Funny. I have a Dropbox folder where I store video tours of all the apartments I've ever lived in. Like, I spend a minute or two walking around the apartment and taking a video with my phone.
I'm not sure why, exactly. Partly because it's fun to look back. Partly because I don't want to "lose" something that's been with me for so long.
I suspect that such video tours are more appropriate for a large majority of people. 10 hours and $200-$500 sounds like a lot. And you could always convert the video tour into digital art some time in the future if you find the nostalgia is really hitting you.
Pedantic correction: you have some sizes where you've written e.g. 20' x 20' and I'm pretty sure you mean 20" x 20".
(Also, the final note saying pixel art is good for crisp upscaling and you should start with the lowest-resolution version seems very weird to me, though the way it's worded makes it unlikely that this is a mistake; another sentence or so elaborating on why this is a good idea would be interesting to me.)
My guess is starting with the minimal resolution pixel art mean you can control the upscaling process and don't have to deal with any artifacts introduced in previous upscaling.
When I know that I’m going to be moving out from an apartment soon, I commission a digital artist to draw it for me. Then I print it out and I have a cool art piece. If you love your current place but you don’t think you’ll spend the rest of your life there, you should consider doing the same.
Digital artists are much cheaper than I think they should be. I’ve paid artists between $200-$500 CAD[1] for my commissions, generally spread across one or two additional housemates. (You should expect to pay more – I limit my own commissions to the common areas since my bedrooms tend to be very plain, and solely used for sleep and other private activities. Also inflation exists.)
You can also consider hiring artists from developing countries if you want your dollar to go further, but I don’t have any advice on how to seek those folks out specifically.
You’ll be looking at around 10 hours of effort on your end, frontloaded but spread out across 2-4 months. I detail my process below.
But first, here are the pieces that I’ve commissioned so far:
Aren’t they sick as hell??? I love them so much. Okay, let’s get you started on yours.
I’ll stick a sample email script at the bottom too.
Commissioning An Art Of Your Living Space, Step By Step
luster gloss poster paper
for larger prints when working with them, and in 2021 the cost was around $10 USD per poster for the dimensions i recommended above.Sample intro email
Subj: are you open to a one-off commission?
Hi [name],
Hello from [country or city]! I recently came across your work on [site], and I really like your [description] aesthetic! I’m wondering if you’d take a commission from me to do an illustration of my apartment – I’ve attached some references for styles I like and approximate level of detail expected.
My budget is around $[amount], but this is very negotiable. I’ve seen [link some images from their portfolio that you liked], and [explain why you like those images]. I’d love for you to do something similar for this piece if you’re open to it.
Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions. I’ll of course be very happy to take many reference photos for you.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
[your name]
misc notes/considerations
upscaling pixel art
for tutorials.i often want to pay them more, but, okay. imagine a venn diagram, where one side is “artists that i am able to find on the internet” (e.g. digital artists that post their work on twitter/reddit and have portfolio sites), and the other side is “artists that are willing to do apartment commissions” (e.g. they’re not saturated with a steady stream of professional projects). my vague impression is that most folks in the middle are generally doing it as a side gig or early career, and dollar signs that are too big might actually scare them off? that being said, my latest piece was done by a professional, and that was a great experience.
not to mention a creeping suspicion that some number of these are AI generated.
a lot of the art in my apartment comes from me scouring the internet for HD art images, running them through an AI upscaler if needed, and then sending them off to catprint. i also heavily endorse doing this, but if you are, note that the price comes down like 5x if you organize your online order in a specific way, because each job costs a lot, but each additional page in a job is priced marginally. so instead of submitting each image as a separate job, sort your images into a couple of standard poster sizes, and then start one job per poster size, and upload all the images for that dimension into that job. also note that their 11×17 and 12×18 print jobs are offered at a ludicrously cheap price.
this is non negotiable, frame your posters you animals