Ok so a guy asked me if he could use this piece for the visuals of one of his songs. The thing is that I was just fooling around with code and programmed this just for fun. I’m not a graphic designer nor anything so I’m completely clueless about how this works. I feel like if I let him use the gif I should at least charge him something, since I spend all night debugging, but I don’t know how much. Any advice would be appreciated.
Only you can determine what your time + skill + experience is worth. If the price you come up with feels too low and you’d feel hard done by, then it probably is too low. However, if you come up with a price that, if you are being honest with yourself, you feel you’d be screwing that person over, then it probably is too high. The other factor is If you would be selling it to him with exclusivity, or could you sell it to someone else? With or without copyright? The cost for each scenario would be different.
So, work out an hourly rate based on the three factors to find a cost for selling it outright, with all rights included. Then work backwards from that for a licensed version and work out what those license terms would be.
The other issue for me is that using it for a music visual, of course, brings to mind Joy Division’s, Unknown Pleasures (which has been since animated).
This is a difficult question to answer precisely because pricing for design varies widely. The short answer, of course, is whatever the market will bear. Design pricing varies greatly by geographic location.
Be careful with pricing. I did a website once, for a friend. I worked out what I thought was a fair price and broke it down into setup, debugging, and a price per page (there were 64 pages x3 languages). It came to a huge amount so I halved it. It was still too much and my friend had to pay it in instalments. In the end the website did not take off as he had hoped and man I felt really bad.
If this is a friend, ask what he wants to pay. Then negotiate if it’s too low for you. If you are fair about it your friend will understand. Bear in mind, though, that for anyone else whatever the job is will be priced differently.
Also, since this is a new thing for you to be doing, someone else who does this kind of thing all the time would take far less time and therefore charge less than you might want to.
This sounds like “a guy” found this work on the OP’s site in some way and wants to use it in the same way you would use a video clip from a stock agency.
Please note: PD is not a lawyer, this is just a suggestion for a start on a rights-managed royalty contract. The OP should do some research into such contracts and come up with what he thinks will cover his bases.
The OP needs to draw up a contract stating that “the guy” can use his piece, non-exclusively, for this specific purpose, for this amount of time, for this amount of money. And that the OP is not responsible for the content associated with the use of his imagery (in case there is a dispute regarding the music involved.)
Also, if the OP wants to sell it outright (exclusive use,) and transfer ownership, this is a helluva lot more money and the contract has to state it. As a result the OP loses ownership and cannot allow others to use the work.
That’s a start.
BTW, cool little motion-graphic.
It wouldn’t be the first time a music artist has used oscilloscope-like graphics for music videos. I don’t know the artist Sprout mentions, but these type of things have been used way back to the start of Television (Ernie Kovacs’ Mac the The Knife sequences come to mind immediately.)
To piggyback off this, here is a general contract example to help you.
http://www.martinvavrla.com/docs/martinvavrla-terms&conditions.pdf
I’d be more inclined to visit the GAG Handbook than a pdf download off someone’s website.
It’s a pretty good one, we were given it in school because it aligns with AGDA terms and conditions, but I understand your hesitation.