Alot of artists overcharge and take way too long, I'm gonna name a few artists I've had experience with and gonna give them a shout out, but one of my go to artists for painting is LYactionfigurecustom, who only charges somewhere between 50-100$ depending on the difficulty. I've also had Duke Avocado (Goodluck studios) do a couple paint and root jobs for me for $400, which I think is reasonable for the quality you're getting.
I wont lie I've bought recasts off of eBay before and it was surprisingly excellent in quality (maybe I got lucky), but I've bought custom sculpts with paint from ForestTotem who charged me $245 for a Geralt and I'm getting a custom sculpt with paint of Guts from Statsmann custom works, who gonna charge me $165.
But yeah I think it depends where you look and what you're after exactly, I've had custom heads done by multiple artists to a high standard. The headsculpt is the soul of the figure for me and I'm willing to pay for it, clothing is a different story though and I cant really justify spending custom prices on it and will usually just try and and something close off on eBay.
Again it depends what you're after and if you want that accuracy you'll have to pay big $ on it, but I'm glad a company like IA exists, I've not seen a company produce such amazing and realistic custom level quality work, they offer the whole package for the price imo. JND, I wont lie I'm not a fan of them and I don't see the value, at least the Joker had rooted hair and a ton of accessories, this Baleman seemed almost barebones and is non-posable.
Thanks for sharing those names
@Akiratang 
I'll have to look them up. Those are definitely more affordable prices than what I've heard from some of the "big name" custom artists. I definitely wasn't trying to say that there aren't a lot of good, affordable painters out there, but there is a bit of you get what you pay for at times. I don't mean that in the negative, but being realistic. Like you said, it depends on what you're after and you tend to have to pay big money for it. There's an artist I like in the US that I will probably use in the future, but I also realize they aren't Yelim, 357partment level or even Jacob Rahmier or Silent Surfer level.
Obviously I don’t mean an entire custom figure with sculpt, hands, suit, body etc. But what I do mean, is that I’d gladly pay $500 for the Iris Bruce Wayne suit, or $420 for the Yunsil bank robber 2.0 suit, than to be content with the quality of a Bruce Wayne suit from either JND or InArt. They’re just not going to go the extra mile for you to that degree, so they pad out releases with other things instead. The rags matter so very much to me for a figure, most here seem to not be bothered by it though. If I’m spending this kind of money, and can’t even enjoy the suit that makes up 80%+ of a figure, then I can’t just quickly forget about it because some random diorama is included.
I mentioned I was told first hand by the artist who tailored the InArt Phoenix Joker red suit, that they’re contractually obligated to no longer make their own run of it for custom collectors, because they’ve already done it for InArt. That bothers me, instead of being able to make multiple samples and dedicate the time and passion into getting it right, to then make a small run of a beautifully crafted suit, they just make a prototype for InArt, then move on. So now you’re robbed from them and their teams quality of work on a small scale, to having to rely on InArt, to mass produce it in hopes it’ll come out the same, which it won’t. I get it you guys hate customs, so it doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to me. These companies are sourcing a lot of custom artists, then stopping customers from getting their true quality of work.
InArt outsources custom artists to tailor their prototypes, custom artists to specifically root their hair, paint sculpts, my buddy is currently waiting on a full 2019 Joker custom project from the guy who roots InArts prototype headsculpts, he’s been waiting since 2021 with nothing to show for his expensive investment, only getting thrown around on when the project will finally materialize and ship because that artist is caught up with his new work for InArt, so the project he hasn’t gotten shipped out yet, is already severely dated compared to other releases and custom runs.
Well, this is totally different point than the argument you made previously of "if they're going to charge custom prices, they need to have custom quality." they clearly aren't doing that but they are slowly closing the gap between custom and mass produced items, at least InArt is which is a step in the right direction for all of us. At the end of the day, they aren't charging custom prices but they are slowly getting closer to custom quality.
If you or anyone is fine with paying for the custom quality that's your prerogative. I've done it before and currently doing it now wit a few custom Bond suits, Raiders Indy set and others. That doesn't mean I like to pay those custom prices but I will for the character just as you will for a character you love. But it's a choice. To say we all hate customs just b/c we're not as annoyed as you are at the things you've mentioned above is a bit of an exaggeration as there's a lot of guys who order officially licensed stuff that also buy custom stuff so we know about the price and/or quality differences. And let's not pretend that custom stuff is infallible either. Everyone feels they have the best custom suit for X character until the next tailor comes a long and does something different that is supposedly more accurate than the last one they just spent $500 on and everyone flocks to that new one in the same manner most ppl do with an official 2.0 product
I do think though that there is an understanding to a certain degree that you can still get good quality w/o paying custom prices. May not be as exact to the same exact color code etc that was used on the real film suit/props but they are close enough for a lot of ppl. That's not you obviously and that's fine, nothing wrong with that. Heck, I was annoyed that InArt didn't go as far as both Asmus and Sideshow with Gandalf's pants with the leaf pattern, but everyone else didn't care, including InArt who basically said that you can't really see it so it doesn't matter
it still annoys me having it in hand now particularly knowing that they knew about it and chose not to include it. But, you gotta pick your battles sometimes and try to find what's good about something rather only seeing what's wrong.
Also, in the grand scheme of things, yea they (InArt and JND) may be stopping
some ppl from getting the full extent of the artist's custom quality work due to contract obligations, but it's like what? 15, 30, maybe 50 people max compared to arguably thousands who will now be able to purchase a full figure. I mean look at how small and expensive the Hwa TDK Joker run is going to be compared to the thousands of full figures being sold. So yea, it sucks for you and the others who would pay through the nose for those bits, but those numbers are small compared to the more ppl, by proxy, that will be able to enjoy the custom tailor's work to a certain degree.
I know you're upset particularly about Phoenix Joker, but Kit already told us that InArt is basically making very little money on the sets which means they probably didn't have the budget to continually go back to to the tailor to revise this and that on the prototype w/o making the set cost even more. While I'm sure you might've been fine to pay a little more to get a better suit as well as some others, when you look at how many ppl are out just from how much the sets currently cost, you have to believe that even more ppl would be out if the cost was even higher. The higher the cost, the smaller your pool of customers get and at a certain point the company won't be making a profit but instead taking a loss due to the numbers not doing what they had hoped. And just b/c someone pre-orders, it doesn't mean they'll stick it out and pay up when the time comes. Heck, some folks seem to already be having buyers remorse.
It'd be so much better if the nose wasn't that thin and small. It just looks off to me.
I've send that before, but all I can see is Bale if he was a Gythyanki in Baldur's Gate.
View attachment 687093
One of the best Bale sculpts we've gotten, official or custom IMO.
