For your.. rpg character icon? Is that like a huge market or something?
No clue. Just listing what my options are if I want artwork for something. It's either steal it online, commission it, use AI... or learn to draw myself. Of those, AI is the easiest.
Art is either expensive, stolen, mass-produced, or AI.
If you want custom original work cheap, it needs to be AI. AI is the only thing able to make novel concepts out of existing well-known ideas anywhere near affordable: in example, "Iron Man drawn in the Disgaea anime art style doing Naruto hand-jutsus while in a temple made of bones" has never, EVER been made by anyone, it is a never-having-occurred-before novel idea of existing ideas. It's a couple minutes work for an AI, or probably a $100 commission from an artist if you want color.
If your idea already exists in its current form entirely, then AI is bad at it compared to cheap labor who can steal it, trace it, or mass-produce it. "Draw Iron Man in an action pose, no background", in example. You'd be fighting the AI the entire way wanting to make the image more complex, but a basic artist could easily find a comic, trace the image, steal and claim credit, and make a small paycheck.
If your idea already exists in its current form entirely, then AI is bad at it compared to cheap labor who can steal it, trace it, or mass-produce it. "Draw Iron Man in an action pose, no background", in example. You'd be fighting the AI the entire way wanting to make the image more complex, but a basic artist could easily find a comic, trace the image, steal and claim credit, and make a small paycheck.
Yep. AI is useful in this case as well, just to indicate certain features you'd like to the artist.
Good art is not cheap at all when factoring in opportunity cost of time. Not to mention if you wanted something decent, you're going to be paying a decent sticker price as well.
Before AI, I saw people selling $30-50 avatar commissions that should've been worth $10. Full portraits for mediocre artists were running into $80-120 range, plus surcharges for novel elements. Then you have to find someone whose art you can put up with, get in line for a slot, which may take weeks, communicate everything to the artist (not easy!), deal with delays and sensitive communication etiquette, and go back and forth for revisions - IF they're responsible.
In the end, after several weeks, you will hopefully get a picture you like. These are mediocre artists, though, so you won't get a picture you love. For that you have to shell out $$$, and I honestly don't know how you get a slot without being a mobile game developer.
There are exceptions, and I would shell out the cash for any art I would consider important. But for a portrait for D&D? Lol.
More like assumptions than estimates. I've never commissioned anything, all I know about that kind of thing is when Arch muses on the subject of art assets for videos and thumbnails.
No clue. Just listing what my options are if I want artwork for something. It's either steal it online, commission it, use AI... or learn to draw myself. Of those, AI is the easiest.
Art is cheap. I think your estimate was way off.
Art is either expensive, stolen, mass-produced, or AI.
If you want custom original work cheap, it needs to be AI. AI is the only thing able to make novel concepts out of existing well-known ideas anywhere near affordable: in example, "Iron Man drawn in the Disgaea anime art style doing Naruto hand-jutsus while in a temple made of bones" has never, EVER been made by anyone, it is a never-having-occurred-before novel idea of existing ideas. It's a couple minutes work for an AI, or probably a $100 commission from an artist if you want color.
If your idea already exists in its current form entirely, then AI is bad at it compared to cheap labor who can steal it, trace it, or mass-produce it. "Draw Iron Man in an action pose, no background", in example. You'd be fighting the AI the entire way wanting to make the image more complex, but a basic artist could easily find a comic, trace the image, steal and claim credit, and make a small paycheck.
Yep. AI is useful in this case as well, just to indicate certain features you'd like to the artist.
Good art is not cheap at all when factoring in opportunity cost of time. Not to mention if you wanted something decent, you're going to be paying a decent sticker price as well.
Before AI, I saw people selling $30-50 avatar commissions that should've been worth $10. Full portraits for mediocre artists were running into $80-120 range, plus surcharges for novel elements. Then you have to find someone whose art you can put up with, get in line for a slot, which may take weeks, communicate everything to the artist (not easy!), deal with delays and sensitive communication etiquette, and go back and forth for revisions - IF they're responsible.
In the end, after several weeks, you will hopefully get a picture you like. These are mediocre artists, though, so you won't get a picture you love. For that you have to shell out $$$, and I honestly don't know how you get a slot without being a mobile game developer.
There are exceptions, and I would shell out the cash for any art I would consider important. But for a portrait for D&D? Lol.
More like assumptions than estimates. I've never commissioned anything, all I know about that kind of thing is when Arch muses on the subject of art assets for videos and thumbnails.