>Reply to your message of 1/28/98 8:10 AM
>How much does it cost to produce artwork? (labels & manual)
>Bob?
Well, this is a fairly complicated question. Let me explain:
When I decided to go with a color label for Okie Dokie, I called a lot of places for estimates. Kinko's turned out to be the moste economical. Roloff De Jeau designed the label for me and I brought a disk to Kinko's and rented computer time to print the labels out. The machines at Kinko's were SLOW, and I had to pay for computer time AND each printout ($2 per page). I got 5 labels per page, which made each label 40 cents PLUS another 20 cents for computer time for each label. Then I had the labels laminated (on one side) which added another (estimated) 10 cents per label. Next I had to spray adhesive on the labels, adding about 5 cents per label. This brings the cost of supplies for the labels to about 75 cents, a pretty reasonable price. Now you have to figure in the time it took to make the labels if you seriously want to determine the "cost". Well, this is very arbitrary, but let's assume that your time is worth $15/hour (I know mine is worth more to me, but just go along :). It took about 2 hours to make 25 labels, cut them out, and apply them, so we're talking $30 for 25 labels, or 84 cents per label. Now we are up to $1.59 per label. The manual cost like 20 cents or so for a double sided card-stock copy, so we are at about $1.80 per cart.
Whew! I told you it was complicated! Now, you have to figure in the time I spent experimenting with getting the printout just right, resizing, editing, etc - this was time I was being charged by Kinko's. I don't even know what this was, I must have spent $30 before I produced the first full label.
The moral of the story is that it isn't cheap and it isn't easy to make the labels. I learned a lot, and have found that I can print color stuff out A LOT cheaper through the printshop at work, and with better quality (if you've seen the booklet that comes with the SAS CD or the cassette insert for the SAS tape you'll agree).
As far as carts go, I'd say that they ended up costing about $5 - $7 each in just materials alone, the most expensive part being the the EPROM. The carts took a LOT of time to make also. Check out my homepage, I have a page dedicated to the process I used to make the carts:
http://www.novia.net/~rcolbert/okieproc.htm
Later,
Bob
Later,
Bob
Wanna write a game for the Atari 2600?
Check out http://www.novia.net/~rcolbert
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