Undervaluing our work for the Art Market

#1

This is important from the standpoint of confronting the back and forth discussion about fairness in pay in the studio environment. Artists sell their artwork into the Art Market to establish themselves as independent artists and also to earn additional income or because they prefer to be artist entrepreneurs. However, if we can only figuratively earn pennies in the Art Market it basically means that studios or whomever can pay us nickels while pocketing 90% of the revenue we put the sweat equity into to create because alternate options/careers for us is kind of bleak.

If your art for the art market is priced roughly at $60, to make a “good salary” you would have to sell roughly 1,250 prints a year every year to support that. This is unrealistic for most people. If you’re only selling 100 prints per year or a lot less at those low values in the Art Market studios know that they only have to worry about other studios within their sphere of influence to compete with and if they get together and decide to underpay everybody we’re all screwed. Which, more or less, has already happened.

While it appears that pay has gone up somewhat, I think, I can see the cycle repeating itself if we ever get back to the number of studios/VFX houses there were say 10-12 years ago because as artists we’re still in the same weak position.

Right now, I feel that if you’re selling decently large canvas prints, even “unlimited” canvas print editions for .30 or less per square inch (which will be limited as in you’ll stop making them available if they’ve made little to money after a period of time) you’re doing a disservice to yourself and to the industry. Asking for so little money basically is telling the world your work and time is worthless.

Obviously, my opinion is irrelevant if most artists decide they’re just going to sell their art for a $.05 or whatever low figure per square inch anyway, but that’s kind of the point: Regardless of whether you or I agree the lowest price offered by many is going to dictate the value of “digital art” for everyone in the general Art Market to an extent. Do you guys really think your work in the Art market is only worth roughly $.30 a square inch?

Maybe everyone is happy and I shouldn’t bring it up, but it’s something I noticed again recently on another website that’s also now selling artist prints and it really rubbed me the wrong way.

#2

While we can certainly argue about whether studios pay pretty well or not, there is no relevance to how much artists sell their independent artwork. No studio gives a damn about how much you are earning on the side or if you make enough to leave.

We all love to think that we are special enough studios will hirt without us, but the reality is they make do even when the best of the best leave. You even have situations where a studio gets a project because of amazing work they did on a previous movie they did, possibly even a sequel, and yet every artist involved on the first project isn’t around for the second project.

If you can make enough yourself that you can leave the studios, that great but your departure isn’t
going to make them bat an eyelid even if artist did it in droves

#3

A lot of false equivalencies in the OP here.

First off - in terms of “Fine Art” … if you are calculating your rates based on “cost-per-square-inch” as the OP suggests … you’re already wrong. Construction materials are priced by size/quantity. Fine Art? No.

Second, there is only ONE correlation between “fine art” and what you can make at a games or film studio - “your art is worth what the market will pay”. I’ve seen blank canvas sell for thousands, while a piece of 3d character art that was masterfully crafted made its creator less than $25/hour, and while I’d LOVE for both artists to be rich, the realtiy of it is, you are worth the current market price for your work. Period, and with no real connection between fine art and what “we” as CG professionals do.

The “Fine Artist” has the advantage of marketing. They are a “one-person team” and can select a demographic and market to said demo in whatever way they wish. They have the advantage of being able to pick a “blue water” strategy and can be as “unique” as needed in order to sell.

The “CG” artist is one of thousands at this point, and as supply goes up, demand goes down. I don’t work for a AAA studio, and even I see hundreds of applications per job posting. There’s an enormous supply of CG artists, and a smaller demand. So they make less. That’s the reality. That being said, most of the CG folks I know, make a decent living, and are fairly “comfortable”. Save your money, and be VERY GOOD at what you do. That’s the real secret …

It’s possible the OP isn’t experienced enough at either “Fine Art” or “CG” to really have a solid grasp of rates/salary, etc.

#4

Your start point is off-base and thus everything after that ends up being a huge tangent away from anything I actually posted.

What I was expressing pretty specifically laid out a reality where our skill, collectively as artists/designers, is leveraged in two opposing mediums simultaneously to raise the value of digital art as a whole rather than to simply accept whatever is offered.

There’s a small percentage of studios that pay well and then there’s a drop-off after that with a lot of artists basically cramming themselves through a narrow passage way to try to get to these top studios. Of course I know this is how it’s always been, but this is also how we got to the place where pay at a lot of studios that are in the best position to pay well pay well below what we should have expected for the level of skill and experience plus time and money many of us invested in education/training.

A lot of artists from the VFX/CG sector sell their printed digital work for pennies on the dollar into the art market based on the “Work is Cheap” model that’s been given from the VFX/animation industry and they’re just using it as a way to attempt to compensate for low salaries and devaluing digital art in the process.

There are actually other artists that are arguably less skilled, have invested less time and money into their training/education but operate exclusively in the fine art market as mixed media artists with digital art as a foundation that add more social context, charge more and get dramatically more money for their art then many of us would get from prints/mixed media prints purely based on the fact that the time of the gatekeepers in the art world is over in print where that’s not the case in animation VFX. These artists just think differently and if more of us acquired a bit more of that thinking eventually the standards would get better in VFX/gaming/animation and across the board.

Beyond that just as independent artists with independent visions a lot of us would likely be better off in the long run to just view print art/Mixed Media Art for the art market as a separate but equal art endeavor if only to move the process forward of empowering ourselves and more artists.

#5

Taking a step back and looking at the big picture reveals that CG alone is not a lot different then a new car that costs a lot, but then only depreciates in value once driven off the lot. In order to gain long term leverage it only makes sense to branch out into other art fields where the product generally only appreciates or grows in value over time and adopt some the best practices from those fields incorporating it into what we do.

Taking this kind of approach may eventually mean in negotiations with studios at some point in the future people who designed or animate famous characters in movies would have the right to create art using those characters, environments, costumes etc. legitimately for the art market without having to license work we created, which wouldn’t be all that different from comic book artists getting their drawn pages back to sell into the art market…a right that was hard fought for by comics legends like Jack Kirby and his supporters.

#6

I think you need some economics/statistics professional to argue or backup your point.
You really can’t even complain or comment on art pricing unless you really understand how the market of economics works.

I will say one thing though. The world is FULL of artists that can’t sell their work.
It’s practically worthless. So then why should digital artists feel bad about charging $.50 for a print? some money is better than nothing.

You can’t control how artists pricing will affect other artists. That is more up to the consumer.
Also art is not a group experience.
It’s not the type of thing you can make a “global artists union” for.
And if you did, you would be taking away some of the “specialness” artwork has.

Basically your mindset is a “franchise” mindset.
Would you really be ok with having mcdonalds style art just so that people can get good pay?

#7

Not at all, especially not in the United States where unionization has carved, in stone, more fair working standards for employees operating in industry sectors with and without any unions at all for multiple DECADES. In this situation I’m not even suggesting anything like formal unionization in the animation/VFX industry only a beneficial voluntary collective bargaining standard with customers in a semi-related field. This is a pattern that’s been successfully adopted by artists in a variety of different mediums. Check out the diversity of project types by your favorite artist’s, directors, actors.

If you think that agency representation, in some of these cases, doesn’t essentially implement the kinds of suggestions regardless of medium I made across all the various mediums to to get the most value for their artists to guard against devaluing the artists’ work you’re naive. Also, if you think basically these customer techniques in business to business transactions only work for people that apparently have magic pixie dust sprinkled on them because their called celebrities you’re also naive.

The reality is that group pricing strategies coupled with enough collector/client/audience/business partner exposure to find core audiences that will support the pricing model have always been effective.

What you’re supportive of is actually a McDonald’s/race to the bottom model without even realizing it.

It also sounds like you may have a very narrow view and possibly uninformed/misinformed perspective on creatives within market economics.

One other thing I have to stress here as well is the fact if you’re a technician and not an artist:

As in you’re incapable of or disinterested in developing your own concepts/content that easily and obviously fit into the category of “Physical Representation of the Emotional” none of what I’ve posted even remotely applies to you. The point is if someone else developed a concept that you just executed or, more or less, copied I can see where you might immediately say it’s only worth $.50, but if you spent equal or more time developing the concept as executing it you’re not going to be quick to say it’s virtually worthless. In fact if you put the time into the conceptualization and the execution you will think about and would be correct to pursue the artist’s path of valuing your work with a proper price and taking the time to find the collectors that are happy to have your work at the price you set rather then the fast food method of “just pricing it to move.”

#8

Here’s another person describing fact that too many artists devalue their work making it bad for everyone. (Mixed Media can cetainly be categorized as Fine Art)

#9

what you all say is very true. I actually don’t disagree.
I suppose my real point, is that the nature of art is a sort of enigmatic beauty.

Putting safety controls on it, diminishes the “specialness” of some works.

But as a whole, you are right. 99% of artists out there don’t need their work to be special in an enigmatic sort of way.
But I would say that definitely the highest levels of fine art art like that.

This is also why the highest paid artist get paid insane amounts of money. This is because the buyers don’t really understand the works. They buy it because it is a trend and they have absurd amounts of disposable wealth.

P.S. i’m not saying this is a good thing. I think it is ridiculously stupid. BUT, I do think that is the world of art in the world today.

#10

I don’t necessarily believe everyone or even most people that buy art are completely ignorant about what it means, art is subjective and that’s really my point. You’ll never really understand this deeply until you see it with your own eyes, like have a mixed media piece of artwork or a sculpture that you’ve had for sale for months or maybe even years, have carried it to multiple art festivals and no one is buying.

Then after all that time some woman you don’t know is uncontrollably sobbing in front of your artwork while your packing things up for the day, you make the sale and you have absolutely no idea what just happened.

The problem is most artists that primarily work digitally never have the confidence to give their work the time to be seen by the person it actually connects with sometimes in ways that are deeper and more emotional than your own connection to the work to allow the sale/adoption to happen.

Instead a lot of artists offer a limited selection of work, much of it isn’t really saying anything, they give it limited visibility for a short period of time and then decide that it’s worthless in the art market. Digital artists en masse go through this, sell their art for pennies and devalue not only their own art but all digital artists work.