Your opinion on painting skins to sell to a virtual racetrack

Hi there! In my old college town, Vila Real, opened recently a virtual racetrack place where they race, obviously, mostly in their home town racetrack, the Vila Real Circuit. I contacted them because I've been, little by little, painting the cars that raced there in the glory days between the 30s and 70s, and was wondering if they were interested in those skins.
They said they were interested and asked me how much would it cost them.
Now, I've never painted for money, does anyone have any idea how much would such work be worth charging for? Before even wondering that, is it wrong to charge for skins? I mean, I don't know exactly how does a business like that run, if they only use the cars available in the original rFactor or if they download more from sites like Evolution. Would that be wrong?
I mean, I was gonna paint them anyway for free share, but if I did, and they where going to make money out of it, I might as well make a contract that interests both parties and that is fair. Do you think I could still share them as freeware here after being painted under contract? Also, if I paint under contract, I might do a few every week, but otherwise i might just do a few every month or year.
Give me your opinion please, I really don't know what to do in this situation.

My opinion only...

Those cars you paint for money should not be posted for free elsewhere. That's morally dishonest...

However, should you paint the cars you want and donate them to the virtual track folks, you wouldn't be in a quandary; you'd be doing what you always do, and getting no end of personal enjoyment from your efforts. You also should consider how much you'd make. If those people only want a quantifiable number of cars (say, 5-10), it may not be worth the aggravation of not releasing those 'paid for' cars to the general public\simmers, and therefore not worth the trouble.

I agree with a lot of what MOF says except I think you should charge them for the skins you do for them (and them only). If you feel it's not quite right you could always give any money you make to a charity of your choice.

As for wanting to know how much you should ask then I cannot tell you as I have no idea either, but if you are donating money to a charity then you could ask them "How much are you prepared to donate for them?"

Thanks for your answers! It will probably be around 200 cars, if we count only the GT and TC cars from the 60s and 70s, so once I have a finished product it kind of would be a shame not to share anywhere else. But on the other hand, since I'm doing now a full-time internship with no pay, any amount of income would be welcomed, and this would certainly be a good way to earn something with the little free time I have now, I guess...
I think I'll try my luck. Also I may be overvaluing my work, the Vila Real Circuit means a lot to me, but I don't think it means a lot to the other modders around here..

You must remember that the greatest artists of the Past died poor and they became famous after their death.Do it for free there's some sort of moral code for the skinners we do it for fun and pleasure.That way we are free to reproduce the cars and logos with copyright.If you earn money with copyrighted stuff you'll have the lawyers after you.

Ned wrote:

You must remember that the greatest artists of the Past died poor and they became famous after their death.Do it for free there's some sort of moral code for the skinners we do it for fun and pleasure.That way we are free to reproduce the cars and logos with copyright.If you earn money with copyrighted stuff you'll have the lawyers after you.

Good point Ned!!

GeeDee wrote:

Ned wrote:

You must remember that the greatest artists of the Past died poor and they became famous after their death.Do it for free there's some sort of moral code for the skinners we do it for fun and pleasure.That way we are free to reproduce the cars and logos with copyright.If you earn money with copyrighted stuff you'll have the lawyers after you.

Good point Ned!!

I completely agree with Ned about this point!

Yes, I imagined that there would be for certain an unspoken moral code not to make earnings out of this, I wanted to know for sure from you guys. Either way I probably would not have time in the near future to do all that, I'll certainly still paint those skins, but on a long run future.