A little bit of context, I've been creating 3D models in my spare time for about a year now. I joined a small dev team, and we created our project out of fun and as a hobby. That means of course, all my contributions were free, but now we have the opportunity to turn our hobby project into a viable commercial thing.
We are now planning out the financial aspects of the project to hopefully set up a kick starter and fund the project. However I just realized that I have no idea whatsoever as to how much my work is worth, because I've been doing it for free and as a hobby.
I've only worked on characters and it takes me about 4 days to finish a model. This is my workflow:
- Draw design of new character.
- 3D drafting and translating the 2D drawing. (basic shapes, metaballs)
- Retopo and Modeling. (Lowpoly)
- UV mapping
- Texturing (Stylized base color only, not PBR)
- Rigging (Human like)
- Animation (5 cycles: idle, walk, attack, being hit, death)
Take into account that I'm not talking about professionally looking 3D models. I'm just a hobbyist after all. My models are lowpoly with fairly easy shapes and uncomplicated textures. I'd say the thing that takes the most time to do is the rigging and animations.
BTW, I'm asking because I've seen 2D sketches costs about 20 - 30 USD, modeling and texturing costs another 20 - 50 USD, rigging and animating also costs about 30 USD... but those are professional looking models. Again, I'm a hobbyist and in an objective comparison my quality is vastly inferior to those pro models.
After all my research, I currently can't decide myself between the 30 - 40 USD mark per character. Does that sound like a reasonable price for the amount of work I'm doing?
Edit: Here is a reference screenshot, just so you can objectively judge the quality I'm aiming for.
