I want some input before I reopen my avatar shop

[Pix3M 607]

A while ago, I got myself into a niche where people end up throwing money at me because I can make avatars, mainly really small 50x50 ones for deviantART. As I started getting more attention, some people have been asking larger and larger works as people were becoming interested in larger avatars used in other places... places like these forums.

 

Here's a problem though. With regular digital painting, if you're working with a larger canvas, you can use a bigger brush to cover the same area. Pixel art works differently. A larger canvas means more pixels, and a pixel artist does not simply use a bigger 'brush' to cover more area, otherwise it's trying to jog with the help of a car. At some point, we have to use pencil tool that only works with single pixels at a time for the sake of precision and refining our works, (otherwise we'll be suck with messy-looking oekaki's that sit on a fine line between digital painting and pixel art.)

 

I've posted my works around, but if you guys don't know me (I'm not terribly active here so bear with me), this is a piece of pixel art that I can make:

 

 

It is 100x100 pixels big. That totals up to 10,000 pixels in that image.

 

These forums, however, use avatars as large as 150x150. That totals up to 22,500 pixels, which is more than double the size of the above attached image. I can expect people to want an avatar that large. Problem is, I find pieces that large for a simple portrait to be daunting.

 

What I end up doing is scaling down that 100x100 image to a 75x75 and manually clean up every mistake the computer makes as it has no spatial reasoning to scale pixel art very well.

 

 

Then I quadruple the size by scaling it by a factor of 2.

 

 

I pretty much cheesed my way to making a 150x150 icon, but problem is that I unavoidably end up with an old-skool look where the original size has a much finer resolution, an aesthetic goal of plenty of a good number of pixel artists.

 

Opinions, especially from people who might (or might not) want to commission me to make a forum-sized portrait of their OC? I want to know if it's gonna be worth going the extra mile to potentially go larger scale instead of scaling up as a cheap shortcut, or if people are going to be fine with a 100x100 avatar.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Pix3M

[Dragonshy 2,305]

I have always been a fan of your artwork, unfortunately I don't have any money. However, I would suggest to doing both, one being more pricey than the other. I like the 150x150 personally.

[Pix3M 607]

No money? I've thought about the people that I know will want something from me but won't have the means to bring the sort of compensation that I want. I'm thinking of holding some silly contest and offer a free request as a prize, and I'd feel good enough about it.

[Killian Jones 2,653]

You know, for all the faults you have mentioned with the scaling. It actually works. The old retro look to the avatar does look good. It makes the avatars more unique.

 

Even if you feel like it doesn't look as good, it has a kind of retro vibe which works. Like playing games back on my NES in the day, which is strange as i never played a NES ever.

[Pix3M 607]

I have always been a fan of your artwork, unfortunately I don't have any money. However, I would suggest to doing both, one being more pricey than the other. I like the 150x150 personally.

 

No money? I've thought about the people that I know will want something from me but won't have the means to bring the sort of compensation that I want. I'm thinking of holding some silly contest and offer a free request as a prize, and I'd feel good enough about it.

 

EDIT: gaaah, this site is being pretty screwy with me lately.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Pix3M

[Bohtty 1,775]

If it's really such a pain to make them larger then just charge more money. If it's too much for people than they wont pay it and you wont have to make it. You could offer the scaling that you consider half-assed for cheaper than one you made specifically for the larger size so that people can choose whether or not they like the style/don't want to pay the extra money. See, everyone benefits.

 

Also, I like your scaled avatar.

[Pix3M 607]

If it's really such a pain to make them larger then just charge more money. If it's too much for people than they wont pay it and you wont have to make it. You could offer the scaling that you consider half-assed for cheaper than one you made specifically for the larger size so that people can choose whether or not they like the style/don't want to pay the extra money. See, everyone benefits.

 

Also, I like your scaled avatar.

 

I've read some tip on commissions to keep the pricing system as simple as possible though, and that adds more complexity to things. @_@ I once had a lolhater who thought I offered commissions for 50 cents and tried making fun of me for that LOLOL, and somebody once tried paying for a commission she thought was only 40 points. Eh.

Edited August 2, 2012 by Pix3M

[Bohtty 1,775]

I've read some tip on commissions to keep the pricing system as simple as possible though, and that adds more complexity to things. @_@ I once had a lolhater who thought I offered commissions for 50 cents and tried making fun of me for that LOLOL, and somebody once tried paying for a commission she thought was only 40 points. Eh.

 

Just make it very large and clear. You aren't making to complex. You aren't making the customer calculate anything (unless they want multiples). Just offer a default size for x amount then a quick enlarge for x amount and then a detailed enlarge for x amount. Nothing to get confused about there if you make it clear. As long as your clear there shouldn't be any sort of confusion.