Team Portrait Drawing - Selling Your Art - The Value of Community [MMG]

moneymatchgaming (60)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

MMG contracted one of our Smash Bros. Competitors on Discord @Jujubabeeh for a team portrait. We get to talk to her most days via discord or Twitch.tv at an event or casual gaming, and at some point she usually shares an update on the drawing with us. We comissioned her $10 for the drawing, as she originally requested to do it for free, but we insisted, wanting to give her a chance to earn money with her craft. Considering ourselves to be a fairly young start-up company, we understand how it feels to want to be paid for your work.

Selling Your Art
So many times young artists miss the boat on when they should and shouldn't accept payment. The act of going in and asking for nothing, was perfect on her part. What it did was earn her that much more trust and respect with our organization. We of course love all of our followers for supporting us, but we also like to reward and encourage those that reach out to us. @Jujubabeeh is a perfect example of that. She's been working on the project now for about a month. It started as sketches which she shared with us, via Discord mostly, every few days or so. Imagine waking up and there's a new sketch of you and your friends. This time there's a slight change, maybe it's a different style all together. It's like celebrating Hanukkah with art updates.

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Give Give Give, Receive
On top of all of that goodness, one day @jujubabeeh subscribed to our channel during an event (events avg 20-60 live viewers concurrent). It was our first subscription, and again, we didn't have to ask for it, but it was nice, and it started a trend were others in our community realized that they could support us to. By the end of the week we had 5 subscriptions to our Twitch.tv stream.

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Finishing a Project
Needless to say, today when she sent an update that had the final touches on our characters coloring, for the first time I had something to say about the drawings. For the first time, I wanted to make JuJu go back and draw something different, change my shirt, my eyes are off...anything. Then I realized that the picture was perfect. It's me that needs adjusting. The picture is almost done. It looks fantastic, we've made a close friend of a follower, gained 10 subscribers now, and -- I'm a little sad to see it end.

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I encourage all artists out there to take this story to heart, from one artist/founder/marketer/content creator to another, give without expecting, and you'll find it to be that much more rewarding. Also, I should mention that The D tipped JuJu an extra $3 to change his posture to a thumbs up after she'd moved on and we'll probably tip her again and try and get her to join steemit (duh). That's $13 total for this commission, which truly is a steal for us, but it's still a sale for her when her instinct was to ask for free (good instinct).

About The Gamer
@jujubabeeh is MMG's only consistent female competitor. Her mains are Olimar and Wario. She has yet to win a Tournament or King of The Hill at MMG, but continues to improve week over week against fierce competition that features some of the best players in the world. Best finishing placement is top 8.