#dearartdirector

[dearartdirector]

Dear ADs, What do I do when an AD doesn’t respond and takes forever to give feedback on sketches and WIPs? It’s only my second job with a publisher and I was given a pretty tight deadline but had to wait 3-5 days for an answer between each step, so I ended up working on weekends and through a national holiday to still deliver on time and it’s really messing with my health. Is that normal? -Thank you!

Anonymous - it's okay to ask for deadline extensions!!! In the future, if you're on a tight deadline, ask the AD to respond to you within a certain timeframe. For example, "In order to meet the deadline of (DATE), I need feedback from you by (DATE). Looking forward to hearing the team's thoughts on these sketches." That way, you're letting the AD know what YOU need in order to meet the deadline. It's a polite way of putting the ball in their court.

If they don't send feedback by the date you asked for, a good AD will offer you a deadline extension. If they don't, it's okay to ask for one. "Because of the delay in receiving feedback, a deadline extension on this would be really helpful for me. Would it be possible to move it back to Monday?" An extension might not always be possible, but it doesn't hurt to ask. A good AD will not think less of you for asking. An AD who takes forever to respond, won't budge on the deadline, and gets mad at you for asking, is a crummy AD.

-Agent Thumbnail

[mayakern]

Hi, you've inspired me a lot to pursue the prospect of being a freelance artist. I've spent a long time giving up my ambitious for the security of a paycheck and currently work at a soul-killing job. I finally have the drive, support and confidence to start investing in it. Any suggestions for someone starting out selling their own art?

i’m not sure what advice to give since i really didn’t enjoy working freelance, except please please take care of your health and don’t let a client with a big name underpay you just because they’re a big name or you like the property. i’d also recommend reading the blog @dearartdirector they will have way better advice than me (someone who has not taken freelance work since 2017)

[checanty]

Hey there!Not to be too corny or over the top, but you are like my favorite contemporary artist and your work is so very inspiring to me! You probably get this question a lot, but are there any tips or things you would tell someone who is currently early in their artistic career(and facing graduating art school soon)? Anything you wish you had heard or been told? Additionally~what's your favorite ghost story? Have you stumbled across any interesting myths or fairytales lately? Thanks! Peace out~

Oh my, you’re being too kind!! You know, the thing with artists just starting out is that there’s no real blanket advice to give as everybody’s in a different situation with different ambitions, personalities and so on. Like there’s some advice good for one person which might devastate another. So my first piece of advice is to take all advice with a grain of salt. Do you feel it applies to you? If it does, great! If it doesn’t, well it’s for somebody else. Don’t fret about people claiming you have to do/be one thing or another to be successful as an artist. (Apart from ‘Don’t be a dick’ which is always helpful.)The second piece of advice is to find your community! Find the places on the internet (or locally if there are any) where the people who are in your situation or are doing the job you want to do hang out. Find the places designed to help you out. (You already know @dearartdirector, right?)Nowadays that’s mostly Facebook groups, some of them secret, so maybe you’ll have to ask somebody if they know a place. There’s a bunch of stuff for children’s book illustrators (also on Twitter!), but there’s e.g. a group especially for female (and non-binary & transgender) illustrators working in the fantasy genre. It’s an amazingly helpful even to read what everybody else deals with, pros and beginners alike and a safe place to ask questions and find support. I’m also in a group for German illustrators which is good for keeping up with changes in laws or the postal system (I KNOW, boring but important and confusing!). Third piece of advice: Be prepared for the paperwork. Seriously, there’s going to be way too much paperwork. I’m sorry. One of my art school teachers told me the hard thing is to find the clients and you can always figure out the paperwork later and I don’t agree. Figure out the paperwork. Get help to figure out the paperwork. But maybe I’m just very easily stressed out about this stuff.Fourth piece of advice: Try everything once and feel free to fail, quit and dislike. I don’t need to tell you that being and artist/illustrator isn’t a particular secure or straight forward path. You can only find yours if you figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Don’t limit yourself to an idea of what you want to be doing. Chances are you don’t even quite know everything out there. Chances are you might not even like the realities of your dream job. E.g. I’ve come to the realization that I’m a good commercial artist but would make a shitty fine artist. I love freelance illustration but dislike the whole ‘artist as an entrepreneur’ thing. I don’t like Patreon. Streaming is bad for me and my process. Exhibiting in galleries is a waste of time for me. But I had to try that stuff out first, didn’t I? There are artists doing work in a similar vein as me who are successful doing just those things, but they are different people with different paths. Number five: Don’t write e-mails or make decisions when you feel super emotional.

Number six: Get all the sleep you need and take care of yourself. I don’t have to say that ‘making it’ (whatever that means) as an artist requires much hard work and discipline and so on. But. Your hard work is much better spent when your brain is actually capable of functioning. Spending less hours doing good work is better than grinding for days feeling listless and distracted, no? Think long term.  I know there’s somewhat of an expectation to have everything now and be young and successful and so on. But. No use being young and successful if you’re burnt out and unhappy. Your job isn’t you, art isn’t everything and the important part is that you’re okay. Take time to change and grow as a person. You know, all that stuff. I’m sure I’ll remember some seventh piece of advise which is of utmost important as soon as I post this.I mean there are also the classics: Make good work and show it to the right people. (It’s true! It’s this easy! Seriously, though. It’s good advice. I like it because sometimes the mind gets messy and you see other folks do great things and do shiny projects and such and then it’s nice to remember this and just keep your head down and do the work.)The whole ‘Finished, not perfect’ thing. It is also true. Don’t be effing precious with your work. You’re going to make a lot of it. Some will suck, some will be great. Some will just do the job and that’s fine. I mean, you should try for great, but realize it probably won’t happen. Most people won’t be as critical with your work as you are.Now I’m done, I think.Oh yes, ghost story. I don’t really read many of those. You’ll find I’m actually consuming very little horror related media. I have a favourite ghost story movie though, which is ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ (good old GDT!).I have no interesting folklore for you either! I recently went through an Arthurian Legends phase, mostly because it’s so fascinating how the whole thing is basically fanfiction of fanfiction and there might actually never have been canon. (At least non that is reliably preserved) So everything is kind of valid. (And it’s interesting to see when different characters and aspects started to pop up and how they changed and so on!)I hope that helps!

[lwd-indy]

We love @dearartdirector!

This advice blog skews more towards freelance illustrators, but still a great resource to check out. Start with the FAQ section and then enjoy the rest!

[pangur-and-grim]

I am a college student deciding on my major and have an interest in illustration. What key factors helped you decide to become an illustrator and do you have any possible advice? Sorry if this is too vague of a question! (ﾐⓛᆽⓛﾐ)✧

WHOOPs, sorry for answering this late!

if I took a job in any other field (biology, medicine, etc.) I’d stop doing art. & that thought was too painful for me, so I clawed my way into a 4 year Illustration degree

here’s my advice: research heavily what you’re aiming for, & create a back-up way of earning money. it took me WAY too long to figure out both those things

for example, what I’m aiming for is natural history illustration targeting museums, gift shops, & educational kids books. and (because I’ve chosen an extremely narrow field & it’s going to take time for my career to develop enough to support my living costs) my back-up way of earning money is selling prints/commissions online, and setting up stalls at air fairs/conventions

another illustrator I know wants to do editorial illustrations & gifs for online/print magazines, and is earning back-up money through retail work. another friend wants to do stop-motion animation, and earns back-up money selling fanart prints/charms/patches at anime conventions across the continent

secondary advice: learn non-art stuff! learn the business side of things, how to craft a contract & not get screwed, when to get a lawyer, how to file receipts, what you can write off as a business-expense on your taxes, how/when to send self-promotional cards to art directors, emailing strategies, the fundamentals of graphic design, etc. you’re operating a small, isolated one-person business, & it can be pretty stressful & time consuming!

@dearartdirector is a great blog to look at if you want a sense of what freelance illustration entails

[dearartdirector]

I am an illustrator and worked on a first round of a recipe book with an "Art" publishing company. The payment was low, but I figured it to be since, its the first time the restaurant group did something like this. Second time around I got a little more confident in my contracts and when they wanted illustration copyrights in perpetuity with no extra pay, I said No. I was then accused of trying to steal ideas from the restaurant and the publisher would let everyone know I was. Is this normal?

Is it normal? Depends on what you mean by “normal” and let me elaborate...

Is it “normal” as in are they right? No. It’s not right that a collaborator should immediately jump to accusations when an artist asks to alter a contract or adjust a working agreement. I don’t know enough specifics here to know whether they could pay you more or if they could have worked out limited licensing terms that worked for everyone, but regardless the answer is not to fly off the handle with threats.

Is it “normal” as in does this kind of thing happen frequently? Yes. There’s a few things at play here. 

A) Intellectual Property Law is very confusing and intricate and instead of admitting that they don’t understand the nuances, people with insecure egos try to intimidate other folks into backing down. 

B) The Restaurant Biz is full of these types of toxic egos, and depending on whether you were dealing with the food folks or the book folks directly that could be a factor. If they are a legit publisher they should have been able to explain their stance on rights to you, and either there would have been room to negotiate or not, but it shouldn’t have been an anger-causing situation. Lots of companies have perfectly understandable reasons for wanting the rights they do, and they should be able to explain why. That’s why I suspect either you were dealing with an inexperienced publisher or directly dealing with the restaurant side folks.

C) Our society, especially in the US/UK, where I am assuming this happened, has steadily underfunded and eroded not only Arts education but also the role of Artists in society. Thus the knee-jerk responses that Artists are always going to be poor and lazy. This is so prevalent that even creative folks themselves sometimes internalize this hatred and it lashes out at other creatives. I see this all the time when Artists are furious if anyone steals their work but are infuriated by the idea that they should be paying to use the music behind their time-lapse videos (just a recent example). That instant fury is a clue that someone is not reasoning rationally, that you’ve tripped over some internalized bullshit. Unfortunately you’re not their therapist and the best way to deal with that is not work with them again.

All in all, the answer you’re really looking for is yes, you were right and justified in discussing terms and even if you were asking for wildly too much, or if you did not understand the business situation (I’m not saying you did, just saying worst case scenario) it should have started a conversation not be responded to with threats and intimidation.

—Agent KillFee

[dearartdirector]

Hello! Thank you so much for being around and sharing so much knowledge, it's truly a sight for sore eyes after new social media mess every other week. I hope this is not too dumb thing to ask, but I'm working on my portfolio and got overwhelmed by a possible technical issue: how do you calibrate right colors when working with artists? I've got a samsung and asus monitors and they are impossible to synchronize, so assuming people have various options too - oof, must be a handful.

In industries where the final product is going to print, the general rules are:

1— Work in RGB, at at least 300dpi at double the printed size (or 600dpi at double the size) unless otherwise noted. Deliver in RGB. The folks in-house are going to convert to CMYK to their profiles set and synced with whatever printer they’re using, and that can vary wildly. Also, everything that’s print still ends up online to sell on a website or post on social and the colors always look better in RGB.

FYI: if you have someone ask you to deliver in CMYK, or you’re going to send something to a printer yourself,��keep it RGB until the very last moment, then group it and convert the group to a smart object. This will preserve the layers, but look like it’s been flattened. You can convert that file to CMYK, but if you double click the Smart Object then all the RGB layers are editable. Magic! Obviously this is in Photoshop, but the other programs have versions of this as well.

2 – You can ask what general color profile they’re using, there’s a ton built into most art programs, and all adobe programs. But honestly, there’s so much color correction done in house before something goes tot he printer that we don’t expect an illustrator to know. You have to set DMAX (Maximum Ink Density) depending on what paper and lamination you’re using. Then you also have to know matte lam makes things tend pink, gloss lam makes things tend towards yellow and more contrast. The grittier the matte coating the less dense the blacks, etc etc. In other words, it’s fine to ask, but the answer is probably going to be “don’t worry about it, work in RGB” because you’d never expect to send something from a freelancer straight in the same file to the printer.

—Agent KillFee

[dearartdirector]

Hi! I'm currently illustrating a book for a client. It's not the style I'm trying to build my career on, and it's in general a bit weird. I'd like my name to be associated with my personal style and work only, so I don't want my name on this book. But this client is furious and keeps insisting I have to send them my photo and bio to include in the book. My question is, is anonymity my right in this situation, if this issue was never mentioned in the contract?

If this is a picture book, then having the illustrator’s name and bio (but not necessarily photo) is standard. If this is just a book cover, then usually the illustrator’s name is mentioned on the back cover and the copyright page, nothing more. If the case is the latter, and the client is still insisting on your photo and bio, politely let them know that that’s not “industry standard.”

If this is a picture book or a graphic novel or something, well, it IS industry standard to include the illustrator’s name, and if you insist on being anonymous then you’re the one making things weird. That’s like asking your date not to tell anyone that you’re dating. They will, understandably, be insulted.

The good news is that, unless this book goes viral or becomes a bestseller, it isn’t going to define your career. You don’t have to put any of this work in your portfolio or post about it on social media. (Unless that’s part of your contract.) Having one project out there in a different style won’t determine your career forever, but you’ll have to course-correct by producing new portfolio pieces that ARE in your preferred style. Eventually the “a bit weird” book will drop down in the Google search results and in your memory, like that person you once dated who was also “a bit weird” and you’d prefer to forget.

-Agent Thumbnail

[dearartdirector]

I don't have a question but just wanted to say thank you so so much for taking the time to answer everyone's questions. It is greatly appreciated by me and I'm certain everyone else too. I hope you'll have a wonderful day and if it isn't then maybe some appreciation'll make it a bit better. :)

IT DOES! THANK YOU.

Seriously, folks. 2020 is hard. For everyone. And so many people are scared & angry & taking it out on people on social media. Unfortunately people are much more likely (about 10x more likely) to post negative comments than positive ones, even if they feel positively about more things. So take a moment, go out and send someone a positive comment or note when you can. It’ll make social media a kinder place.

—All Agents

[dearartdirector]

Hey ADs! I took on a design/branding project last month that was described as "we want you to draw this in *your* style"- it's devolved into a nightmare. I've done 1000x revisions and they now want me to make it look like some other art style they found online. It no longer makes sense time or money-wise to keep on working on this project. I need to quit- but how do I leave in the middle with the project unfinished and still come off looking professional?

Well that certainly does not seem sustainable!   To me, it sounds like either a very inexperienced team, or a stakeholder with a lot of power changing their minds about what they want.  If this is something they do a lot, it won’t be the first time an artist has left mid-project.  Who knows, maybe they’re used to in-house artists who can iterate eternally if salaried. 

What does your contract say? Depending on your contract, you might need to consider this a hard lesson learned and not be paid at all. Some contracts have a maximum number of revisions before additional compensation is required, but many do not.  In either case, letting them know that you are out of time to work on the project and will need to stop work now if the original brief and style requirements are changing abruptly is not unprofessional.  Be respectful with your phrasing, and you should be fine. If you are feeling especially generous, compromise with “I can make the following alteration, but then I’m done regardless of approval state”. and leave it up to them. 

Sometimes projects spiral, and especially if the vision and direction keep switching, sometimes leaving a project is necessary. It happens. Be proud of yourself for recognizing the situation and doing what you need to!

-Agent Critique

[dearartdirector]

This blog has been incredibly useful to me for years, and now it is my one-year anniversary of becoming an AD myself :) I am grateful for your insight and levelheadedness! Do you have any advice for an AD starting out? I love our team, and I think they all enjoy their jobs. My biggest trouble right now imo, is that while I have a lot of 2D experience, I know next to nothing about 3D. Our 3D modelers often have to explain a lot of stuff to me OTL Is that normal...?

For brand new shiny ADs, absolutely! If you could do everything, you would...do....well, you wouldn’t have the time to do EVERYTHING. But nobody (nobody reasonable, anyways) expects an administrator to be an expert in all areas they administrate, especially at first!  

I should qualify this with saying that the phrase “Art Director” means something different for every industry, and darn near every company and studio. Since you’re dealing with both 2D and 3D I’m assuming you’re in video games or animation, so Imma roll with generally how those industries are put together.

As no doubt you’ve discovered by now (and so many new ADs are surprised at this), there is often very little art making in art direction. It is, very VERY often, a COMPLETELY different skillset from creating art.  (Congratulations on surviving your first year of flinging your body on the most dangerous metaphorical fire to put it out, hey!) Most Art Directors spend the majority of their time communicating, clarifying, and mediating the big picture vision and things like timeline expectations and budgets with the other teams and the stakeholders to manage expectations and clear obstacles so your people can do their jobs without all that back and forth getting underfoot. You’re an ambassador, the voice of your team to other teams, and the voice of everyone else to your team.

Because of that, clarity of communication, being able to define the goalpost and not keep moving it, not necessarily the technical knowledge of how to do every little thing, is what is required of you. So it sounds like you’ve got a leg up; an AD who listens to their team is a great thing!   

-Agent Critique

[dearartdirector]

Hello! Is there any standard pricing structure for illustrating for a brand's social media?

We get a lot of questions here about price lists and such, and the problem with price lists is not that IT’S A BIG SECRET (which is what everyone thinks) it’s just that pricing is complicated. It’s a Venn diagram of what size the company is, how experienced you are, and how much time there is to do the job. That’s why we can’t spit out prices easily, and why all “Standard Pricing Manuals” never really help all that much. There’s too much variation. If I knew what company it was, what your work was, and what the deadline was, I could ballpark you a number, but we can’t just toss prices out into the void, they’re not really useful.

—Agent Moneypenny

[dearartdirector]

Dear AD, Have you ever read the contracts you ask illustrators to sign ? If so, how do you feel about the rise of more and more predatory contracts asking for moral rights to be waived, exclusivity or never ending usages for very little money ? I understand these contracts are written by legal people and not ADs so what would be the best way to tell an AD that their contract is abusive and needs to be edited ?

Look, my first piece of advice would be to start on a much less confrontational footing. Even here. “Have you ever read the contracts you ask illustrators to sign” is a little insulting. Of course we read them! Many of us were in the room working with legal the entire time they were being drawn up. 

I don’t think it’s helpful to look at contracts in terms of “abusive” and “predatory”. No one sits in a legal department like a cartoon villain rubbing their hands together yelling BWAH HA HA ARTISTS WILL OWN NONE OF THEIR OWN WORK! And thinking that is the case honestly makes it much harder to deal with very legitimate contractual concerns with a level head. 

Legal departments exist to protect the companies that hired them. And the best protection, from the company’s POV, is to own all the rights. That’s what a lawyer will counsel every time. What a good Art Director will do is explain to the company they work for that more rights = more pay and that asking for only the rights you actually need saves the company money. In some companies that works. In others it doesn’t. No one is forcing you to work for a company with a overreaching contract, but it is worth taking a moment and asking the AD if there’s something they can do to adjust the contract. Sometimes a legal dept. will not let an AD change the contract, but they will have a notes section where the AD can add things in to elaborate on the details (mine does). Sometimes the legal dept. will draw up a new contract. Sometimes there’s nothing they can do, but they can put in an email things to address your concerns, and the physical record of an email is as admissible in court as a contract modifier. 

Also remember, some companies have a perfectly legit reason to ask for things considered “predatory” like Work For Hire. If you are working on someone else’s IP or copyright (like most movies, comic books, games, toys, licensed books, etc) then you will not own the copyright to your own work regardless of what any contract says because your work is derivative of the original copyright. So every one of those contracts is going to be Work For Hire. (That’s also the issue with fan art, by the way, and most artists don’t understand that either)

The point is, you don’t know until you ask – and remember, almost no one asks. I’ve been an AD for almost 20 years and I can count on my fingers how many artists came back with questions about my companies’ contracts. And that’s not because they weren’t overreaching – it’s because most artists don’t read the contract. I know a legit question about terms will be met with praise by most ADs, because it proves they have a savvy professional on their hands. That means you’re probably going to be a professional about getting the job done too.

A good rule of thumb is not to assume the worst before even asking. ADs are not the enemy, they’re your collaborators. You can tell a lot by how they answer your questions. If they are dicks then run away. But there may be very good answers to your questions.

—Agent MoneyPenny

P.S. Pricing is a whole different issue and this post is already long. Only work for the companies that pay too little if you need the experience. Who needs the experience? Folks who may not have made the connections higher up the food chain yet, and doing the lower-paid work will get them there. Or maybe they don’t have the skill for the higher-paying work yet. But these low-paying gigs should only be a step up the ladder & you should move on as soon as possible. And another option is to skip this step entirely, and work on your skill and/or connections on your own time while you work a non-freelance-art job to pay the bills until you’re ready.

[dearartdirector]

Dear Art Directors! Thank you so much for all the helpful answers. I have a book cover licensing question! I licensed a cover piece to a different company for an audiobook version. While I only gave them the type-less art I created, I noticed they ended up using the full cover from the original publisher. I don't know if a separate agreement is usually reached between publishers concerning the in-house designer's work. Is this something I should bring up with the designer? Thank you!

This area of licensing is called “Sub-Rights” and it’s a very standard part of publishing. The publisher who initially buys the manuscript and releases the book has a contract for a certain amount of rights from the author. Usually it’s for certain formats (Hardcover, paperback, ebook, digital audio, physical audio, large print, etc) and certain languages/territories. If another publisher wants to bring out that same book in a different format or region or language, they have to contract that with the author (if the author retained those rights) or with the originating publisher (if the publisher, say, bought world rights). Either way, there’s no point in re-editing the book from scratch, you want the version the originating publisher finished. But to do that you need to pay for the work that publisher did. 

If you want to use the same cover, you need to pay for that too. If it has art on it from a freelance artist then you have to go back to the original art contract and see what the AD licensed. If the originating publisher bought all the book usage from the artist then the 2nd publisher pays the first publisher. But if the 1st publisher didn’t license the art for, say, other languages or formats, then the 2nd publisher is directed back to the artist to negotiate a re-use fee with them directly.

Once that is done, however, they usually are still going to use the files from the 1st publisher because the design and type and final color correction is part of those files. They were really only renegotiating the USAGE from the freelance artist, not the actual file. But they usually take the file too, just in case they need it.

In MOST cases the 2nd publisher has already talked to the 1st publisher and that is how they knew to contact you to reuse the art. They would have checked to see if the 1st publisher licensed the rights. Sometimes there’s something shady going on, with very small publishers or some foreign countries, but I wouldn’t expect the artist to be policing that. If a 2nd publisher comes to you looking to relicense art, they’re usually legit, or they wouldn’t have contacted you at all. 

And in that case, let me answer the next question: negotiate whatever you can for the reuse fee, but know it’s usually much less than the original fee. 2nd format publishers and foreign publishers usually have very little budget to relicense art. Consider it a little bonus money, and don’t stress too much about figuring out exactly what it’s worth in the book market. You can always say no if you don’t want them to use it, but honestly it’s usually only $100-$500 max.

—Agent KillFee

[dearartdirector]

Hello! I looked through your tags but couldn't find anything addressing this, so I figured I'd ask. Is it normal to be asked to sign an NDA before you find out the details on a project? I haven't been told if I'm hired yet, and they said they'd give details on pay and things after I sign the NDA. also, NDAs just say I can't talk about the work, not a contract saying I'm agreeing to work with them, right? Tysm!

You are correct! It’s not a contract for work and payment, just an official way for everyone to understand that even if you ultimately turn down the job, the details of the job will still remain confidential. It’s a very common practice when bigger Intellectual Properties are involved.

Agent Critique

[dearartdirector]

Hi, what practical steps should I take to be an illustrator for children literature?

Well, that’s way to big a question for this format...but luckily for you, we have an entire course on Art Business, and we’ve discounted it by 90% to help artists for the duration of the quarantine: https://gumroad.com/drawnanddrafted?recommended_by=search#Kbqkw

And you can always download our Art Business Onesheets for free on gumroad as well: https://gumroad.com/drawnanddrafted?recommended_by=search

And last but not least you can join our supportive Art Business Community on Slack (usually $10/month but we’ve waived the fee while the quarantine lasts): https://gumroad.com/drawnanddrafted?recommended_by=search#RpUaf