Question for anyone who does Commision miniature work

[maverike_prime]

So about a year ago I built Abaddon the Despoiler. When I built him I needed to buy the base, the Chaos Terminator box set and the Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor while I got the Dark Eldar Talismans and Sanguinary guard bits from bit sellers. Over all I spent about $100 on it.

 

Out of curiosity I went and added up how much it would cost were I to build the conversion today and did not have the benefit of 15 years worth of Bits and had to buy every thing straight out off the shelf. It took me a little while to piece my jaw back together after it smashed on the floor from seeing a Whopping Total of $544 to build it straight off the shelf today.

 

Now, here's my question to those of us who do commission work: When you quote a price for a project what is that quote based on? Time spent in constructing the model? Cost of Materials? Both? Is it an even break down, do you charge more for time then for materials?

[winterdyne]

If I have to order specific parts from bits sellers these are charged at cost. If I'm using bits I have (or I'm buying a set only partially for use on the commission), then a proportion of the model cost is charged, especially if it renders the 'main' contents of a set from being buildable. There's no hard and fast rule, just make sure you think about the costs when you give the quote. Time plus parts, plus some factor for difficulty. Time is always the main part of it though - so if you get a job out quicker by scratchbuilding something then that's the way to do it. Sure I could have ordered shields, but if it takes me 10 minutes to make one from plasticard, is it worth spending an hour trawling bits sites for something that will need work to adapt anyway?