2000 AD Online Forum

Okay People,been getting a bit of flack over Dredds chin last week and thought i might state my case!
   In this pic he is sort of thrusting his face back while pushing his jaw forward to avoid the Alien(Dredd thinking 'Oh shit!') which if you do it in a mirror makes all kind of weird shapes to your face especially with a chin like his.Ive always enjoyed taking the mickey out of Dredd, hes so serious ,hes a soft target!

Greg

PS In my world Dredd thinks shaving is for girls!

Then why doesn't he have a big flowwy ZZTopesque beardy then?

Nice cover either way I reckon.

I quite liked it.

At least Dredd wasn't on the bog, in the bath or arresting Mr Spock or Chris Evans...

- Trout

It was great. Chin shmin. It was bold and clear and everything that was ever good about Bolland. If it werent for that damned alien...

I also loved the art for Dead Reckoning, but Ive said enough about that already.

Great cover, yeah a bit knobbly but hey, ITS A COMIC!
fabby Alien and it leap off the newsagents shelf,well laid out, good image,  unlike that latest Slaine one.

Humblehand McProudhuff

I was more concerned with Dredds nose than his chin. It was a bloody brilliant cover and you should do more lineart I think.

The Strontium dog cover was excellent too. (but the Dredd one was better)

J Kat. (Greg taples fan)

Greg Vs PVS. Who would win?

Greg Vs PVS. Who would win?

PVS would be pushed off a cliff by Dredd's gargantuan jutting chin. I drew a picture of his mammoth jaw actually...

Is there any I can get it off my computer and into a post?

J.

"My dog wee's on the street, he stops to do a poo, I'd like to do the same but they'd put me in a zoo...."

Ah, the chin...

The best pisstakes of Dredd just play him dead straight, Cliff Robinsons' American beauty cover with the ugly still has me smiling.  One of the funniest Dredd's ever I think was bollands, he was so serious and stoic it was very comical.  if the chin is the funny bit, then it's just like saying 'hey that blokes got a big nose, hee hee'.

Dredd not maintainaing the standards and correct deportment of a judge?  Pah...  I say pah!

It was a nice pic though.

Hmmm, wonder if there could be some sort of chin restraining circuit fitted to droids that gives them a nasty shock every time they decide to mock his chin?

I am off to construct main wondrous devices of torture for those who do not follow the puritan chin by-laws.  Then it will be time for test subject S*ku to feel the cold embrace of the chin spikes...

Hey Paul, this'll wind you up.

Siku was selling painted art, framed, double-page spreads at Dreddcon.

For ?260 a go.

Bloody hell!

- Trout

Blimey! Flint was doing art for ?20 a page!

Of course, you need a double page to get that chin in!

"Oh my grudd, the aliens, they got Dredd!  Emergency chin graft!"

"Hmmm... all we have is this MUTIE chin..."

"My god, but it's huge, but where's the rest of him?"

"That's all he was.  One big living chin."

"No time to be fussy, we need MC-1's top lawman on the streets.  ATTACH!"

"Siku was selling painted art, framed, double-page spreads at Dreddcon.  For ?260 a go."

You know, I don't get it.  I get paid much more than that for my work- and it's not even framed!

Why are comic artists paid so poorly?!?  It's not exactly a piece of piss- and believe me, if it was, I'd have drawn comics for a living myself...

Anybody want to volunteer the current page rate for 2000ad- full colour and black and white?

Nosey Matt

This is based on hearsay, rather than knowledge.

I think that the standard page rates are approx.

?60 script
?60 pencils
?60 inks
?60 colour
?20 letters

So a 5 page b/w future shock is

?300 - script
?600 - art
?100 - letters

Total ?1000

I think I heard that a b/w page (pencils plus inks) takes approx a day, so that's about ?120 per day for an artist.

Wake

DISCLAIMER - I don't KNOW the above, I just believe it to be approximately true. Page rate will certainly vary from artist to artist (and probably from page to page too) and "names" are likely to get extra, but it's a starting point.

Not enough!  Pay the buggers more...

Clearly the luckiest job in comics must be a letterer who uses a computer. No offence like.

ADE

but probably the dullest...


Jock

The Projected Future of Law...

Arse...

Link: The Projected Future of Law...

("Siku was selling painted art, framed, double-page spreads at Dreddcon. For ?260 a go."
You know, I don't get it. I get paid much more than that for my work- and it's not even framed!)

I'm in two minds on this issue and I'm glad someone brought it up.

I've become very aware lately of the economy of buying comics art and getting it framed, compared to getting something else on the wall.

I spend a lot of time at local art exhibitions and even a pen-and-ink drawing of a local landscape, usually by some retired civil servant, costs considerably more than the published work of the people we all revere.

I reckon Siku's prices, though shocking, are simply the going rate for a framed painting.

However, the fact he was selling at much higher prices than everyone else in the room (John Higgins was next door with B&W stuff at ?60 a page) probably kept his sales figures pretty low, I think.

Now Siku is a very nice, enthusiastic man and I quite like his work (Peevs, it's horses for courses) and I don't think he was out to con anyone but there were mutterings near his table.
I certainly couldn't afford it and I suspect much of the rest of the room was the same.

It all comes down to the old maxim: It's only worth what someone is prepared to pay.

For comics art, ?260 shocked me quite a bit, although, in hindsight, I don't think it was enormously overpriced.
However, I wasn't prepared to pay for it.

Am I making sense? Anyone want to chip in with their opinions?

Do these artists deserve more for their work, or have they been paid enough by the comics companies already?

- Trout

I am shocked that that is the going rate. I cannot believe that professional artists are getting so little. I write crappy financial software and get paid more than that.

It shocks me too, those sound like the kind of rates you'd expect from say 15 years ago.

More credit to them, there must be a dedication in what these guys do, and they do provide us with thrill power.

Hats off to ya!

Ed

"Do these artists deserve more for their work, or have they been paid enough by the comics companies already?"

I think that they do.  I've said it before and I'll say it again- anybody can create "art"- but not a lot of people can draw a story AND make it nice to look at.  

There's a real skill involved and I've never understood why it's still classed as being inferior to "real" art.  Any dick can throw paint at a canvas (sometimes quite literally), frame it and sell it as "art" for 500 quid a pop- and more power to them if they can find somebody who'll pay for it- but there can be a bit of snobbery where comic art is concerned.

There are a few pages of comic art that I wouldn't begrudge paying 500 quid for- if I could afford it- and the fact that the artists have already been paid is neither here nor there.  A lot of paintings that you might want to buy will probably already have seen print as well- and nobody seems to mind if those artists got paid twice.

As you say, at the end of the day something's only really worth what somebody else will pay for it.

That said, I can't get myself a decent Batmobile on Ebay for anything less than a million quid, it seems...

It is art, but unlike some contemporary art, you also need to have the craft to do it.

As for Siku*, I think his prices are perfectly fair.  If you wanted to break down how long it took him and the fact that his skills are rare and the execution unique, then it's a perfectly fair price.  That's only ?130 per page, and framed.

Having said that to a comic reader like myself it's a lot more money than I can bring myself to fork out.  

I have a Ron Smith (?30), a page of Halo(?80), Robohunter (?40), Skizz (?10), Flint Nemesis (?50), Flint ABC (?25) and Bradbury Tharg (?10 per page). Note these are all single pages B/W, so again Siku's price isn't looking that far-fetched.

All bought over a while, when I could afford it, in all cases I thought the artwork prices SHOULD have been more, but in each case would have prevented me from buying it (even the Skizz was bought instead of food and booze for that week at uni).

So it's what you can get for it really, I don't see how you can criticise artists (not traders) for trying to get the best price for their work. But then again they might have problems selling it, at least as speedy as they'd like.

I'd also find myself unable to buy an Ezquerra or a Bolland for ?260 just because it's way beyond what I could fork out for at any one time.  Sure I think there talent is WORTH it, but I just can't pay it.

Cheers

Paul

*And I actually like Siku's art, Trouter, his chins may be big but his last dredd story was very good.  Probably best not extrapolate any opinions beyond what I've actually said.  

"best not extrapolate any opinions beyond what I've actually said"
Ooooh! I'll consider myself told, you grumpy old sod. :-)

I was under the impression you weren't a fan. My mistake.
For the record, I wasn't a fan of Fetish and that humungous chin, but came to like Siku's stuff when he toned it down a bit - at the request of David Bishop.

The affordability question is a good point.
Yes, James, they might deserve ?500 a page, but, like many fans, I couldn't possibly pay that.

As long as they don't price fans out of the market, they'll continue to make a few quid extra, and deservedly so, IMO.

But those rates do seem very low, if they are indeed the rates.
It's easy to see why so many people bugger off into more commercial fields, or simply deal with US publishers.

- Trout

>>But those rates do seem very low, if they are indeed the rates.

They're not.  They're waaay off the mark in several important respects.

For instance, ?60 is nowhere near the starting page rate for scriptdroids, especially if that's what the pencil and inking rate supposedly is as well.

Writers work a lot faster than artists - ie. it takes a lot less time to write a page than it does to draw it - so the page rates have to reflect that, which these guestimate ones don't do at all.

For example, while Dom Reardon is working flat out on Caballistics at the moment, he's only one of 5-6 artists I'm currently writing material for, which maybe tells you something about the time difference involved between scripting and drawing.

And about what a shameless hack I am  ;->

"Ooooh! I'll consider myself told, you grumpy old sod. :-)"

Indeed!  I probably antagonise enough people as it is without help from you or Art (who has the largest shit stirring stick in Europe).  I was recently reminded of an encounter with a yank on a messageboard who made up a whole raft of opinions for me (as if I didn't have enough as it is!), none of which I held as I was to prove, with logic, but by then the damage had been done. I even had people defending my views (which of course weren't my own) and so on...

I think Siku's artwork on Fetish for a large chin-shaped part was a bad joke at the readers expense.  Fun for artists maybe, but we're the consumers and if we don't like it we should say so!  However chins aside, I like him fine as an artist. But Peter Doherty was write about comics and games ;)

Henry Flint had huge piles of art from Shakara (SHAKARA!), ABC, Nemesis and Dredd.  I must have spent half an hour looking through them.

I think these rates are pants considering the speciallist skills involved. i mean whats to stop these droids buggering off & doing web-design or something , but how many web-designers could make a strip? No objection to the prices they wanna charge for the art work, so i can't afford lots? well i can't afford the car or gadgets i want either, don't mean i should get given them.

Its the gulf between payments & different jobs in this country at mo , disgusts me. gives soulless monkeys the impression theyre important cos they earn squillions. spose anything creative has got a ways to go to get its value recognised , think its getting there. example from my world, a 1 hour crafts occupational therapy session with the elderly & disabled etc including my materials(3 hours inc' preparation), i get paid ?10... A 1 hour kids papermaking workshop with the council, i got paid ?120. go figure.

Does it matter that Siku's Dreddchin is too big or that Irvings helmets are too rounded etc etc. The point is that everyone knows who and what is going on and it doesn't matter to me if an artist wants to go their own way visually. It'd be duller than dishwater if every artist had the same style.

>This is based on hearsay, rather than knowledge.

>I think that the standard page rates are approx.

>?60 script



Cor, I should bloody *hope* it's hearsay.  Starting rates are nowhere *near* that mark for writers.

Thought those rates looked dodgy.

As with all these sort of things, there's probably an element of how good at negotiating you are involved.  My negotiating skills extend to saying "Aaaw, go on, please?" so I can't see myself making a living out of it in the immediate future (and Tharg chuckles as he reads this and thinks "Delusional, delusional, delusional!").

I do hope all the artists and writers I've been lucky enough to meet so far are managing to make a living out of it. It's a pain when something you enjoy has to stop because you just can't support yourself and/or a family on it.  

Some writing can be squeezed in part time I guess (bus and car journeys to work and even at work, emailling it home to yourself one paragraph at a time...) but getting out the easel and doing a fully painted page of art while trying to pull pints behind a bar must be a bugger...

As for the sale price of Siku's work - If I was a big fan, I'd have bought it. It all depends what it's worth to you.  I don't have any original artwork but I do have a unique aniumation cell from the BATMAN animated series - the wife got me it as a wedding present and it cost a bit more than the Siku stuff but I felt it was worth it. It's probably worth 26p by now on ebay but it's still worth much more to me.

Are Siku's Dredd chins really so bad?


Ed

Not after you've finished your half hour's work a day and you're off down the bowling alley.

ADE

wow siku must have some thing specail.
those frames must be wonderful if they are 260 sterling  with a free picture inside.
anyone got a web link to these frames? are they avaible on ebay.

as for value of art work, after the comercail price has been paid, then the secondary market
 IE us.
should be within a certain scale.
Sir ian gibson. charges a very reasonable 20 -80 pounds depending on what it is.
as do many of our faves Jock for one.
this puts there work within our grasp.the abilty for them to actaully shift a fair bit and not have it stock piled to the ceiling.

i collect art in many forms. i pay what i coinsider it is worth.
comic art at the end of the day is a commercail mass produced though indivual example of art. with the target market limited to a certain few. as such i feel the 20 -80 per page for B&W to be correct. and 50- 120 for colour also very reasonable.
after that it can be hard to justify to the fellow members of your household.
well thats my take.
to any artists who read this and fall into this priceing category ,
thankyou for making it avaible to the majority of us to enjoy by making it affordable at price we can justify.

whereas Henry Flint was selling Dredd/Aliens artwork for ?30-?60 a page.

some of his VC's stuff is now available online.

La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.

Link: Brit Comic Art - Henry Flint

wow its gorgeous innit, he's the main man !

You know, I think that looks better without the colour. Nothing against Chris Blythe but since Flint's art is already pretty busy adding Blythe's hectic colouring can be a little harsh on the eye.

 
Getting back to script rates, does Gordon mean nowhere near as in nowhere near that much or nowhere near that little?

I agree, better in B&W, his best work probably being Nemesis.

For some reason  always think of Black and White art being more subversive and exciting. Perhaps because of the history of 2000ad, while colour has always been the realm of American comics, but all the 2000AD strips that I've been most influenced by have been B&W.

ADE

I agree, better in B&W, his best work probably being Nemesis.

For some reason  always think of Black and White art being more subversive and exciting. Perhaps because of the history of 2000ad, while colour has always been the realm of American comics, but all the 2000AD strips that have most affected me by have been B&W.

ADE

Whoops, apologies for the double-posting by the way.

ADE

Double rates for this chin? a union matter perhaps?


Ed