I would love to make some money with my art!You have my interest!

I understand Your relationship with the web business and your train of thought! I never try to sell my work. My opinion: very interesting and useful your guide from the money side of artist!

Hi meredith, This is the best News i've had. I'm in and will give whatever I can to support you/ us etc.. I totally agree with profiling digital art. here in the u.k there are only a few magazines on digital art most people look at you and frown.. there is a community for those that know where to look, but the general public don't know what to look for , how to buy something or whether it is considered real art... I would love to be involved and any cash would also keep the wolves from the door etc lol... grweat idea Kalixx

WOW Meredith, this is a work of Art in itself! Bravo! Awesome sugestions, and superb tips for the person who wishes to make money with their Art! You go girl!

You mailed me about this before and I am already looking around. For my photo's it can work.. for my art is is more difficult, as I mainly use what other made.. I am not skilled enough to create like many here can. Or maybe I can, but I haven't tried and I do not know the programs others use (yet).. I don't suppose the Danies, Marforno's, Andi3d's are using Poser Primitive Props.. ha ha. But with the photographs I am interested and will work things out overhere too and let you know about the progress I make with it.

Wonderful idea & very well said from a professional stand point!! So many talented people here who I know will do well :)

I am completely on-board. I too dream of going into the digital art biz, but there are a couple of things holding me back. 1. I am a timid, crappy businessman. 2. My present life. It... a. demands tons of cash on a regular basis, and b. restricts me to 1/2 hour to 2 hour "bursts" of time for creative endeavors

Fantastic work!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You got my interest too!!! Excellent idea!

Sounds intriqing. Look forward to helping where I can and seeing where this goes.

You have my interest too. You have very good points and ideas. I've been thinking about this myself in the last few days... About two things mostly, the format, I want to print on good quality paper, not a poster that you put on your wall with thumb tacks. And getting recognition from the fine art world. This is kind of a new medium. What sells is what you can put on your walls or what is considered an investment. That is, oil paintings, acrylic, photos, watercolours but CG? I've been thinking about going to Deviant Art but like you say - and I like the idea - we might want to move the decimal point. For $20. I'm pretty sure it's more like a poster quality although I didn't investigate. But it's not so much the money as the quality I'm thinking about(although it would be nice) but I'd like it to last, like any other work of art. And I'm saying this because I was thinking of buying a piece from a friend recently and I don't want a poster myself or anything glazed with the corners that will roll in a few months. So I like your thinking. Good work!

All good material and great research already Meredith... and all the points you make are the keystones to success... one of the things that may have been left out.. is the possibility of being different enough to be noticed.. a dangerous way perhaps to enter the art market.. but true creativity is recognised.. and duplication is not very often... hell I may be wrong. And if a style is successful then consistancy should be maintained... just really jotting down my initial thoughts at the moment. Exposure, exposure, exposure... I still think the more your artwork is viewed.. the more and faster you will be recognised... I post every day to get that recognition.. and so far it seems to have worked... I have quite a few people who have faved me and the heaps of comments now on my images.. whether they do it because I do post everyday or because I have a style of art they liek to comment on, I'm not sure, but the exposure has helped stimulate me into doing better with each image, and sometimes I pullit off, and sometimes I don't, but there is now a consistancy appearing. So having burbled on about bugger all for a while.. I'll shuddup and say... here, here...

Amazing material for sure... and you are right.. people still dont "see" CG at all. Some say CG are "easy" to make.. maybe someone that never spent about 54 hours ( sometimes more ) on a single image to make it right. If we do want to be recognized as artists we do have to make things right and seriously. I heard about people printing images on canvas, Ive never seen it so I am not sure about the quality and how it looks but sounds quite interesting too. I wont say much now cause I am acutally learning more then adding anything at all... Im gonna digest everything you said here.. and its a lot.. and I am in!

You've got my attention.. But then you already knew that from some of the discusions we've already had...

Talking about me, I'm sure about the amateur hobbyist parts but I'm not much sure about the artist part... Yeah! Let's move that decimal point to the right!... Er, wouldn't that make any amount smaller? Sorry, I'm not good at maths... uh... oh, well, I'm still having troubles with right and left too... Think hard?! What's this?! You want to kill me, won't you? I know you're showing that artnet site just to discourage me... Well it looks like you did your homework. There's a lot of information here that asks to be digested slowly. If you need someone to hand out leaflets or printed images, I'm your man. Good luck! I think you should get paid just for all this work.

Some very good suggestions there. I would love to make money with my art but fear that I'm nowhere near talented enough (certainly not compared to a lot of people I see here)!

Money... almost as good as nude blonds:)

Very interesting!

First, you need a Nexus of communications. If Rosity is going to provide this then it might be a good idea to converse with the owners and demonstrate what's in it for them. This site may be free to us artists but it's paid for by marketing and advertisements (among a few). If not, then a web site needs to be established to centralize and coordinate communications. Then a mission needs to be established. Is the goal to help individual artists make money on their unique works or will it be a project that everyone contributes to and then shares the resulting profit? How does one reconcile such a diverse range of talents if the goal is Project orientated? A company like Pixar can make a great CG movie with a work-force of very few highly talented individuals. Who decides who is good enough to join. How does one enforce a schedule? The best I can see is creating a work group to promote individual artists and perhaps, increase the artistic skills of those that want to be serious about making some money. I'll have to give this a lot more thought to offer anything truly constructive.. But this is an idea I've also had for a very long time. (Putting all this Rosity talent to work for profit.) It's a monumental task and this would seem to be a logical first step of a rather long journey. I'm already doing my "Chira" project with profit in mind and time to commit to this endeavor is a serious issue. I'll be in touch Mere! Hugs from Dave :^)

i'm into it...

Well reasoned and thought out ideas, thanks for your efforts and for sharing these thoughts and inviting others to join you on this quest to "mine the value" of the wonderful, fun, creative, and interesting art that many have both enjoyed and worked hard to make!!!

To put it in a nutshell, I'm interested in making money with my art, but as Davidoblad said, it's a monumental task and I don't envy you, but I'm in awe of you and your ideas, there is hope yet to make some moolah ! Who will judge what is good or what is mediocre ??? a lot of art is great, but only in the eye of the beholder and some art would be difficult to class or categorise. Lots of questions....but I'm on board as well ! ~Cheers~

Sounds like an interesting idea Meredith, but somehow I don't think my artwork has enough umph to make money, I might end up dying a starving artist :) I am very modest about my artwork, maybe someday I might think about selling my artwork. You have a brilliant mind and I want to thank you for sharing this idea with us!!! Hugsss Frankie ^_^

Ohhh, so very interesting idea my dear but you think I can make some money with my photo or only in art digital like fractal, poser and more ? I don't know... Good day and hugssssssssssss ;)

A fantastic idea, Meredith but I have no idea how to realize it! I'm also not sure whether my images have the quality to be sold! LOL Thanks for this real interesting posting!

there's a lot of great ideas here. it's definitly something to contemplate.definitly something for me to strive for in the future.

Well interesting!

One thing we would need to be careful about (perhaps you covered it above and I missed it; if so, I apologize), but those working in Poser particularly would need to go back and check the files used in creation of the artwork. Some people's packages state clearly whether or not their materials may be used in commercial renders, others don't. While you say that you are definitely not offering legal advice, I think anybody who participates in such ventures will need to be aware of potential legalities. That being said, I'm all for this. I think it's an absolutely splendid idea.

Personally I don't think anyone would buy mine I don't consider myself good enough. You really have done your homework here. I would have to look at what work sells though to get some idea if I could do it or not. It really has never entered my head really. I read the comments on here and I am a kind of neative person who needs a good kick up the you know what to move lol! Obviously artists like Ilona and Deane already have a saleable style me thinks. It's a great idea though :) Cathy xoxoxo

WOW Meredith, you've been a thinking long and hard on this, I can tell  :o)

**Well as you know I had been looking at my gallery for a long time and thought it looked really messy with the thumbs so took your advise and altered ALL the thumbs to a theme, uniformity is more pleasant to the eye and will catch the eye of a passerby, so if anyone sees a framed thumb with a rose, IT'S MINE!!!so come in and view and add me to your favs :o) **

Another thing I do is delete quite a few images from my gallery every once and a while, I only keep images in there that I feel I really really like, if its something I just like then I tend to delete it after a month or so, this then gives you a quality gallery (to the best of my ability) rather than one with hundreds of mediocre images in (which is what I would have had if I hadn't have filtered them out)I have I think about 71 or 72 images in there at the moment but would have over 250 by now if I hadn't removed them.

One way to gain recognition is via the freebies section, if you are talented in a particular way in the art field (good painter, scripter or photographer) then you can give your stuff out initially free and then maybe go onto selling it once you have made a name for yourself. Everyone loves a freebie.

Another way of recognition is to post your art in as many places as possible, Artzone, individual's online galleries (which I have one of  www.lullys.com/showcase/entergallery.htm and am at present holding a competition with prices, this is a fun thing to do but also it encourages traffic) and also on your own webspace. Flash slideshows are brilliant too as it allows the viewer to view a selection of work without much effort and therefore it will entice them to view more, (also have it auto starting so that it catches their eyes as they flick through your pages)  I have one on my homepage here at Renderosity.

**And the third way is to have an ecard system, I have got several Ecard sites on my website, I initially did those when I wasn't producing art and sort permission from artists who had their work on the internet, most were very helpful for which I greatly appreciate. I also set up and power one for Steven Gardner who is a fine artist in California http://www.gardnergallery.com/ **

Lately I have set up an interactive gallery where anyone can upload and this also includes an ecard facility.  I was apprehensive about this to begin with but the script writer said that he would incorporate a section where I could turn it off or on and also a 'no right click' script which disabled the save as picture function.  This allows work to be viewed by those who had not ventured onto the site (i.e. the recipient of the ecard) To be honest I'm glad he left it in as it enables people to send ecards and therefore send adverts out of their work and also this then brings traffic back to my site and again people will view the artwork.

Regarding the business aspect of art, or any other business, this I shy away from, I am very scared of stuff like this and people say to me that I should sell my stuff and make money out of it as I've ploughed money and time into it, maybe after your series I may be in a better position to consider it. lol