State of the Nolani

Gosh... Now I want to open a chibi thread... :\

Chibis sell well, of course, and as long as Guru condones trading art for profit, I would think that profit takes precedence over anything else.

For example, I hate doing GW themed art. But I do it to fund my goals in game. If there wasn't profit to be made I wouldn't really think of doing GW art simply for the community.

I have plenty of ideas for non GW art, I just cant find anyone willing to do them without paying out the ass for it. =/ That's what bugs me the most. =/ (Yeah... ignore me kinda lol)

I suspect part of the appeal of the Chibi is that they tend to be cheap, you can get a chibi done for a little bit of farming. Forking out XXecto is beyond a lot of players despite the belief that every player has had to buy a new storage panel for their ecto stacks.

I dunno, I've seen chibis go for xxEctos. I will try to refrain from commenting on that tho :P

I think the real appeal of chibis is you don't have to wait xxmonths for one. <guilty of that>

Personally I dont care how long I have to wait for good art, as long as they dont forget about me. lol

I'm sure if you get in contact with any artist on Nolani that you'll be pleasantly surprised. You shouldn't ever consider yourself ineligible to take commissions since the demand is just so damn high.

All this bullcrap started only because 1 person decided to be whiney and complain first about nolani and then that she was leaving the forum. Okay fine your leaving, then leave and post it in your own thread but do not make a new thread just to moan about what the forum has gone if you cannot handle the load anymore and rather play a new game or whatever.

Now we are having a discussion about what has come to Nolani, just because of this?

I think Nolani is just fine though :x

I think Nolani has pretty childish issues, atm...
quite apart from the fact that everybody either seems to be taking the piss or is complaining about something.

Im going to agree with you there Morag..

Well I intended the discussion to better understand the current situation of commissions in Nolani, not to baw over the absence of someone [who will be missed].

For example, there are some people like Valeria who've never been able to get their commission done. There are also people like Hailfall that have had many commissions done. Sometimes I get the urge to play robin hood but that can piss off people like Hailfall who are valuable patrons D:

I cant help it that i have a lot of money but ntohign to spend it on since i dont care about any weapons, besides the ones i already have and already have almost all armors in the game.

Espadon if you want to play Robin Hood then go ahead, it wont piss me off.. besides i do not have a commission running with you even though i had been wanting that but oh well.

I wasn't stating my case as an example, but rather looking at Araiia's refusal earlier to do work for chronic art collectors as the scenario. Sorry for the bad wording.

No personal attacks anywhere.

As both an artist and a buyer (something that is, apparently, fairly rare here, with the notable exception of Morag D), I feel sort of stuck in the middle. As a buyer, I want cheap art. But as an artist, I understand how much effort goes into the artwork. So I price my art at what I think it's worth, which is not much. I'm not one of the best artists here, and I know that; I try to reflect it in my prices. But at those prices, I can't afford anyone else's stuff. I just can't earn enough to buy anything. To date I've gotten my hands on ONE commission, plus a very lovely spontanous freebie sketch. Whenever someone shows up in a price range I can afford I put up something, but they seem to have a nasty trend of burning out about 5 pieces in.

There are a couple of trends I'm not too happy with, namely chibis and auctions. Chibis... I don't know. I just feel like they're not so difficult to draw, and if I really wanted one I could make it myself, in a style I actually liked. Auctions... once again, the price range is so high it caters to only the great Patrons like YSJ and Hailfall (not that I've got anything against you guys; I just wish I had pockets that deep). I'd really love to get a picture off one of those, but I haven't got hundreds of ectos to bid - all I've got is the 50k in my account, and that's reserved to pay Espadon when my commish gets done someday.

What ends up happening is that trying to find a commish is nigh impossible if you don't have an overflowing Xunlai. Either the artists have affordable prices and wait lists so long you KNOW they'll go on hiatus (I would too) and you won't see it completed for several months, or they're charging large amounts of money, or they're doing it auction-style. If you're like me, and you haven't been playing the game since forever, and you can't farm worth a darn - in short, if your only cash is what you get from playing the game, doing minimal farms, and doing a commish here and there, and you're still trying to fund your characters at the same time - you're screwed. I'd do art trades, but fewer people seem to be into those, and I'd feel like trading my art for theirs is ripping them off.

I do have to say, after all that negativity, that I'm glad that contests are back in style. I wish a few had been in summer, as many people are in school now and have not time, but I'm happy to compete. Contests, I find, are beneficial, because they give someone who may not be fabulously wealthy (okay, 200+k is still tons more than I've ever had at once, but its still not like what you see in the auctions) a chance to get multiple pictures of their characters done by resident artists, and it gives some artists a shot at making a lot more than usual for a single piece if they win. If I manage to nab a couple wins, I'll probably turn the money back out into another contest, now that I've gotten most of the armor I want. So contests are good.

But overall I'm a bit unhappy with the way this is going; it feels like art is becoming a privilege of the uppercrust and those of us who aren't the famous Patrons can barely get anything. Out of the past 2 pages of forum, there are 11 commission threads. Several are under 50k for a minimal sketch and even in a few cases a full work, but most of those are very slow-moving due to waitlists or the artist's time constraints. Of the ones I see most commonly updating, the MINIMUM non-chibi price is 30k for a half-body partial nude. Consider: even Makani (yeah okay she's my hero, shushup) charged only 45k per piece for one of her works; nowadays, artists of a similar caliber seem to be charging over 75k or expecting large tips. The trend seems to be to do one of three things: 1) Hold an auction 2) Do art for tips, which appear to range toward the hundreds of k end of the scale (so to ask for a commish when one knows one hasn't that kind of money feels like insulting the artist) or 3) Keep comparatively low prices, but note that large bribes (once again, in the hundreds of k range usually) will... scooch one's commish to the top of the queue. I know the artists here are really fabulous, and they deserve to be paid what their art is worth, but it also leaves middle-class players stuck with the choice of waiting months for art, blowing all their cash on one fantastic piece, or not getting art at all.

ok ok crucify me for starting the auction thingy - I already declared that that got out of hand. for everything else.. it's called development. people move on. I don't do regular commissions because I don't feel like putting myself under a lot of pressure for a few loppy plat. call it elitist. but in days when people have lots of money and nothing left to spend it on, I call it capitalist market self-regulation. commissions in nolani come in waves - for months there is NOTHING and then suddenly a few threads pop up and the whole thing becomes huge; until people lose interest again. prices rise and fall in accordance with what people are prepared to pay for art. but don't blame the artists for taking advantage of that