Every now and then you find yourself in a different place."
-George Carlin
But I know what you mean. Our packs are, first and foremost, gifts to ourselves. Very expensive gifts, by the look of it. The fact that other people also enjoy them is just a nice bonus and if we make a little of that "expense" back then all the better. Still, any time you enjoy "wasting" is still time well spent.
If you look at things that way, sleep is a super expensive luxury, as are all of your hobbies and recreative activities to a lesser degree.
But that only really makes sense if you assume you would be earning income if you weren't texturing. In reality most of us would be doing some other entertainment/relaxation activity instead of texturing. Quite a few of those possibilities actually cost money, so you can more validly look at texturing as a very affordable recreation.
Of course, if i was doing a complete pack for someone according to their specifications, i would charge a lot.
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This is where the question really comes from, isn't it? It's one thing if you're doing something because you want to. It's an entirely different story if you're doing it for someone else with the expectation of compensation.
Very much this. My personal pack ive been working on (well off and on) for the past ~3 years. Ive reworked textures 6, 7, maybe more times before i settled, but even that isnt set in stone. I recently redid my stone texture, and now i need to redo ores to fit the new stone. Ive reworked GUIs several times and now i have 4 variations. Not to mention mod texture adaptions. God, Industrial Craft GUIs are the bane of my existence...
My pack first looked like this when i started:
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b200/staplehead78/Minecraft/javaw2010-11-1402-37-46-45.jpg
Now it looks like this. It has been pure evolution and i think really shows my skills have indeed improved.
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b200/staplehead78/javaw2013-02-2311-46-51-25_zps72b7f85c.png
Indeed, we start making packs because we are making something WE want, first and foremost. At least that is what I hope people start with. I've only released my pack because i want to share what I've created. I don't even use Adfly or any sort of donation system because I personally find that against the spirit of modding. Ive gone against what people have suggested because I wanted to go my way, but I still value the opinions of others in regards to criticism.
So what would I value my pack at? Priceless. Because I made it for me.
Cast aside your festive doylaks: dragon stuff is about to happen.
Multiplayer is lonely once you understand how it actually works.
Alpha 1.0.4