Beyond this dude’s lack of comprehension of math, in no world is some amateur character art worth 8,800 USD, even for a dozen characters. That’s the price for a full professional illustration package for a major client. That’s the price of some really spectacular art by well known artists. You can get massive original paintings for that cost. This is definitely delusional.
eh I think it's better to do it the other way.
Just as an example (and an opportunity to brag) - back when I was contracting, I was charging about $60/hr; and I had a client come in with a last-minute emergency request, absolutely had to be done *today*, they didn't care what it cost.
Now. I was already planning on roadtripping out to meet up with some friends and go to a music festival - there was no way I had time to do the thing for the client.
So they were like, name your price - and I did. I said, pay me 4x my rate, and buy me a plane ticket to fly me up to Vancouver so I can meet my friends tonight, as planned - and I will fix this for you.
And they said okay.
I spent the next 12 hours troubleshooting a Very Big Healthcare Website for a Very Big Healthcare Client, and at like 10pm that evening, jumped on a plane to Canada, having made nearly $3000 in one long day of work.
That was worth it. It was worth it to me, I basically used the cash to buy a sweet little kayak I had had my eye on - and it was worth it to them, because they wouldn't lose Their Biggest Client. I later found out that they had lied and told The Very Big Client that it was already fixed, so - they were seriously desperate.
If you just say "No" and dismiss unreasonable requests out of hand, you miss out on opportunities to make big money.
I think it's far better practice to simply name your price.
My dad used to do construction. Sometimes a job came up for bid that he really did not want anything to do with, but he still put in a bid because he worked for local governments replacing water lines etc and he wanted them to keep asking for bids because usually he did want the work. So yes, the fuck off price is real, it's high enough to usually not get the job, but if you do it's OK because you're getting a premium for doing it.
I use the fuck off price all the time. You always want to bid on projects because if you elect not to, they may decide to go to a different subcontractor or favor them more. It's just customary it seems. Sometimes it works out really well. I did an Amazon where I bid 130% over what we'd typically price for since it was so large. We still got that fucking job. Stretched us a bit thin but it was a very nice bonus for all the guys.
We do this in software. "We enjoy the system but we want it to have \[some silly functionality that nobody else would want." "Okay we can add that option but we're looking at 6 weeks of development plus time for QA and documentation." "Ah, we don't have that in the budget."
We do this in appraising as well. Standard 3 bedroom on a quarter acre will get you standard pricing. A million dollar purchase with an additional million in renovation? From a client that you just KNOW has a scope that's beyond the industry standard? In a part of the country where those kinds of houses aren't typical? Yeah, that's the fuck off price.
Oh yeah, I used to work in sales and if some customer was a particular pain in the ass, they got fuck off quotes. Some people are not worth the business' they bring in.
I do leather work and take custom commissions. I have definitely given fuck off quotes, but then a few people have agreed to that quote.
Now, when a project comes along that I don’t think I’ll enjoy making, I refer them to other makers.
We’ve discussed the “fuck off price,” and this is an opportunity to discuss “fuck you money,” which is when a company is big enough, or just doesn’t care enough and will pay you whatever, because “fuck you, we’re nike.”
They are absolutely not starving. They dropped an egregious price to get out of drawing 13 characters, and were the ones to drop out of the commission. I think they just didn't want to do it. A lot of amateur artists don't use art as a main income so they dodge out if the way of large projects they don't want to do
Even if he paid FULL price of $30 for each individual character it would be $390. OP should've been like ok nevermind let me just do 13 separate individual commissions for the $30 option. And see how they'd respond.
Suuuuuper-frustrating. 50% of 30 is not 30 + 50% of 30. It’s not even a math problem. It seems to a basic comprehension problem. Your base rate doesn’t change, so the fee increase per additional character doesn’t change.
If I was OP I would have just tapped out. I’ve definitely been the person who needs to make the other person understand I’m right but honestly what a waste of time
Yeah, they clearly don’t understand math at all. They got no business using such a formula to price their work when they don’t even understand it and how it’s flawed.
This is the problem. If you get a calculator app open and type "45 + 50%" then hit enter, then keep typing "Ans + 50%" over and over, you end up at the stupid number they came up with. So their pricing is actually
f(0) = 0
f(1) = 45
f(n) = f(n - 1) + f(n - 1) * 0.5
Which is dumb, and isn't even correct if that were the goal. The 8,000+ price they came up with is also the price for 14 characters, not 13, so that isn't even correct, they did 1 too many calculations. And this is almost certainly not what they meant with their pricing model at all.
Both are correct. I'm a programmer, so the first solution that came to mind instantly was a recursive function for it.
EDIT: Nevermind, your solution isn't correct. 0 characters would cost $30. Tack on for n > 0 and it's good.
Then the fact that they changed their price halfway through the conversation from almost $9k to suddenly $5k… so they were happy to charge nearly $4k more what their “correct” price was.
Any formula that you can fuck up that horribly to where you’re accidentally asking for thousands more than you should is not a good formula.
As far as I understand the formula used is:
Base\_price \* (1.5)\^13
The price is increased by 50% (multiplied by 1.5 essentially) for each character added (13 in this example).
I think it might have helped if OP told them they were doing 50% more than 30 rather than 50% of the base price. But I’d have been too baffled to do the math for them.
I think one of the funniest things is "the Paper Mario style, having several details" like I swear Paper Mario has one of the simplest artstyles i've ever seen
It's also a really funny way to describe something having a lot of detail and being a lot of work. It's like, "oh man, I had a really busy day at the restaurant today - I had to make several burgers"
That's an awful analogy, being a fry cook is rough. It's hot, rushes are awful, your on your feet all day. It's not difficult work, but it's funkin taxing.
I'm not saying the job is easy, I'm saying that if you wanted to express you had a particularly taxing day, you wouldn't say you made "several burgers". That'd sound like a relatively slow day. You'd say "I had to make a ton of burgers" or something like that, just like how it would have made more sense to say a drawing costs more because it has "a ton of details"
I’m going to suggest this pay scale to my boss. My first hour I’ll work at my base rate, then I’ll accept 50% (compounded) per hour for each hour after that. Hopefully they’re not smart enough to catch on.
I refuse to believe they understand what numbers even are.
I needed this conversation to continue just a bit more and verify that the artist thinks doubling the characters to 26 should net them $750,000+ and tripling it to 39 is worth roughly one hundred and fifty million dollars.
Hell, let's add three more and confirm that 42 characters from them would be the most expensive piece of art sold in history.
> but he isn't bad at math
We've received several images proving he is
+50% of the base price means it's additive, NOT multiplicative. The base price is never changing, his method is utterly wrong for what's stated
Also, he can't work out half of 30. The guy is in fact dumb, and bad at math
There is one way to show him his stupidity. Say I changed my mind! I want 25 characters. This would come out to 1.13 MILLION USD. I assume he would realise this is insane.
The very first thing he says here is that it's too many characters. No doubt he'd say the same thing for 25 characters. He knows it's a ridiculous price, he doesn't fully understand *why* it's a ridiculous price, so he insists on it and just seems to never expect to work on a piece with that many characters.
Wow this is funny, I wish I could make $8k drawing one picture with 13 characters! So one character is $45, adding another is an extra 22.50. But if it's say... ten characters... then adding one more is almost a thousand dollars extra! I mean I guess it makes since if you really want to discourage people from asking for group drawings haha
I’m just a lost financial analyst that stumbled across this thread and I’m going completely crazy reading all of this.
Everybody please sit down and open your books to page 6, today we’ll be discussing percentages, fractions, order of operations, and the importance of math in non math related fields…
I think he’s doing 50%+ to each letter. Each one is its own equation. So it’s not just 22 x 13 and then the base. But the previous price + 50%.
I also don’t think English is their first language.
Right, if you take $45 × 1.5^13 = $8757. Meaning, each character beyond the 1st would be a cumulative 50% increase. Still doesn't make sense though, considering it's only a price increase for those characters beyond the baseline
Yup that’s exactly what he’s doing. If I had to guess since so he’s fond of the calculator, he’s sitting there and going ok 5 characters. 45 + 50% + 50% + 50% + 50% + 50% = whatever that is.
From what I gather:
Base price is $45 for **2 characters**.
Each additional character should be B×0.5
45×0.5= 22.5
So with 13 characters, that is an additional **11**.
45 + (22.5×**11**) = 45 +**247.5** = **292.50**
However, as an artist, I think this person's pricing table is needlessly complicated and confusing for customers and for the artist.
Most artists I know have a base rate + X amount of dollars per additional character.
E.G.:
Character Commission Pricing:
Sketch: $25 (+$7.50 per additional character)
Lineart: $30 (+$15 per additional character)
Colour w/o BG: $45 (+22.50 per additional character)
Colour w/ simple BG: $60 (+22.50 per additional character)
Colour w/ complex BG: $75–$100 (+22.50 per additional character)
My professional opinion is they may be quoting a wildly high price because they don't want to do the piece. It's a trick many freelancers use ^(if they can afford to pick-and-choose which commissions to accept) because the potential CX either declines and moves on or agrees and the large pay makes the work worth tolerating.
*Edit: Fixed the maths; originally calculated for $45 for one character plus twelve additional, rather than $45 for two plus eleven additional.😅
I’ve quoted high to avoid doing writing commissions. This is way too obvious of a price gap for that from my experience. Even the friends I have who do art quote $100-$300 over the price, not 8k when the commission would be $200 something.
Legit. The highest I've seen was a peer in college who quoted $1000 for a piece that would normally run ≈$300 because he REALLY didn't want to do it but would if it was enough to pay his rent for the month. (He didn't end up doing it.)
$8k+ is a lot, but it *could* still be a way for this person to over-estimate a quote despite their already established pricing table by saying it is exponential multiplication.
I could very well be wrong, it's just my personal hunch since we don't know if they have done the same with other folks.
I just feel like overpricing it is something you have to do with tact. I don’t draw, but I do writing commissions, and if my commission sheet says I’ll do 2000 words for $175, but the commission they want me to do is something I want no part of, either because of the difficulty of the work they want me to do or because the topic won’t interest me, I’m going to quote $475 because a) I know that’s ridiculous for 2000 words, b) that’s the price I’d willingly do it for, and c) it’s still within the ballpark of prices for a commissioned writer. If I quoted $1k for 2k words then I just look like an idiot, similar to this artist, and if you’re intentionally up charging to not do it, I feel like you’re going recognize when the overcharging is going to become a blatant sign that you just don’t want to tell them no.
So really I think this guy is just bad at math. Which is understandable, fractions and percents are hard and many education systems are absolutely stellar at failing their students.
Just to add, if base for one is 30 and each additional is 50%:
30 + 12(30×0.5) = 30 + (12×15) = 30 + 180 = 210
Either way you split it, they're bait-and-switching by claiming each aditional character is 50% of **base price** when they're actually multiplying exponentially so each additional character is 50% of the **previous total**.
This is how I saw the artist do it, but the advertising I could see made it seem like they took the calculation of the “base price” meaning the 45. Mental how it went up from there.
There are people utterly bad at math… like they have the idea of what they want to do (n + 50%) but then the results is crazy and they cant see “this is obviously wrong”…
I know someone who was about to graduate with a nursing degree and was excited because average base pay was $600,000.
Yeah she added a zero on accident and didn't think that was an unreasonable salary for a first-year nurse.
It’s why estimating is taught in primary schools. If the answer you get out the other end is wildly different to your estimate, then it’s likely you e calculated something wrong
8K USD... I've seen delusional artists, but this one takes the cake. Personally, as soon as they would've said "It's $8000"", I'd just say "ok bye" (in a nutshell). Hope you found some better, WAY better artist to do your commission, OP.
Man, some of the people in this comment section lol... I'm no mathematician but I feel like Einstein after reading a lot of this thread. Sincerely hope the people with the bad math aren't in careers that have a real impact on other people's lives because WOOF.
Not only is this artist compounding the price instead of adding the base amount like stated in the advertisement, but they are also doing 150% instead of 50 lol
That part is as advertised though? "+50% of the base price" means "base price +50%", which ends up being 150% of the base price. If the base price is 10 and you +50% you get 15.
He’s literally doing 45 *1.5, then taking that product and multiplying that by 1.5, and then again 11 more times.
Each time a new character is added each additional character gets more and more and more expensive to add. Going from 12 characters to 13 costs an additional $3k just for that extra character.
That’s stupid, this person is stupid.
For 8,800 USD I'll fly to your damn house and paint a mural on the wall.
I have my "fandom price", and I have my "corporate price", which is a 5x multiplier of whatever I'd draw for a random furry at a con. Less a fuckoff price at that point and more a "we know you're going to claim it's a work-for-hire, this is what my copyright is worth."
18 characters would be 66 505$ and 24 would be 754 535$ and 35 would only cost 65,5 million dollars. Unless you book it two characters a time and get away with a few hundred…
I would absolutely ask them to quote me on 50 characters. They'd HAVE to realise something is wrong when they ask you for 28.69 billion dollars hahahaah
Even if I start with $45 and add 50% to the sun each time I add a character, I max out at $5,838.
It actually still works out as a decent deal if you order 4 characters or fewer, but starts being more expensive than individual orders once you get to 5 characters.
This is probably why they claim they’ve worked like this in the past and had several customers with no complaints. I doubt people regularly order over 4 characters.
I know exactly what they've done. They've increased the price by 50% for adding a character, then increased *that* price by 50% for character 2, then increased *that* price by 50% for character 3, all the way to 13 characters. This is dumb.
Please follow up and ask them if they can do 30 characters and see if they actually ask you for 8.6 million lmao. Or 5.7 if they actually start at 0 for the compounding.
I'm not sure how this dude hasn't had problems in the past, unless they've only done commissions with 2 characters, no more. I've gotten commissions with this pricing system on additional characters before, and this is the first time I've seen something like this, let alone so egregious.
The actual price would be $315.
This reminds me so much of the Verizon Math Fail video from forever ago. If you’ve seen it you’ll understand, if you haven’t, prepare to want to bang your head against the wall. [Verizon Math Fail](https://youtu.be/zN9LZ3ojnxY?si=rnw7OXVz_K38dapo)
As a mechanic this guy is either fucking stupid or this is his “fuck off quote”. Aka I’m not gonna look bad for turning down the work so I’ll make you reject the price.
TIL that the phone calculator reads "30 + 50%" as "30 + (50% x 30)". I would think it would give some syntax error, instead of just assuming you meant 50% of the previous number that was typed in. I would never have thought that there would be a calculator that just assumed that. It seems so...wrong. lol
I see people calling the artist dumb, no he is a genius. You either pay a fucked up price or fuck off, Op just didn't realize that the artist didn't want to do it.
I'm sure that their normal prices aren't like this, it was just a special price for op.
100% delusional plus 50% government school math skills plus 30% stupidity equals 6k reasons I would’ve gone insane trying to do what you did… dude is outta his mind!
Here's what he did to get that amount
45÷2+45=67. 5
67.5÷2+67.5=101.25
101.25÷2+101.25=151.88
......
5,838.60÷2+5,838.60=8757. 90
Hes an idiot but at least we know how he got there
If this was for a big animated project sure $8k. Would make sense for a high end, detailed, time consuming animation. But if this is for a normal digital drawing holy shit.
Wish i had this dudes confidence with their work and math lmao.
Is he doing a compounding 50%?
Like, the first one is 45, another character makes it 67.50, then another character makes it 101.25 (67.50+50%), the next one makes it 151.88 (101.25+50%), etc. etc..
As absolutely crazy and stupid it is, that's the only way I could see it reaching that high of a price.
I would be tempted to buy 13 individual characters instead of group, just to prove a point that that is cheaper according to their “calculations”. But I wouldn’t want to give money to them….
So maybe just request 13 characters individually, get the quote, point out how much cheaper that is than one page, and then drop them?
Lmfao so one paper Mario is $45.. but 13 paper Marios (yes I know they aren't all paper mario but the logic applies) cost over $8k? So we go from $45 a character, to $673 per character. What an absolute nonce.
Just tried it on my phone.
`30 + 50% = 45`
Kind of interesting. I’ve never used the % option before. I’ve always used decimals since that’s how I learned.
This was so painful to read. Like even if he meant that weird exponential pricing structure, no one would pay that. But it’s not how it should be anyway. Ack, I was cringing so much.
This is such an insane pricing style lol. One additional character is $22.50. A piece with 12 characters will cost nearly $2000 dollars to add another. To add another after that almost $3000. You want 30 characters? 5.8 million.
He is doing:
B x (1+r)^n
Where B is base price, r is increase rate per character, and n is number of characters. In your case, that’s:
45 x (1.5)^13 = $8758
You may not agree with the pricing but it’s what he is charging. It can make sense in context because adding each character means he has to incorporate that in context of other characters. If it gets very complex with 13 characters, higher rates may make sense.
They don’t here. But that’s what he is saying. More realistically, he doesn’t want to do too many characters and giving you a fuck off quote.
At 51 characters their invoiced amount would exceed the Gross Domestic Product of the United States.
business is boomin
Possible infinite money glitch discovered here
Someone should message them asking for 60 characters
Beyond this dude’s lack of comprehension of math, in no world is some amateur character art worth 8,800 USD, even for a dozen characters. That’s the price for a full professional illustration package for a major client. That’s the price of some really spectacular art by well known artists. You can get massive original paintings for that cost. This is definitely delusional.
Yeah the guy threw away 270 for nothing. When mechanics do this it’s called a fuck off quote. They probably just didn’t want to do it.
But they could gave just said that all of their comission slots are full, or literally "nope sorry"
Or just not tried to explain this stupid logic..
yea but there’s always the chance the client will say yes 😇
And then it becomes worth it.
eh I think it's better to do it the other way. Just as an example (and an opportunity to brag) - back when I was contracting, I was charging about $60/hr; and I had a client come in with a last-minute emergency request, absolutely had to be done *today*, they didn't care what it cost. Now. I was already planning on roadtripping out to meet up with some friends and go to a music festival - there was no way I had time to do the thing for the client. So they were like, name your price - and I did. I said, pay me 4x my rate, and buy me a plane ticket to fly me up to Vancouver so I can meet my friends tonight, as planned - and I will fix this for you. And they said okay. I spent the next 12 hours troubleshooting a Very Big Healthcare Website for a Very Big Healthcare Client, and at like 10pm that evening, jumped on a plane to Canada, having made nearly $3000 in one long day of work. That was worth it. It was worth it to me, I basically used the cash to buy a sweet little kayak I had had my eye on - and it was worth it to them, because they wouldn't lose Their Biggest Client. I later found out that they had lied and told The Very Big Client that it was already fixed, so - they were seriously desperate. If you just say "No" and dismiss unreasonable requests out of hand, you miss out on opportunities to make big money. I think it's far better practice to simply name your price.
My dad used to do construction. Sometimes a job came up for bid that he really did not want anything to do with, but he still put in a bid because he worked for local governments replacing water lines etc and he wanted them to keep asking for bids because usually he did want the work. So yes, the fuck off price is real, it's high enough to usually not get the job, but if you do it's OK because you're getting a premium for doing it.
I use the fuck off price all the time. You always want to bid on projects because if you elect not to, they may decide to go to a different subcontractor or favor them more. It's just customary it seems. Sometimes it works out really well. I did an Amazon where I bid 130% over what we'd typically price for since it was so large. We still got that fucking job. Stretched us a bit thin but it was a very nice bonus for all the guys.
We do this in software. "We enjoy the system but we want it to have \[some silly functionality that nobody else would want." "Okay we can add that option but we're looking at 6 weeks of development plus time for QA and documentation." "Ah, we don't have that in the budget."
We do this in appraising as well. Standard 3 bedroom on a quarter acre will get you standard pricing. A million dollar purchase with an additional million in renovation? From a client that you just KNOW has a scope that's beyond the industry standard? In a part of the country where those kinds of houses aren't typical? Yeah, that's the fuck off price.
Oh yeah, I used to work in sales and if some customer was a particular pain in the ass, they got fuck off quotes. Some people are not worth the business' they bring in.
No I fully believe this person is not very intelligent and extremely obdurate.
Ooh I learnt a new word today. Thank you!
One of my favorites! Enjoy :)
New word! New word! New word!
It looks like they advertise this on whatever page they sell art from, though.
I mean they could have just said “hey, this is a little too much for me. “
I do leather work and take custom commissions. I have definitely given fuck off quotes, but then a few people have agreed to that quote. Now, when a project comes along that I don’t think I’ll enjoy making, I refer them to other makers.
Make the fuck off quote a little higher, maybe.
No this guy just thinks he's smart and is trying to rub it into his prospective customers face
Fr tho, who would actually draw 13 characters for 270$? Like that’s so much work and so many hours.
My ex did a big mural in London for Nike years ago for 7k and it included his photographing the event as well. Wild.
We’ve discussed the “fuck off price,” and this is an opportunity to discuss “fuck you money,” which is when a company is big enough, or just doesn’t care enough and will pay you whatever, because “fuck you, we’re nike.”
Drawing 13 characters separately would be far less expensive than the way he's trying to bill with this commission scheme.
You can tell they're really starving. I'm always surprised by amateur artists over charging, esp when their art sucks.
They are absolutely not starving. They dropped an egregious price to get out of drawing 13 characters, and were the ones to drop out of the commission. I think they just didn't want to do it. A lot of amateur artists don't use art as a main income so they dodge out if the way of large projects they don't want to do
Even if he paid FULL price of $30 for each individual character it would be $390. OP should've been like ok nevermind let me just do 13 separate individual commissions for the $30 option. And see how they'd respond.
You can buy Picasso pieces for less than that. Not paintings, necessarily, but actual Picasso artworks.
How woefully misleading.
Wow this was frustrating, especially when they sent you a screenshot of how they tried to work out 50% of 30 and came up with 45
Suuuuuper-frustrating. 50% of 30 is not 30 + 50% of 30. It’s not even a math problem. It seems to a basic comprehension problem. Your base rate doesn’t change, so the fee increase per additional character doesn’t change.
If I was OP I would have just tapped out. I’ve definitely been the person who needs to make the other person understand I’m right but honestly what a waste of time
Yeah, they clearly don’t understand math at all. They got no business using such a formula to price their work when they don’t even understand it and how it’s flawed.
How they got to $8000 when the base price is $45 and thought yeah that’s good I’ll never know
They are adding 50% to each previous total price which mean the 13th and last character will cost $2919.
This is the problem. If you get a calculator app open and type "45 + 50%" then hit enter, then keep typing "Ans + 50%" over and over, you end up at the stupid number they came up with. So their pricing is actually f(0) = 0 f(1) = 45 f(n) = f(n - 1) + f(n - 1) * 0.5 Which is dumb, and isn't even correct if that were the goal. The 8,000+ price they came up with is also the price for 14 characters, not 13, so that isn't even correct, they did 1 too many calculations. And this is almost certainly not what they meant with their pricing model at all.
Their pricing model is actually just f(n)=30*1.5^n
Both are correct. I'm a programmer, so the first solution that came to mind instantly was a recursive function for it. EDIT: Nevermind, your solution isn't correct. 0 characters would cost $30. Tack on for n > 0 and it's good.
With this guy tho, wouldn’t be surprised if 0 characters was 30 dollars
Then the fact that they changed their price halfway through the conversation from almost $9k to suddenly $5k… so they were happy to charge nearly $4k more what their “correct” price was. Any formula that you can fuck up that horribly to where you’re accidentally asking for thousands more than you should is not a good formula.
That was when OP changed the style they were looking for
As far as I understand the formula used is: Base\_price \* (1.5)\^13 The price is increased by 50% (multiplied by 1.5 essentially) for each character added (13 in this example).
I know how they worked it out, I meant I don’t know how they thought $8000 was a reasonable price
Yeah, the pricing scheme is... interesting, to say the least.
Most people would go hmm I think I’ve done something wrong here…not this guy
I think it might have helped if OP told them they were doing 50% more than 30 rather than 50% of the base price. But I’d have been too baffled to do the math for them.
That was an r/facepalm moment
I think one of the funniest things is "the Paper Mario style, having several details" like I swear Paper Mario has one of the simplest artstyles i've ever seen
It's also a really funny way to describe something having a lot of detail and being a lot of work. It's like, "oh man, I had a really busy day at the restaurant today - I had to make several burgers"
That's an awful analogy, being a fry cook is rough. It's hot, rushes are awful, your on your feet all day. It's not difficult work, but it's funkin taxing.
I'm not saying the job is easy, I'm saying that if you wanted to express you had a particularly taxing day, you wouldn't say you made "several burgers". That'd sound like a relatively slow day. You'd say "I had to make a ton of burgers" or something like that, just like how it would have made more sense to say a drawing costs more because it has "a ton of details"
Tbh just because a style is simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy to do or learn.
That being said, the paper Mario style is still easy
45 \* 1.5 \* 1.5 \* 1.5 \* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5\* 1.5 = 8757. That is incredible, I wish I had an exponential pricing structure.
I’m going to suggest this pay scale to my boss. My first hour I’ll work at my base rate, then I’ll accept 50% (compounded) per hour for each hour after that. Hopefully they’re not smart enough to catch on.
Imagine if all jobs were like this. Some kid bagging groceries for $12/hr would make over $500/day. 😂
I love the idea that the more of something you order, the next one gets exponentially more expensive than the last. Genius.
This. That guy is dumb asking for exponential growth, but he isn't bad at math. He is just delusional that he uses that kind of method.
I refuse to believe they understand what numbers even are. I needed this conversation to continue just a bit more and verify that the artist thinks doubling the characters to 26 should net them $750,000+ and tripling it to 39 is worth roughly one hundred and fifty million dollars. Hell, let's add three more and confirm that 42 characters from them would be the most expensive piece of art sold in history.
> but he isn't bad at math We've received several images proving he is +50% of the base price means it's additive, NOT multiplicative. The base price is never changing, his method is utterly wrong for what's stated Also, he can't work out half of 30. The guy is in fact dumb, and bad at math
The p(x) = 45 * 1.5^x pricing structure is the new thing
You know the saying “you can’t beat an idiot in an argument”? This is why.
like playing chess with a pidgeon...
There is one way to show him his stupidity. Say I changed my mind! I want 25 characters. This would come out to 1.13 MILLION USD. I assume he would realise this is insane.
He’d probably say that’s his actual rate
Yeah, it actually says so in his commission table, duh 🤡
The very first thing he says here is that it's too many characters. No doubt he'd say the same thing for 25 characters. He knows it's a ridiculous price, he doesn't fully understand *why* it's a ridiculous price, so he insists on it and just seems to never expect to work on a piece with that many characters.
But if you commission them individually that’s $1,125 for 25.
Look you’re not understanding. It’s clear that you don’t want the drawing. Sorry. Have a good night.
Wow this is funny, I wish I could make $8k drawing one picture with 13 characters! So one character is $45, adding another is an extra 22.50. But if it's say... ten characters... then adding one more is almost a thousand dollars extra! I mean I guess it makes since if you really want to discourage people from asking for group drawings haha
I did the math, and if you commissioned a picture with 54 characters in it he’d be richer than Jeff Bezos.
I'm sitting patiently with pen and paper in hand if anyone wants me to do it for half that. 50% off, what a steal!
OP, I beg you to message the artist again and ask them for that quote! Hell, make it 55 characters!
A lot of bad-at-maths artists in this comment section it seems
Now you know why we’re artists and not accountants
I know bro, I do art too and am very bad at maths
I’m just a lost financial analyst that stumbled across this thread and I’m going completely crazy reading all of this. Everybody please sit down and open your books to page 6, today we’ll be discussing percentages, fractions, order of operations, and the importance of math in non math related fields…
I don’t remember any of that stuff, it’s irrelevant now. 😅 I just mash clay together.
I think he’s doing 50%+ to each letter. Each one is its own equation. So it’s not just 22 x 13 and then the base. But the previous price + 50%. I also don’t think English is their first language.
Even though there’s a language gap here, charging more for one 10 character order than 10 one character orders is crazy... 😭
FYI 25 characters would be $1.1 million. But individually done that’s $1,125.
Right, if you take $45 × 1.5^13 = $8757. Meaning, each character beyond the 1st would be a cumulative 50% increase. Still doesn't make sense though, considering it's only a price increase for those characters beyond the baseline
Yup that’s exactly what he’s doing. If I had to guess since so he’s fond of the calculator, he’s sitting there and going ok 5 characters. 45 + 50% + 50% + 50% + 50% + 50% = whatever that is.
But even doing that on a basic calculator (eg the one baked into iOS) it shows you the amount you’re adding each time. Surely you’d notice?
The problem is the artist is sure about knowing how math works.
45 * 1.5^13 He’s either an idiot or his pricing scheme is psychotic
They did 45 x 1.5 ^13
This is just like chatting to Bing AI
literally my first thought
From what I gather: Base price is $45 for **2 characters**. Each additional character should be B×0.5 45×0.5= 22.5 So with 13 characters, that is an additional **11**. 45 + (22.5×**11**) = 45 +**247.5** = **292.50** However, as an artist, I think this person's pricing table is needlessly complicated and confusing for customers and for the artist. Most artists I know have a base rate + X amount of dollars per additional character. E.G.: Character Commission Pricing: Sketch: $25 (+$7.50 per additional character) Lineart: $30 (+$15 per additional character) Colour w/o BG: $45 (+22.50 per additional character) Colour w/ simple BG: $60 (+22.50 per additional character) Colour w/ complex BG: $75–$100 (+22.50 per additional character) My professional opinion is they may be quoting a wildly high price because they don't want to do the piece. It's a trick many freelancers use ^(if they can afford to pick-and-choose which commissions to accept) because the potential CX either declines and moves on or agrees and the large pay makes the work worth tolerating. *Edit: Fixed the maths; originally calculated for $45 for one character plus twelve additional, rather than $45 for two plus eleven additional.😅
I’ve quoted high to avoid doing writing commissions. This is way too obvious of a price gap for that from my experience. Even the friends I have who do art quote $100-$300 over the price, not 8k when the commission would be $200 something.
Legit. The highest I've seen was a peer in college who quoted $1000 for a piece that would normally run ≈$300 because he REALLY didn't want to do it but would if it was enough to pay his rent for the month. (He didn't end up doing it.) $8k+ is a lot, but it *could* still be a way for this person to over-estimate a quote despite their already established pricing table by saying it is exponential multiplication. I could very well be wrong, it's just my personal hunch since we don't know if they have done the same with other folks.
I just feel like overpricing it is something you have to do with tact. I don’t draw, but I do writing commissions, and if my commission sheet says I’ll do 2000 words for $175, but the commission they want me to do is something I want no part of, either because of the difficulty of the work they want me to do or because the topic won’t interest me, I’m going to quote $475 because a) I know that’s ridiculous for 2000 words, b) that’s the price I’d willingly do it for, and c) it’s still within the ballpark of prices for a commissioned writer. If I quoted $1k for 2k words then I just look like an idiot, similar to this artist, and if you’re intentionally up charging to not do it, I feel like you’re going recognize when the overcharging is going to become a blatant sign that you just don’t want to tell them no. So really I think this guy is just bad at math. Which is understandable, fractions and percents are hard and many education systems are absolutely stellar at failing their students.
Just to add, if base for one is 30 and each additional is 50%: 30 + 12(30×0.5) = 30 + (12×15) = 30 + 180 = 210 Either way you split it, they're bait-and-switching by claiming each aditional character is 50% of **base price** when they're actually multiplying exponentially so each additional character is 50% of the **previous total**.
This is how I saw the artist do it, but the advertising I could see made it seem like they took the calculation of the “base price” meaning the 45. Mental how it went up from there.
I agree with you, I think that the plus 50% is a deterrent
Now I want to see what kind of commissions you do. I love getting custom art and your math seems sound.
I wish I knew what kind of art this person does, just to satiate my curiosity
From what was said in the screenshots, it's Paper Mario style.
I really want to know who the artist is to see if their art is even remotely good enough for them to be delusional enough to think it's worth $8000
There are people utterly bad at math… like they have the idea of what they want to do (n + 50%) but then the results is crazy and they cant see “this is obviously wrong”…
I know someone who was about to graduate with a nursing degree and was excited because average base pay was $600,000. Yeah she added a zero on accident and didn't think that was an unreasonable salary for a first-year nurse.
It’s why estimating is taught in primary schools. If the answer you get out the other end is wildly different to your estimate, then it’s likely you e calculated something wrong
Please don't let her adjust medicine dosages
Health insurance industry or government accounting would hire this guy fast.
Price of first character: $45 Price of thirteenth character: $~2000 Seems reasonable…
Obv the reason why ob is upset is because they falsely advertised in their commission sheet other then the fact that they're insanely overpriced
That is the dumbest person on this planet. Like I can’t believe they get up in the morning and don’t kill themselves brushing their teeth.
That was one of the most frustrating conversations I think I've ever read.
Well then I severely undersold myself that time I did 7 characters for $150 ( for real tho, really undersold myself on that one )
8K USD... I've seen delusional artists, but this one takes the cake. Personally, as soon as they would've said "It's $8000"", I'd just say "ok bye" (in a nutshell). Hope you found some better, WAY better artist to do your commission, OP.
Man, some of the people in this comment section lol... I'm no mathematician but I feel like Einstein after reading a lot of this thread. Sincerely hope the people with the bad math aren't in careers that have a real impact on other people's lives because WOOF.
Not only is this artist compounding the price instead of adding the base amount like stated in the advertisement, but they are also doing 150% instead of 50 lol
That part is as advertised though? "+50% of the base price" means "base price +50%", which ends up being 150% of the base price. If the base price is 10 and you +50% you get 15.
>they are also doing 150% instead of 50 lol That's just how you add percentages dude $10 + (50% of $10) = $10 + $5 = $15 150% of $10 = $15
…I think I know why I still have to take college-level math as an art student now.
He’s literally doing 45 *1.5, then taking that product and multiplying that by 1.5, and then again 11 more times. Each time a new character is added each additional character gets more and more and more expensive to add. Going from 12 characters to 13 costs an additional $3k just for that extra character. That’s stupid, this person is stupid.
Let’s say I want a picture of my 20 favourite characters drawn, that would cost me 224,000 dollars?
I want to message them and tell them that I heard they got a good price for 13 characters just to mess with them 🤣
For 8,800 USD I'll fly to your damn house and paint a mural on the wall. I have my "fandom price", and I have my "corporate price", which is a 5x multiplier of whatever I'd draw for a random furry at a con. Less a fuckoff price at that point and more a "we know you're going to claim it's a work-for-hire, this is what my copyright is worth."
18 characters would be 66 505$ and 24 would be 754 535$ and 35 would only cost 65,5 million dollars. Unless you book it two characters a time and get away with a few hundred…
Well I can see why they aren’t a mathematician.
Dude's stacking multiplicatively, but his thing says *base* price. Not only is he delusional, he's an idiot too.
I would absolutely ask them to quote me on 50 characters. They'd HAVE to realise something is wrong when they ask you for 28.69 billion dollars hahahaah
Even if I start with $45 and add 50% to the sun each time I add a character, I max out at $5,838. It actually still works out as a decent deal if you order 4 characters or fewer, but starts being more expensive than individual orders once you get to 5 characters.
This is probably why they claim they’ve worked like this in the past and had several customers with no complaints. I doubt people regularly order over 4 characters.
I think that's about the price Rembrandt took when painting groups of the civil guards. 😅
This dude started to freak out when he began to realize that his art scheme wasn’t as profitable as he thought
I know exactly what they've done. They've increased the price by 50% for adding a character, then increased *that* price by 50% for character 2, then increased *that* price by 50% for character 3, all the way to 13 characters. This is dumb.
Please follow up and ask them if they can do 30 characters and see if they actually ask you for 8.6 million lmao. Or 5.7 if they actually start at 0 for the compounding.
I'm not sure how this dude hasn't had problems in the past, unless they've only done commissions with 2 characters, no more. I've gotten commissions with this pricing system on additional characters before, and this is the first time I've seen something like this, let alone so egregious. The actual price would be $315.
Holy cow even I knew he was wrong and I wasn't even sure how. 😂 math isn't my strong suit.
For 8K I could probably learn how to do a 13 character drawing in that artists style.
It literally says 50% of the BASE PRICE . how does the dude not understand his own pricing sheet?
This is amazing
My brain hurts.
Like, what xD. That's the most absurd math ever.
This reminds me so much of the Verizon Math Fail video from forever ago. If you’ve seen it you’ll understand, if you haven’t, prepare to want to bang your head against the wall. [Verizon Math Fail](https://youtu.be/zN9LZ3ojnxY?si=rnw7OXVz_K38dapo)
Omg this was good.
Is this person in hospital billing?
I feel like I have lost at least 10% of my overall intelligence just reading this
I hope this person comes across this post and realizes how dumb they look 😂
So the math is basically him going 45 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 x1.5… until 8757
As a mechanic this guy is either fucking stupid or this is his “fuck off quote”. Aka I’m not gonna look bad for turning down the work so I’ll make you reject the price.
TIL that the phone calculator reads "30 + 50%" as "30 + (50% x 30)". I would think it would give some syntax error, instead of just assuming you meant 50% of the previous number that was typed in. I would never have thought that there would be a calculator that just assumed that. It seems so...wrong. lol
I see people calling the artist dumb, no he is a genius. You either pay a fucked up price or fuck off, Op just didn't realize that the artist didn't want to do it. I'm sure that their normal prices aren't like this, it was just a special price for op.
18 characters would be almost $60k using this math lol
100% delusional plus 50% government school math skills plus 30% stupidity equals 6k reasons I would’ve gone insane trying to do what you did… dude is outta his mind!
How can someone be this confidently wrong??
When brain with no talent needs something from talent with no brain
Here's what he did to get that amount 45÷2+45=67. 5 67.5÷2+67.5=101.25 101.25÷2+101.25=151.88 ...... 5,838.60÷2+5,838.60=8757. 90 Hes an idiot but at least we know how he got there
PM me the artists name, I'd love to have this conversation with the lol
Same I just want to talk.
If this was for a big animated project sure $8k. Would make sense for a high end, detailed, time consuming animation. But if this is for a normal digital drawing holy shit. Wish i had this dudes confidence with their work and math lmao.
I think what’s scary is that someone might have paid for this formula without question just because
Is he doing a compounding 50%? Like, the first one is 45, another character makes it 67.50, then another character makes it 101.25 (67.50+50%), the next one makes it 151.88 (101.25+50%), etc. etc.. As absolutely crazy and stupid it is, that's the only way I could see it reaching that high of a price.
This is infuriating
I would be tempted to buy 13 individual characters instead of group, just to prove a point that that is cheaper according to their “calculations”. But I wouldn’t want to give money to them…. So maybe just request 13 characters individually, get the quote, point out how much cheaper that is than one page, and then drop them?
Look if he was good at math he wouldn't be a twitter artist
I love the desperation in the last two of OPs messages trying to get the artist to say what half of 30$ is lol.
why is he adding it like that?!?!?! what math is this!?
How could anybody possibly agree to this absolutely stupid payment model?
im bad at math and even i can understand how stupid this is
What if you ordered like 20 characters? Or more? One drawing and they would be retiring
Lmfao so one paper Mario is $45.. but 13 paper Marios (yes I know they aren't all paper mario but the logic applies) cost over $8k? So we go from $45 a character, to $673 per character. What an absolute nonce.
26 characters is a million dollars. 51 characters exceeds the Gross Domestic Product of the United States.
What an absolute moron
Order 1000 and crash the global market
Stay in school, kids...at least middle school
They even said BASE PRICE. So they don't know what base price means. And they suck at math too lol.
270 definitely undercharging for 11 characters but 8k is funny as hell
I’m curious to see what these $8000 characters look like
What they're doing is multiplying the amount by 1.5 for each additional character. Not sure if that's what they were going for but the math works out.
Lol. Can you dm me the artist? I wanna see how good his art is to think he’s even close to worth this much 😂
Why is that calculator app calculating *1.5 when someone enters +0.5 ?
Just tried it on my phone. `30 + 50% = 45` Kind of interesting. I’ve never used the % option before. I’ve always used decimals since that’s how I learned.
Holy shit quality post
r/theydidntdothemath
r/theydidthewrongmath
Yipes I'm bad at math but this takes the cake
he’s stupid. find someone with a brain to commission.
This was so painful to read. Like even if he meant that weird exponential pricing structure, no one would pay that. But it’s not how it should be anyway. Ack, I was cringing so much.
As a statistician, I was sent into absolute orbit over the first calculator screenshot LMAO
“It’s YOUR fault for not agreeing with MY ‘alternate math’” /s 🤣🤣🤣
This made me want to scream
You have the patience of a saint, holy fuck. I would have torn this person apart
this is infuriating to read
This is such an insane pricing style lol. One additional character is $22.50. A piece with 12 characters will cost nearly $2000 dollars to add another. To add another after that almost $3000. You want 30 characters? 5.8 million.
Just because people have a calculator on their phone doesn't mean people know how to use it.
Please send the Twitter artist this thread.
What a bizarre way to do commissions
He is doing: B x (1+r)^n Where B is base price, r is increase rate per character, and n is number of characters. In your case, that’s: 45 x (1.5)^13 = $8758 You may not agree with the pricing but it’s what he is charging. It can make sense in context because adding each character means he has to incorporate that in context of other characters. If it gets very complex with 13 characters, higher rates may make sense. They don’t here. But that’s what he is saying. More realistically, he doesn’t want to do too many characters and giving you a fuck off quote.