Good Morning you guys I had a pricing question . A client I'm doing a book for has asked me to price quote them for two images they would like me to create once the book is done. One being the head to bust drawing of a character in the book so they can turn it into either a badge/ button / banner and the other being an image of a sun/sand/surf image.

They've asked me to price these and they would like to have them both copyrighted , now one of the images I feel comfortable with drawing and giving away the rights to, which is the character for the book, the other image one I don't feel I should give away the copyrights to cause no where in this book have we made a character for the sun , or sand and it makes no sense that I give her the rights to such an open ended drawing... I feel like down the line I'd create an image just like it so the last thing I'd want is for this person to come back and say that I stole that image from them,

So I guess my question is how should I price quote these images if the client wants to turn these things into a banner ,button or badged for the book that will either be in the corner or top of the book. ( to be honest I don't really understand how it will sit on the book ? )
And is it odd that the client wants the sun /sand/water image copyrighted ???

Thanks so much for all your help you guys

(https://corcorart.squarespace.com/)

@xin-li I'm sorry for the late reply and thank you for your valuable information!
Btw I really love your art style. It's so beautiful 😊 😍

This is a follow up question from a previous post. Should an organization want to license an image for printing a single year of Christmas cards (print run of 700) and additionally print the image for use in fundraising (on cards that are handed out as donor gifts-a print run of 1500 with the image posted on their website as incentive as part of a fundraiser) what should the licensing fee be? Does it make a difference if they are fund-raising nuns? (I am actually being serious...)

Just trying to get a good picture of what is being charged for a single run art license.
Thank you in advance for the help.
Cheers,
Laura

@Judy-Elizabeth-Wilson

My initial contact with the licensing company was through a post card mailing.

@NessIllustration @Nyrryl-Cadiz @xin-li Yes, 100% agree. I'm planning to drop my first emails next week. First locally, because I have all the publishers and contacts. For worldwide I will have to do additional research (whom I targeting, which markets etc), but I will definitely throw my portfolio out there as soon as I can.

I'm ok with rejection, because I'm very critical in my work as well. I started pretty late with this at age 35 (I'm now 36), so I have a lot of catching up to do and still a lot of room to grow. My visual library isn't that extensive yet for example. Last year was all about learning via SVS, getting to know Photoshop and now it is more about putting pencil on (digital) paper, finding my style and draw, experiment and learn. Even without feedback from any publishers this forum has been a great help.

Thank you @NessIllustration this is the clarity I needed.... hard to refuse nuns, but a fundraiser using my artwork for less than pennies on the dollar for my time is easier.

I recommend the How to Discover Your Style SVS class. It's a good start to figuring out where you want to go with your art. There is a dream portfolio assignment that is perfect for this question.

@arielg I understand. Personally for smaller homework assignments I don't put a story into them, like use pattern here to draw your eye. But for the larger and at the end of the class ones (if there is one), I try to wrap up everything I learn, so that I aim to add it to my portfolio work, with story or some sort of message.

🙂

@davidhohn I understand it (i.e., this is just what I've heard people say casually), to go into business for yourself you have to do the bureaucracy to get a VAT number and then set yourself up with an accountant. This obligates you not only to pay an accountant, but also to make sizable social security payments even if you earn nothing. It's way more complicated than merely doing a schedule C, or even getting a business license in your home state and paying sales tax. I have done both in the US.

I have always planned to "go official" when I was ready to work professionally, but I never considered that work might start trickling in in amounts too small to make it worth it. The initial hurdle is high enough that you might operate at a loss, not to mention the time lost. This is in addition to the usual problem of starting artists not making much to begin with.

I honestly have no idea what all this does to contracts, but I would imagine that drawing up a contract makes you "official," and therefore subject to all the starting costs and bureaucracy. I should talk to an accountant.

Don't even get me started on doing two tax returns. I love Italy but I'm not fond of the bureaucracy!

@Jordi-Ventura

when i look at these kind of works:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/74152293/BNA?tracking_source=project_owner_other_projects

I have no idea where to start and how that color thing works so well for him.

@xin-li yes, it makes sense. I did save it as 8x10 inches at 300 dpi. I don't know why the file size is so small when it's a jpeg. I've done it before and file size was much bigger. I have more research to do to figure it out!
I wonder if there's just less information because there weren't a ton of layers and it's only black and white? I don't know if that affects anything.
I sent the PNG to the printer but I haven't heard back from them yet.

Much appreciate the help everyone 🙏. I'm slowly figuring things out. Technology isn't natural for me.

I just do what @Nyrryl-Cadiz does. The only thing to do is put all the layers for each character in one folder. It just gets to be a real pain if you revise something towards the end and then you have to find every single layer that gets affected. 😖 One thing I do is, towards the end, jump to a new PS document and start merging entire characters. I've done this up to 16 times, but it's getting better as my workflow gels. Not sure if that helps, and needless to say, it takes a ton of space.

If it's easier to organize layers in Procreate, I can't wait to get up to speed!

@xin-li Youre welcome! OBS is also a great tool. I use it as well.

@Coreyartus Thanks so much for this! It's so informative and answers so many questions that I have since learning procreate!

@eriberart Ah thanks so much, that's brilliant. Funny enough I do have to Writers and Artists Yearbook, not the children's one but I think they have a section in there for kids, don't know why I never thought to check it out! Thanks for reminding me.

I'm not super active on Twitter, maybe now's the time! 🙂

@VeronicaMui its fine to use whatever you want, but use it wisely. Reference should just be exactly that. For example, If you need to know how armour connects to a body, get loads of pictures of armour and study them, then work out how your armour would connect to your character. Work out how armour reflects light, and apply the theory to your lighting setup in your artwork. If you want to steal armour designs, steal em, but steal from lots of places and put em all on one character, and change em a bit, so your character is now unique. No copying there! If you just find a picture of a knight and copy it exactly, thats not using reference properly.

Its fine to steal. Just dont get caught! 😉

@Ari-Sorokin I usually use Venmo

@Melanie-Ortins Awesome advice. That's the exact strategy I use for portrait commissions, I'm not sure why I was so shell shocked when it came to a cover design 🙂 Of course it would work for that as well! I guess I'm still trying to figure out the right balance of "I need to make enough per hour to buy groceries" vs "no individual personal client is going to pay this much..." I'm narrowing the window.

I didn't think cover artists would get royalties for something like this but figured it was worth asking. Thanks a lot for your reply!

@Mary-Toth Your thumbnails are nicer quality than my finished product, haha! I love the one on the bottom left. The idea that the fairy is trying to figure out the plan, but that's kind of the trap, is great! Really cool ideas all around!