I currently make 2.5$/hr as a non artist, can i make more with my art?

Lucaus

So im currently making  2.5$/hr as a non artist and in a few years it will go up to 6$/hr. So I'm  not very hopeful about my future career. 

For the past 6 years  i have been making art for my own enjoyment. not focusing on it 100%, so it pretty terrible.
But i see a lot of decent artists make way more than 2$ per hours. So it shouldn't be too difficult to pass that threshold, right? What do you think?

Now one problem is that i don't really have a portfolio. 
I just started to build one this year and so far i only  have one piece that i think is decent. I post some wips on Instagram  if want to take a look. 

What do you think? Should I just stick to my job?

Alex_J

yeah you should be able to make a lot more than that. You don't have to wait until your are AAA photorealism skilled either. Start putting all of your practice models up for sale on every store you can. You'll be making more than 2.5 an hour in passive income within half a year (assuming you stay steady with your production).

Big problem with a lot of artist is they are perfectionist. Spend too much time trying to make things perfect and then not making good use of all the work they have done because they don't consider it good enough. Just sell it. The market will decide - the market is your eyes so use it.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Wait, are you being serious they're paying you $2.5/hour in South Korea?  That sounds illegal.

Lucaus

Alex Javor said:

yeah you should be able to make a lot more than that. You don't have to wait until your are AAA photorealism skilled either. Start putting all of your practice models up for sale on every store you can. You'll be making more than 2.5 an hour in passive income within half a year (assuming you stay steady with your production).

Big problem with a lot of artist is they are perfectionist. Spend too much time trying to make things perfect and then not making good use of all the work they have done because they don't consider it good enough. Just sell it. The market will decide - the market is your eyes so use it.

I always  assumed  if i sold a couple of assets i would  get only 1 or 2 sold per year.
But i guess  you are right,  the market will decide.
So it wouldn't hurt to try.

Now im not really a perfectionist but i enjoy taking my time working on models, so if i want to start  selling  assets i would have to start cranking them out quickly i guess. 

Neox

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Wait, are you being serious they're paying you $2.5/hour in South Korea?  That sounds illegal.

It says Korea (North)

anyways, generally speaking. yes if you are good enough to deliver decent quality you will make plenty more than USD 2.5 per hour, I would say for non indies your aren't there yet, but there might be indies who could use your support and pay you more. We work in AAA most of the time our juniors make 8-10 times more, the seniors double of that, no matter where they live.

But I have no idea how anyone will be able to hire you, being in north korea.

If you wanna make assets and sell them on the store, think of what an audience would need and buy stock. not so much what you would like to create personally. If you do fanatasy characters the target audience will be rather limited, compared to generic environment assets people can just use. If you stick with the characters, i would target prototyping. Making already rigged and ready to use assets people can use in the early stages of their games. Or NPC type work for backgrounds. The more specialized you go, the smaller your market will be.

Lucaus

Neox said:

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Wait, are you being serious they're paying you $2.5/hour in South Korea?  That sounds illegal.

It says Korea (North)

anyways, generally speaking. yes if you are good enough to deliver decent quality you will make plenty more than USD 2.5 per hour, I would say for non indies your aren't there yet, but there might be indies who could use your support and pay you more. We work in AAA most of the time our juniors make 8-10 times more, the seniors double of that, no matter where they live.

But I have no idea how anyone will be able to hire you, being in north korea.

If you wanna make assets and sell them on the store, think of what an audience would need and buy stock. not so much what you would like to create personally. If you do fanatasy characters the target audience will be rather limited, compared to generic environment assets people can just use. If you stick with the characters, i would target prototyping. Making already rigged and ready to use assets people can use in the early stages of their games. Or NPC type work for backgrounds. The more specialized you go, the smaller your market will be.

but isn't being specialized a good thing? competing in a bigger market seems more difficult. 

Alex_J

@Lucaus,   you don't necessarily have to adopt a totally new business strategy. If you like to do high quality characters, just break them up into many parts, each part you can consider personal practice, and then sell those as you make them. So like, for Joan of Arc, maybe you make like 10 chest armor peieces, each time practicing some different techniques, then put all of those together in a bundle and sell on stores. They won't make a lot of money but if your current income is 2.5 an hour, it's going to probably end up being more than you earn from your job once you get a decent library of models like this built up.

The idea is to kill two birds with one stone. You are practicing anyway, so might as well give those practice models a chance to make back some money for your time.

Lucaus

Thank you all for the feedback its really appreciated.