/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

>>4955427
>>4955473
>>4955580
There's a difference of drawing some dude's D&D character so he can have a picture to print on his character sheet or put on his campaing journal/blog; a cover for a fanfic; or a fanart of your crappy OC; and creating from the ground up a character design that will be used for commercial gain.

First, ideas are rather irrelevant by themselves, they're dime a dozen and are not protected by copyright, patents or trademarks, what is valuable and protected is the expression of those ideas. So your shitty idea for the 5000th pink-haired schoolgirl, 3000th monster-girl variation or 1000th spike-haired sword-wielding isekai protagonist have zero value by themselves until they're given proper written (a script, a draft, a proper design document) and/or visual form.

Second, design implies a a greater effort work (research, multiple drafts), back and forth, revisions, etc and also involves a greater creative effort that gives shape and expression to an idea that can be valuable - and you all recognize how important is a good character design.

The expression of the design is 100% the creation of the artists and so he owns unalienable moral rights to that specific character design, as well its commercial rights - as established in copyright law all the way back to the Berne convention. When you want to exploit that one design commercially, you are asking the artist to cede you his rights over the design, something that, by your own admission, you view as valuable. Also, if you're going to potentially be commercially exploiting the design (i.e. not only super chats, but you can just turn the design, even if under different styles like chibi, into products such as mugs and t-shirts) and generate even further dividends, the service demands a higher fee.

As such, it makes sense that if you're not negotiating royalties (which, if you're not a partner in the project or working under a company it's, in most cases, not worth it) you may ask for a higher upfront fee to pay for the time, effort, the transfer of valuable rights and a token measure of the potential earnings that design can make.