COMMISSIONS

It's relatively simple to commission an artwork / sculpture from me - tell me, show me, or draw me (etc.) what you're after, at what size or scale, how detailed you want it, and so on - and I'll tell you if it's possible, and at what cost: or, if you want to decide on how much you want to spend, I'll let you know what I can do within your price-bracket. Once all that's agreed, I'll usually require a minimum 30% deposit payment to cover the initial materials costs, (though this may be waived in some circumstances, and does not apply to 'typical' miniature commissions) and once that's received I'll get busy with your commission. I'll send photos of the work in progress to keep you up to date prior to delivery, and a finished item photo so you can confirm your order, which will be sent to you once I've received the balance of the agreed price.

Costs for commissioned works vary according to the subject size, complexity, and a number of other factors: but the main thing you should consider is that such individually-commissioned pieces are original artworks and not mass-produced factory-fodder - and the cost of any piece will reflect the amount of work that goes into the scale and the detail of the finished item - have a look at the works in progress page to see just a small part of what's actually involved in the making of one of these things; you might also want to check out miniaturemonsters.com for some of my miniature works.

Unfortunately, there's no way to standardise such an open-ended medium; but bear in mind that any 'typical' artwork (as regards one of my 1/6th-scale figures) requires a minimum of two week's labour, and you can begin to appreciate what sort of costs might be involved - what do you make for two weeks' work, for example, and what do you actually produce in that time? - take a note of that time-period, too - that's not just two week's work flat, it tends to be spaced out over anything up to a month or more - bear in mind I'm working on several projects at once, and all of this goes on in my spare time - unfortunately this isn't my actual job, I have to be realistic about making a living in the meanwhile: sometimes work in the real world can hold things up here when it gets busy there, so bear with me. Also, don't expect your order to be prioritised just because you want your certain something right this minute - it's amazing how many people think I can just turn these things out of nowhere, like maybe just dash one out over the weekend or something; honestly, there's a lot more to it than that: even for the stuff I do create moulds of, it's not that quick to make a reproduction - check out the process involved on my snuurg's workshop page.

To otherwise give you some sort of a 'ball-park' of costing, though - well, a rough pricing guide for a 'typical' sculpt (which of course there's no such thing, but you know what I mean) goes something along the lines of a starting price of around £80-£100 (or whatever equivalent... I'll have to get me one of them currency-converter things) per inch of height, varying according to how detailed a piece is required to be - an inch-high barbarian in a loincloth for example, is going to be a lot cheaper than an inch-high paladin in intricately-decorated plate mail.

- in 1/6th or other larger scale-sizes, eyes are another consideration, depending on whether the client wants them painted on or if 'proper' eyes are more desirable - by which I mean I actually make glass-effect eyes for the piece in hand that are a lot more effective than painted-on ones... but of course, pricing comes up accordingly.

...meanwhile, none of this as yet includes postage/shipping, and some of the larger figures do end up being quite weighty in that respect - and of course this also bumps up that ever-increasing cash-deficit: unfortunately I can't say with any certainty what the postage costs will be since obviously this varies greatly from piece to piece in direct accordance with the weight of the finished work, which is impossible to predict.

Anyway, all of this ought to give you some idea for the cost of an entirely original commission, which as you can see can get to be a pretty big chunk of change; I do however also try to tailor things towards what any given client can afford to - or wants to - be able to spend:

- for just about every commission I've ever done, I'll have taken moulds of some of the various limbs and bodyparts involved as I go along with the process, such that I've got a fair-sized collection of assorted bits and pieces that I can cast up for use on new figures, if they're appropriate to the piece being considered; and obviously, if I can make a piece by utilising a lot of already-available bodyparts, it saves me a lot of time - and thereby saves the client a lot of money - if the greatest involvement on any piece is to do with 'hiding the joins', as it were. You can check the progress of an example budget-sculpt on my latest commissions page.

The time to completion of a piece tends to vary in respect to my available time and the client's fulfilment of payment - if somebody opts to pay by instalment (at whatever interval and amount best suits their pocket), I'll work at whatever rate spare time allows - the same goes for any kind of 'budget' sculpt, these get fitted in amongst whatever else is going on too, and they will tend to get shouldered aside whenever a full commission comes my way, as these are getting paid for as they go along - I don't take any kind of preliminary payment on budgeted sculpts, since before now it's given people the mistaken notion that suddenly their 50-quid work has way more importance than the £800 piece I'm already working on, or that I should otherwise be making it a priority to finish that before anything else. Hopefully I've made it clear enough already that if you want it cheaper, you'll wait till I have time to edge it in with the spare time between my other works. For instalment-payments, I'll usually charge the client whenever I notify them of particular progress with a given sculpture; completion of a work under these circumstances can be anything up to six months - sometimes more, again depending on the buyer's ability to finance further progress - but generally I'll have a fully-financed commissioned piece finished somewhere inside of a month, depending on how many other works I'm busy with at the time - but in any case even a quickly-finished work isn't released until it's fully paid for, so it may still be a while before a buyer can get their mitts on it if they're working to small instalment payments.

One other thing to realise or consider with an instalment-paid or budget sculpt, is that, whenever I send an update of the progress on a piece, I'll tend to forward a few pictures of the work, or at least a link to a page of such pictures, for the client's consideration: I personally consider it to be only common sense that the client will assume these to be a prompt for further progress, i.e. that they should let me know that they approve of how the work is progressing thus far (with instalment-paid pieces I will of course continue without such assurances if the payment is forthcoming at the proposed time); however, if I send photos or links to a client and they fail to notify me in any way that they are pleased with the progress-so-far of the sculpt, I will cease work on the sculpt until such time as I do hear from them with such confirmations: for my own part I would assume that it would be entirely natural for the client to suppose that such photographs etc. should merit such responses, but it has been known for me to send out pictures to clients who have been badgering me for progress reports, and then suddenly not hear from them for prolonged periods of time; and that when they do at last respond, they're expecting their piece to have been finished; all I'm asking is that the client should always consider things from my point of view - if you've been asking for pictures and I send them to you, surely it's only natural to respond in some way - even a negative response is better than hearing nothing for a couple of weeks.

But in any event, if some time passes between my dispatching of photos and whatever response might be forthcoming from the client, then I will naturally assume that they have no further interest in the piece concerned, and will therefore stop work on that particular piece - unless or until I hear a positive go-ahead from the client - as it's simply not worth my time to continue working on something which might turn out to be unwanted - this especially applies to budget sculpts, since after all I'm effectively doing the work for free until the client pays for it upon completion of the project, so I'm certainly not going to be committing time to any budget sculpt if I haven't heard from the client for a while. I have plenty of paid work to be getting on with, thanks very much, so don't come to my e-mail box with a short temper if you've been away for a couple of weeks and hoped to have a finished work at the end of it, if you haven't let me know in the meanwhile that you're still happy for the work to continue. I hope that's simple enough for everyone.

- oh, one last thing on instalment-payments: if you've opted to pay by instalment, at whatever rate we've agreed to, you should not assume that your having paid a recent instalment entitles you to get pushy with my time constraints; the instalment has paid for whatever progress I've shown you up to that point, not for what I've yet to do - so effectively I'm doing the next part for free until I receive your next instalment, so you shouldn't get the idea that you can tell me when to do work that as yet you haven't paid for. Refer back to all that stuff about as and when my spare time is available, for any further questions on that.

Another quick thought - I have on a number of occasions agreed to carry out works (most often for miniature-sculpting) on a percentage-of-sales basis, i.e. I make the figure for the company or individual concerned and send it to them, and they reimburse me with a percentage of the sales or profit thus generated in selling copies of the figure; obviously this is somewhat of an act of faith on my part, since of course I have no way of knowing or proving how much profit or how many sales such a person/company might have made of the piece concerned: thus, while I'm not entirely lacking in trust, I make the proviso that if I do agree to undertake such a figure for production, then I will retain a copy of it for myself so that if it appears not to be making a profit in whatever market(s) the client might be trying - within a given grace-period - then I will try to make sales of copies of the piece myself to recoup whatever costs might have been involved in the original creation of the sculpted piece: in such circumstances any person or company requesting such terms should understand that I still consider the sculpt to be my property - and thus still mine to copy and sell by my own means if I so wish, if sales have failed to meet the assumed cost of the sculpt within the aforementioned grace-period - until such time as whatever sales/profits that client has passed on to me have accounted for what I deem fair cost of the piece concerned - i.e. if I create a figure worth £100, then I will still consider it within my rights to make and sell copies of said piece if sales do not seem to be happening very well for the client within that given period, unless or until the profits they pass on to me by percentage of their sales (etc.) of the figure have reached an equivalent amount - at which point the client may consider the sculpted work concerned to be entirely their own property, with all/exclusive production rights included accordingly.

Further to these conditions, I will not supply refund of any monies lost to said client that may have been incurred in putting the figure into production for creating saleable copies, if they have in the interim failed to recoup their own costs in doing so, since ultimately there will likely therefore have been no measure of payment to myself for that figure, and in any case no liability on my part for whatever failure there may have been on their part in the selling of the piece concerned. Also, any monies that may have been made by my own sales of copies of the piece, if made after the agreed grace period for sales returns to accrue (if the client has failed to provide me with sufficient payments to effectively buy the piece within the aforementioned grace-period) - even if sales subsequently rise to meet this need - will be considered my own, and not an infringement upon the original agreement. Personal sales of the figure will of course cease once the assumed cost of the figure has been met; the percentage of sales/profit due to myself for continued sales by the client after that point though is assumed to continue in perpetuity, or until such time as both the client and myself have acknowledged that the piece will cease to be in production by them.

Production-times for such works fall under the same conditions as already detailed for budget-sculpts and instalment-paid pieces, i.e. they will take a lesser position in priority than sculpts that are being fully paid for, and will therefore progress as spare time allows, rather than at a speed that the client might wish to dictate, since as with such pieces already mentioned, a sculpt that is effectively being made without being paid for up front, will not get to go to the front of the queue.

Right, back to the production-time of these works - so many people seem to want something as soon as possible - tomorrow / by the weekend / next Tuesday, that kind of thing - it just doesn't seem to sink in that I'm not a mass-production mail-order company, and I do not have ready stocks of any of this stuff sitting around waiting to be ordered: everything I produce has to be done on a made-to-order basis, therefore it takes time - as I've already said, with a lot of orders on the go at any one time, and with all of those orders being in due process, you should allow an absolute minimum of 28 days for your order to be processed. For those of you who really must have something right now, take a look through some of the links on my suppliers / contacts page: much of what any of those folks do can be turned around pretty sharpish, as they're all stockists, and not producers, of these items: though having said that, I'm fairly sure you'll still see a disclaimer in some of their literatures to the effect of waiting at least 28 days for delivery.

Meanwhile, as far as my stuff is concerned, the only real limitations are your own imagination and what you're prepared to spend, otherwise the possibilities are almost boundless - natural world, sci-fi, the erotic and the bizarre, the weird and the wonderful - whatever.

Believe it or not, I'm not trying to put you off, but please take all the stuff I've mentioned into consideration before you start.

Contact me via the e-mail link if you're still interested.

30% deposit on quoted price required on most orders - covers materials costs incurred at start of artwork development. Ask for details. Deposit non-refundable. Allow minimum of 28 days for order processing.

All artworks bought as seen in finished item photography. Jon Brumby (hereafter referred to as 'The Artist'/ 'the artist'/ 'The artist') reserves the rights to all original art and design work undertaken by himself, and the rights to the finished shape or form of any given artwork or sculpture created by himself. Rights of ownership of the artwork remain with the artist until such time as the work has been fully paid* for, at which time ownership of the artwork is transferred to the payee. Rights to the use of existing images of the artwork (whether concept-drawings, work-in-progress photographs, photographs of the finished work, etc.), and ownership of credit for production of the artwork, remain with the artist.

'Budget' sculpts are considered to be only part-owned by the payee, to the extent that the artist may use parts, or all of, the artwork concerned for his own purposes, whether that be for the moulding and casting of such parts, or the use of the parts themselves (if for example moulds/casts have been made and a more lightweight version of the commission has been requested for cutting down on postal costs) in the making of further sculptures: this particularly applies to budget sculpts built entirely as new (i.e. completely original works), rather than those using cast pieces or similar additions from other works - a budget-bought original sculpt does not afford the same exclusive ownership of the rights to a given artwork, since it has not in effect been fully paid for: the client thus has no demand on what the artist may or may not do with whatever moulds or casts may have been made of the piece concerned: ultimately, if the client wishes to purchase full rights to use an artwork as they see fit, then the full quoted price must be met.

The artist cannot accept responsibility for any item lost or delayed in transit, but will take every measure to ensure safe delivery of the item concerned. Price quoted for any item will include delivery costs likely to be incurred for item dispatch.

All original artworks, drawings, sculptures, models and photographs, and any names, terms, or phrases originating in the text or logos appearing on this page or any other page throughout this website are copyright Jon Brumby 2002 unless noted otherwise.

* the term 'fully paid' refers to the original quoted price (i.e. the price-per-inch cost that will be stated before whatever the quoted budget-cost might be) for any given figure, before any budgetary changes are considered. An artwork is only considered to have been 'fully' paid for (with respective rights of ownership as already mentioned above)if the original price-per-inch cost has been paid; otherwise the ownership of the work is still shared with the artist, and the artist retains the rights to use parts, moulds, or castings of the work concerned for whatever purpose he sees fit. If the client meets the full payment in the meanwhile, then of course full rights to the use of the work are transferred.