@carlianne I have only been back to this forum after half a year, and I can say... yeah it's broke 😕

Hi everyone!

I just signed up for a year long subscription to SVS and have been learning so much already. I just finished watching the mammal class and I heard some reference during those lessons to lessons on birds and other types of animals. Is there an ETA on those, or is it already out and am I just searching the wrong thing? When I searched “animal,” I didn’t see anything to follow up after the mammal one.

Thanks in advance for your help!

@melissa-bailey-0 Thank you! I scanned in greyscale because I'm a scanner newbie and I figured "thousands of grays" sounded pretty good for a pencil drawing!

Yesterday I converted the whole doc to Adobe RBG 1998 (or whatever it's called), but I'm still having the same problem. I'll see what happens if I scan in color...

Hi all,

I'm negotiating with a potential publisher for a book that I did the illustrations for (with a previous publisher that is folding). The publisher does not want to collect royalties for direct purchases by the author or myself.

For example, if the author bought 1,000 copies directly, I would not receive any royalties. This seems weird to me. Has anyone else run into this?

Would love to hear from you! 🙂

Cheers!
Jessica

@kim-hunter I also responded similarly (sans goats). Time also limits my ability to enter every month. I feel that a reasonable expectation for me would be to do my best to have something I feel comfortable entering at least a couple times per year. A stretch goal for me could be to try and enter, say, 6 challenges out of 12. For me, entering the contests also means making time for interacting in the forums. I haven't been reading the forums let alone sharing crits or posting anything in the past several months that I've been a member, even though I know it is so valuable to the education of an illustrator (both giving and receiving critique). So part of my stretch goal would need to include discussing the process with others. I think every artist's pace is valid, and I also appreciate the time constraint. In my personal work style, a tight deadline helps me to improve. At the same time I appreciate that were are not being "graded" on whether we submit something in any given month or not.

I did like the series of challenges that included character design, scene design, and a home (both Albert and Yeti). Even though I didn't submit to them all, I made attempts. One good thing about them was that there was a little bit of a preview of coming challenges, so that started the ideas percolating. So even though we didn't have the exact specs in advance, we kinda knew what to expect.

@judeweston I'm not sure which size is best for your comic, but standards for comics are 13.625"x10.5" spreads, 16.25"x10.5" spread for magazine size, or 10.5"x7.75" spread for manga.

FWIW, I very nearly used these folks, Ka-Blam Printing, when releasing a TTRPG book last year, but they didn't have the square format we were looking for. The sample stuff I've seen from them was quality though.

@danielerossi Thank you! This was helpful. On my phone and tablet, on the main screen of the profile page, more posts do not load automatically when I reach the bottom of the page, so I assumed they stopped.

BUT just now I checked the "..." next to the name at the top of the screen and found "topics" "posts" etc., which generates complete lists of everything. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for the help!

Problem solved!

( @Kim-Rosenlof , thought you might find this interesting. 🙂 )

Agree @davidhohn! A conflict of interest clause or direct competition clause would clarify this further as an ethical dilemma.

This is a great thread!

@jeremy-ross The only resizing I’ll be doing is resizing down 🙂 But for now I made a size-is template at 600 dpi. I only get 6 layers to play with but I’m fine with that as my comics are black and white 🙂

Hi everyone!
I've heard a few times on the podcast that breaking into the educational/textbook market was fairly easy, consistent work, and pays decently (if I understood correctly). I was wondering if there were any resources on how to find these jobs? Are there certain companies to reach out to? I would love any help or insight!

This would be appropriate pricing for a cover but for a book this is insulting in my opinion. Think about how much you want to earn per hour and from there figure out how long it would take you to illustrate a book. That should give you a good idea of what you should be getting paid. It’s great to get work and it’s tempting to take projects but I think your time and your artwork is worth more than this project. You’d get some good portfolio pieces out of it but if I were you I would instead spend that time working on my own projects which will also generate portfolio material.

Thanks for the advice It was all very helpful, I have an idea of how I should approach these exercises now.

@jenn Thanks for the link. I think I'll give printing it directly on watercolor paper a try first and see how it goes. For one thing, I have it already so the worst that can happen is I'll lose one sheet. I'll let you know how it goes.

Love love love!!!!! Thank you all for being so engaged and offering such great solutions. Hopefully I'll feel like I have a print to sell some day and will certainly be using all of this data. THANK YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!

@s-annisa It really comes down to what you want. Did the client contact you direct (where they wanted YOU specifically or was it via a site where they can simply click on another person's name)

The fact that it is out of the client's price range should mean little to you. Their problem.

Is this a client you will earn decent money from? Is there a possibility of continued work with them (or is it a one and done)?

Would you earn enough from this project to make it difficult to walk away from?

Personally, for a self published project I would not give them all rights because you don't know what they will do to your artwork. Whether your name is on it or not do you want your work to possibly end up on a thong on cafepress?

@Johan-Schneider

Hey!

Great start! I like the white color on the tail and under the side, It gives a good contrast to the scene.

Feedback wise:

try experimenting with a complementary color in the scene. adjust the placement of the fox, focus on the rule of thirds. slightly blur the background clouds. think about adding white to the foxes eye as the black is slightly blending into the brown.

I hope that helps 🙂

There are some excellent videos on the Graphixly Youtube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/Graphixly). I've learned a bunch from their different webinars. I think if you stick with it you'll love the software. Arranging your workspace, as obvious as that sounds, makes a big difference as it relates to learning speed. Once I learned the gist of the software and put the tools, presets, etc. of my workspace in the best places I was able to learn more quickly.

@Jeremiahbrown Thank you! I thoroughly enjoyed it!

@danielerossi I do this too!

@Matthew-Oberdier I think you may be right about that. But I also think that people who are illustrators only should be able to develop this skill. So maybe the key is to think through the story, but in pictures, not words.

I am continuing to think about this. If anyone has a good Visual Storytelling book or website to recommend, I'd be all for it!

@Melissa-Bailey-0 said in Painting the whole book in Procreate?:

The one thing that I keep in mind if I'm illustrating entirely in Procreate is not to resize anything in Procreate that will be in the final illustration. This is because when you resize bigger or smaller, or if you rotate an image, the lines pixelate.

This is indeed very annoying, but it really helps to have your scale settings on bicubic (the circle button right of ‘fit to canvas’). It makes a huge difference. But still there is some loss.