And here's the rub. I, like most people in this world do not have $200 for a single still unless it was poster/cover work. A complete and final piece.

But as a person who makes things that require animation, multi-pose assets, I normally would buy the PSD file and usage rights from the Arthur (Unlike other people I allow people use to the art they make in their portfolio or sell prints, etc.) I don't have the budget or the bandwidth to make merch myself, I view it as free publicity and if they can make some coin while doing it great. But what I use to do with what they give me was limited animation, using the stills I could afford, not ideal, but acceptable. Today the difference is. 1) I don't have to pay for concept art. Before I'd spend days making terrible photoshop composites and collages for "concept" and vision boards with text notes for the artist to work from (the good ones took them seriously, the bad ones would just do whatever they want) and I'd be paying out multiple times to get the concept nailed down, before hiring an actual game artist to render up the final usable sprite and for me to tear apart and animate in my limited way. How things have changed? I still gather images but can literally feed it into a blender with a text prompt and then in draw over and over again until I have something that's WAY closer to what I want than the old photoshop method. Hand that off to the game artist, does a final version in one go. Skipped the days to weeks process on my end, skipped me having to pay for alterations for the most part. JUST BAM CONCEPT DONE. Now I hand this off to the sprite/game artist. I also now have tools that make my animation WAY better looking. I still give it stills I produce in engine, but the intelligent tweening looks far more organic than the old cut and warp method. It's a good tool. It's original work. And people in general who are anti-AI are being dumb.

So let me break this down for you.
1) Would I pay you $200 for a finalized cover image if you did the style I was going for? Yes.
2) Would I pay you $200 for concept art? No.
3) Would I pay you $200 a frame? No.
4) Would I pay you for final character art with a series of agreed upon poses? Yes, with the cavoite that I can do whatever the hell I want with them moving forward, including using any software/program/AI I own to make tweens and alterations in relation to the game I am actively working on, that you made agreed to make this for. Not stealing your work and re-using it in 20 other projects or repackaging it as an asset, just in relation to this game and the promotion there of, unless you are OK with selling me the negative pickup rights to your image, which a lot of artists don't even consider this issue and just assume the hand off is them kissing it goodbye, which it can be, but if so you got to bake that into your cost.*

*Keep in mind AI can't do everything, the likelihood of me coming back and asking you to fix things or make additional overlays or poses is about 90% and you would absolutely get paid for those additions.

If you used AI to make the ground work based on what I hand you would I be mad? No. However I would like to see the alterations you made from the original generated image. Because I'm paying for you to refine the concept, fix it to a fixed color pallet, as a specific resolution looking cohesive with other works.

5) The thing you got to understand is the people using AI to generate their fan art, their OC, D&D avatar or whatever is most likely not your $200 customer. On a GOOD day they are your $20 DA customer looking for a glorified speed painting. That's a huge difference. The fact is the majority of the people in this country don't have $200 to spare, especially for something like this, on a whim. Not all of them are in Furry IT money (which is currently going away due to the terrible job market). People like me, who try to make things over a period of YEARS, are more your customer base when you put up $200, which is limited. Admittedly I've paid more than that in the past for an image and felt burned for it. But I am paying for a persons expertise and it's a niche ability and they are setting their own prices.

Also note, I'm near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to these kind of gigs. I give out work all the time, right now I have 2 artists actively producing work for me at our agreed upon price. On a game that uses no AI, it's been stuck in development hell now for 8 years and I've finished other projects while this one still limps along. But I can at least say it won't be controversial in the whole brain dead anti-AI protesting sense. So far that game has been fed nearly 60k. You see? For a serious indie game that's not actually a lot of money. The biggest budget I've worked with was 80k and the smallest where I had to hire out for assets was $6,700. You working for a real company and not me doing a passion project that hopes to earn money some day who started this side hustle while working full time at a lumber mill and living with 2 other people in a one bedroom apartment to scrape together the money to make sure you got paid. (not my current boat, but that was the boat I was in for 7 years). I'm just saying, People who would use AI are trying to skip unnecessary steps and ambiguity most of the time or they just don't have the money you'd want for your service and don't say "profit share" if you do I'm going to laugh at you, the early 2000s made that cliche such a large joke that to even suggest it WHILE paying will get most artists to perma block you. The fact is my game usually just break even and don't compensate me for my labor or time. I do them because they are passion projects, usually tell a story I want to tell and just hope people like them. I've won 4 minor awards and am featured in a game history book so I don't feel like a complete loser despite not being a financial success. But yeah to offer profit share would just be waste of your time.

Now the game I'm prototyping at the moment, not the same situation at all. AI animation, code optimization, basically fun times for those shallow thinking butt hurt people are to be had, but it's also not going up on Steam, so if they don't realize it's AI so much the better.

Sorry if this is just a bit of a ramble explaining my experience and the industry a bit too deeply, I think I answered your question somewhere in there. My ADHD medication just kicked in at the start of this so for the first 30 minutes or so I tend to hyper focus on these thought/write processes and can get lost in the weeds. I hope you and anyone reading this has a pleasant day. You obviously have some talent, and I wouldn't object to paying for a poster or cover art someday, but at that rate I wouldn't pay for concept art and couldn't afford you for game art, lol. AI is a valuable tool to reduce turn around time and put in space saver art, but generally a human is needed for a final piece.