Reasonable time to paint character art?

[biomanz]

I'm wondering what's a reasonable time frame for painting a character art in Photoshop or any other software, assuming you already have some reference picture on hand. Specifically, how long would a studio expect you to finish something like:

http://www.escalationstudios.com/news_images/Severity_Characters_HR.jpg

or

http://www.unlimitedgamer.net/wp-con.../ff13scan1.jpg
(don't think that's a 3d model, or is it?)

minus the backgrounds, from sketch to finish. I'm thinking the FF one would take longer than the first since it's cleaner and more detailed. Also, how long would it likely take just to sketch out either on paper or tablet?

Trying to force myself to focus more and do stuff faster instead of being too relaxed, since I'm not being paid to

[Aseph]

To be honest with you those two pieces could have taken any length of time, but I would imagine it would all depend on the deadline of the project and how detailed you're required to be. In the case of those two works the first may have taken anywhere from a few hours to maybe seven. For the second one, looks like a 3d model maybe even taken through ZBrush or Mudbox than ran through Photoshop for post, I'd say a little over a week for those whom are centered

Really you should try and be as fast as you can while keeping you quality together.

Hope that helps

WN-

[biomanz]

Yeah I figured my question was pretty vague and the answer depends on so many factors, but still wondered if there's a time frame employers would expect an artist to finish within, just to get an idea of the standards (if any) in the industry.

[sampson]

i'm quite sure that ff is a 3d model. they make some fantastic cut-scene pre rendered stuff (as well as ingame) they have experts you know - zbrush/mudbox pros, modellers, texturers and i'm sure a lot of work went into making that.

[Talon]

You can find that even if you spend ages getting it all perfect, chances are you'll have to rework or rethink parts of the design anyway.

I can't really speak for real studios, but stuff we've had done on HB (that meets that sort of quality) I think was around a couple of evenings per piece, which were based of 6 quick sketches that got done before breakfast, all by a very talented artist. Other pieces we had done ranged from a week to an evening's work. And even they got reworked later on to fix up some stuff :P

And yeh, the FF one is a 3D model.