Besides designing and planning titles like Forgotten Worlds, Final Fight, and Street Fighter II, he’s created some of gaming’s most iconic characters and art, such as for, again, Street Fighter II.
For a guy with credits like that, you’d think he’d command a high price for illustrative work. And you’d think that Enterbrain, the publisher of Japan’s biggest game magazine Famitsu, would know that.
According to Akiman’s blog, Enterbrain offered Akiman ¥8000 ($102) for six drawings for a game character. If the drawings took, say, two days, that would mean he’d get 50 dollars a day. If they took four days, then he gets 25 bucks a day. And so on.
“My rate is from ¥100,000 ($1,300) for one drawing,” Akiman blogged, adding that he would do illustrations as part of a large assignment for ¥80,000 ($1000), but that things like the character design fee were not included in the illustration fee.
Even at ¥100,000, Akiman’s rate isn’t outrageous. Enterbrain’s offer, however, was.
8000 [akiman's blog via はちま起稿]
ryuhayebusa
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 4:34 PMyea tell him i like the picture
Sam
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 7:16 PMBoth prices seem on the extreme end of the scale >.>
Alex
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 11:41 PMHis price is a steal with credentials like his. The whole world seems to think that because creative output and its processes are a largely intangible thing to laymen that it doesn’t deserve appropriate pay.
Don’t confuse what you see with what you got. What you see is an illustration of a character. What you got was 20 years of experience and talent informing its creation.
mikey
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 2:49 PMWell said!
Thermal Ions
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 11:29 PMSo he did design and illustration work on iconic games over 20 years ago. Maybe he shouldn’t be too surprised? The last job interview I went to they couldn’t care less what I did 20 years ago – they want to know what I did last month and for the last 12 months.