How and how much do you pay to your artists?

Procrastinator,

I know there's a "unfair" share here. It's personal matter only for this first project and only with her because i try to help her impulse her career with a project that, as you said, she can show in her portfolio.

In this, and only this, first project i play a little like santa. So i can keep this 50/50 and also pay a reasonable amout of money for her work. Just to make it as some sort of safety net if anything goes wrong at relase times.

My question is how much is good enough to pay for an artist work and what methods of payment worked better for all of you. But forget the end shares in the equation.

If this is more of a token gesture, then I would keep it simple.

Approach her with the amount of work you will need to finish the game,

decide how many hours work it will take for 100% of all the artwork required to be completed, add this up at $25.00 an hour, for the total to be payed...

Ask yourself is that reasonable value...

If so, pay in segments on work completed ie full tileset 30%,full characters and animations 50% ,full menus and GUI 10%...that way you will only pay when you receive and the motivation is still there for her to complete.

Stick to it and don't get soft, there is nothing like people to mess up your day... <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Pixel Perfick,

I really liked your method there. I will take it as a reference for this and also future projects. I don't know why i cannot solve this kind of problems. In others bussiness i always had my tricks and solutions to "manage" payments. I guess it's because this line of work is new and a partner of two with my added "protection" of interest throws conventional methods out the window.

I consider myself satisfied with all your help people! As i said before, keep showing more of this for anybody else in my same position.

Regards and thanks to all of you! ;)

Yeah nothing wrong with helping a friend out. As has been mentioned, don't devalue your own work in the process.

Pixel perfick's suggestion is a decent one. Just don't overpay!

Good luck though. Hope it makes you a vast amount of money ;)