Some of my friends (for some bizarre reason) want me to make costumes or costume parts for them, and I was wondering how much people who do that sort of thing usually charge?
I was thinking the cost of the materials, the pattern, and hourly minimum wage ($7.95), or is that too much?
At least that. There's a whole lot of discussion on this subject over on cosplay.com worth looking at. Skilled seamstresses and tailors definitely charge over minimum wage, so it's a matter of considering how much
you think your skill is work. It's amazing how much time goes into something, though if you charge an hourly rate, you're going to want to not only log work hours but update them regularly -- easy if it's friends in the area. It's your call if you want to give them a "friends" discount. If the hours start to climb up, they can always help you out to mitigate that, right? Estimating as best you can in advance how long it'll take would be good for both of you, to give them a ballpark.
The only people I've done cosplay 'commission' for have been my family, and it's been as much gift as commission. I'm doing an Edward Elric coat and wig for my sister next year, and the deal we made was that she pays for the materials and helps out some in exchange for my doing it -- but that's family.
And oslapedo, sometimes people charge hourly because it's hard to gauge sometimes how much work will go into a cosplay -- what's deceptively simple may take hours, and then you sometimes have fittings that require changing things completely or the like. Things like progress logs and regular updates (photos or in-person) help monitoring. As for someone going purposefully slow, that's an ethics thing, but word gets around very quickly in the cosplay community, and I'd like to think that someone like that would get smacked pretty quickly.
