I almost forgot to post this today so I'm posting one of the short and simple ones. This is the first post in a series about little ways to make money here and there outside of your primary money stream.
Magic the Gathering card alters
I only recently discovered this method of making side money when I last had a table at GenCon.
Magic the Gathering is a popular card game and apparently players like to have their cards turned into original art by paying artists to expand the artwork to remove the graphic elements and sometimes the description box.
Here's a link to a video so you can see what I'm talking about. These are not done by me.
It's quick work and in my opinion it's fun work. It's mostly about mixing paint to match colors exactly. I think lots of the alters out there are being done by non-artists so there's pretty low expectations for the quality.
I think I charged $35 per card and it takes about an hour to do one. Some artists do go all out though and may charge more. I remember seeing on Terese Nielsen's website where she added gold leaf to a card alter.
Wizards of the Coast is constantly releasing new sets of Magic the Gathering so people are always making new decks and wanting to have them altered.
HOW TO GET THE WORK
I recommend having some alters on display at your table if you're set up at a convention.
A comic store talked to me once about putting my alters in their glass display case and advertising my service so you may want to approach your local brick and mortar shop and ask if you can put up a flyer. Or you could just do some alters on your own and ask if they could try to sell them and they could have a %. The real goal would be that people see those alters and commission you for their own rather than buying those.
Magic the Gathering card alters
I only recently discovered this method of making side money when I last had a table at GenCon.
Magic the Gathering is a popular card game and apparently players like to have their cards turned into original art by paying artists to expand the artwork to remove the graphic elements and sometimes the description box.
Here's a link to a video so you can see what I'm talking about. These are not done by me.
It's quick work and in my opinion it's fun work. It's mostly about mixing paint to match colors exactly. I think lots of the alters out there are being done by non-artists so there's pretty low expectations for the quality.
I think I charged $35 per card and it takes about an hour to do one. Some artists do go all out though and may charge more. I remember seeing on Terese Nielsen's website where she added gold leaf to a card alter.
Wizards of the Coast is constantly releasing new sets of Magic the Gathering so people are always making new decks and wanting to have them altered.
HOW TO GET THE WORK
I recommend having some alters on display at your table if you're set up at a convention.
A comic store talked to me once about putting my alters in their glass display case and advertising my service so you may want to approach your local brick and mortar shop and ask if you can put up a flyer. Or you could just do some alters on your own and ask if they could try to sell them and they could have a %. The real goal would be that people see those alters and commission you for their own rather than buying those.
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3 comments:
Fascinating. Where I immediately go is to the copyright implications. This seems like a harmless and indeed wonderful secondary market for Magic cards, though in this day and age of intellectual property rights, I think this would be pretty clearly a derivative work, infringing on WOTC's copyright and moral rights.
I'm reminded of the recent case of Marvel/Disney against Gary Friedrich over Ghost Rider - he sued them for royalties, they countersued him and in the end won an injunction preventing him from selling sketches of his own character at conventions.
I wonder if the law views customization differently. Could Honda clamp down on vendors of after-market spoilers, claiming they're creating unauthorized derivative works on Honda's copyright on the Civic's design?
Michael-Interesting. Many of the original artists do these. Perhaps they are doing them for free?
Perhaps WotC doesn't do anything because it actually leads to more sales. The way the comic store guys explained, it sounds like different tournaments have different rules regarding these cards. Some won't allow them. Some will allow as long as casting cost is visible. Some will only allow the borders to be painted over,etc. So that means some people may want to effectively have a duplicate deck in case tournament rules forbid them from using their custom cards. In the comic stores perspective this just means more sales.
I can't imagine why WotC would have a problem with it since every alter requires having bought the original from WotC.
Wouldn't photo-retouchers be at risk of being sued by photographers if MtG alters were considered derivative works?
I would think since the money trading hands is for a service rather than a commodity that it would be safe. Essentially a client is bringing something to you for you to work on and then they're getting their property back. Now you may be right though about creating a MtG alter on your own and then selling it as the customer is paying for the item rather than the service but again to be able to do the alter you have to have purchased the original card from WotC and I couldn't imagine there being anything blocking you from doing whatever you want with that property and selling it. If there was a problem with that then wouldn't every comic/gaming store be in trouble?
Most alters are protected by the fact that they're frequently parodies.
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