Character Design Copyright Buyout Rates

[adam3000]

I'm new to paid illustration/character design, but through my interaction with a community site (mojizu.com), someone contacted me to help them design a cartoon character. I offered them a rate for the whole job with an attached 5% royalty fee on any merchandise and media sold using the character design.

The client wants the full rights to the character design and asked me to provide him with a buyout rate for the full character rights.

How do I determine what a buyout rate should be for a cartoon character design?

The character is going to be the featured cartoon character brand for a new games based website for a client who currently has another games based web site with an Alexa rank of 3,209 and an daily estimated session rate of around 41,000 visitors.

Any advice, links, experience, sample contracts, etc. you could share would help me out a lot. Thanks.

[Sharvonique]

I hope someone answers this because I would like to know, too. :p

[Graphiteman]

I know of no artist that received/receives royalties on character design...not that there may be. Maybe if one is a big name.
Character design is generally work-for-hire.
Or you work for a corp like a gaming company or Disney, they pay you a salary but the character is their property.. but one may be acknowledged as the author of a character for historical purposes or legal needs.
Carl Barks created Uncle Scrooge....more then just design, yet he did not own the character.

IMO character design is only one aspect of the character and creation. It is a collabrative effort and I would guess would be prohibitive to pay everyone a royalty who had something to do with a character's creation.

5% (on the net or the gross?) is alot imo.

[L_Finston]

How do I determine what a buyout rate should be for a cartoon character design?

This is a tough question.

Any advice, links, experience, sample contracts, etc. you could share would help me out a lot. Thanks.

This may not address your particular problem, but it might be a good place to start:

http://genedeitch.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=chapter&chapter=9

The Society of Illustrators might also have some information on its website, or further links. I don't have the link handy, but it should be easy to find.

Laurence Finston