Charging for Tilesets

[CharRedBaron]

well 25-30 bucks a sprite is certainly in my range for the money the team has. As for the tilesets I normally buy things from the shop, or I take tilesets that are free to use and follow the term of use.

The tileset I wanted made was FF6-like (not a rip, I understand copyright laws ) in style, but you see I wanted a full set (A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, B, C, D, E) and if it costs me thousands of dollars then I cannot pay that.

 

[Shaz]

I have not read through all of this ... I'll take some time later to do that.


$30 an hour is a very reasonable price. I get just a little bit more than that (AU$) programming, and I've got 20+ years of experience.


I'm curious about the 12-15 hours to create a tileset. I just can't see that happening, and I've looked at her DA work and seen the amount of detail. How can she create a tileset with that amount of detail in 12-15 hours? I doubt any of the artists here could do that, and they're all pretty darn good!


So my question is "what is a tileset"? How many tiles are we talking? Are there any autotiles - animated OR otherwise? She would have to be amazing to create a full tileset for even a single map (just one style of house and roof plus all the extras) in that amount of time.


Re no experience with Ace ... they sure look like they'd work. Might be worth checking out the engine that she makes tiles for and seeing what the tile specifications are, and how much they differ. Even ground, groundcover, buildings and extras (esp if there's animated water) for a single town would be worth what she's charging. Just multiply that by however many areas you want to have a different appearance. And if you can't afford everything, see if she can make "special" things - just buildings and a few extras - in a style that will match Ace's, so you can use them both for a less expensive option that still gives your game individuality.


@Zoltor, that artist you linked to did the title page for the second Aveyond game. I didn't see any pixel art there though (not that I looked too far).

 

[Sharm]

Huh?  Did I miss something?  I didn't see where Ruby indicated who the artist was or any links or anything.

Ace is pretty unusual in the way it handles autotiles.  It's not hard to learn but it takes some time and can be a little difficult to understand because of the whole partial tiles thing.  If she's experienced in working within an engine that has predefined resource standards like Ace does that would help a whole lot.  Really, it's all the little quirks about the resource standards that make it difficult, like understanding the layering and why a piece in one position changes how other tiles autotile and so on.  I still haven't figured out how counter tiles are supposed to work.

 

[Celianna]

@Sharm: Ruby mentioned the artist in her status update, which spawned this thread. Who seemed to be a man, not a woman


@Ruby: I moved the thread since it was about a commercial discussion (commissioning a tileset), your game doesn't need to be commercial for this (in fact it has nothing to do with your thread).

 

[whitesphere]

@Ruby

It does sound like getting custom tilesets is a very costly purchase.  I agree that, if someone is intending on making a huge commercial game, it is probably worth commissioning custom tilesets.  But if they are making that type of game, I'm sure they have probably at least $30,000 budgeted for resources, from music to artwork.

Take your favorite professional RPG and look at the end credits.  Let's say each artist gets paid $30/hour.  Now, let's further say each music or graphic artist works full time on just that one game, and they worked on the game for 6 months. That's $31,200 per artist for their time.  

So I think $1,000 is probably way too low for the custom tileset.  

It sounds like the artist has never made VX Ace tiles before, and has no idea how long it takes to create them.

Personally, I'm very grateful for the Resource Packs, since I'm not making any commercial games and their quality is far, far better than I could ever hope to draw on my own (Stick figures anyone?).  But, then again, we all have our own unique talents.

If you really want custom artwork, what I'd recommend is just commission a few key pieces, like a few key non-autotiles in the B-E tileset, and perhaps some custom player character sprites.  If you use those strategically, they can add a nifty custom look to your RPG without breaking the bank.

 

[Sharm]

Thanks Celi.  I think Ruby referred to him as she which is why I did it.  So I looked him up, and yes, I'm familiar with his work.  $30 an hour seems fair to me for that quality.  I think he might be able to mimic the Pixel Myth style, you should see if he's willing to try.  That way you'll still have useable no matter where in the process the money or motivation runs out.  I still think he's underestimating his time investment but I also think he's worth testing out.  If I were you I'd go for it.