Actually I’m on vacation! But, there’s still work either in progress or waiting for me when I get back:

• Book Illustration- Doing a ten page/cover job for a book pitch. Don’t worry, I’m getting paid for it whether the book get’s picked up or not.
• Warner Bros. Video Box Artwork- a spot illustration that is being used for product packaging.
• NCS Reuben Brochure Art- My usual artwork for the cover of the Reuben Brochure.

Here’s my latest Marlin workplace poster illustration, pencil roughs and finals. There were some changes to the patient’s expressions asked for, as you can see from the end result. As always, clicky to embiggen:

The pencil sketch

The revised and final art

Here’s a new merchandise release from Jeff Dunham featuring one of my illustrations. Obviously Jeff wanted an Ed “Big Daddy” Roth/Rat Fink feel to this piece. You can order the shirt here. Illustration below:

And yes, Jeff actually DOES have an Achmedmobile dragster.

Q: I am just starting my career as a freelance artist/illustrator. I just completed a project with a credit union for a character design that they used in their advertisements. When the obvious discussion of pricing came up, I wasn’t sure where to begin. We settled, quite quickly, without any problems. I was just curious if there is any method to the madness?

A: This is a question I get pretty frequently, so every once and a while I re-post this answer from a few years ago.. simply because it’s still as good an answer as I can come up with:

I get individual e-mails occasionally asking for advice on what to charge on this project or that kind of job, and the problem is that the question in basically unanswerable. It is always “that depends”.

By the letter of the law the discussion of how much to charge for the same kind of service or product between two competing sources of said service or product is called “price fixing”, and is quite illegal in the United States. Realistically there needs to be someplace to begin for illustrators just getting into the business. For those people I always recommend the Graphic Artists Guild’s “Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Handbook”. This book has a plethora of information from typical trade practices to copyright considerations to actual comparative fee ranges for different kinds of graphics services including “Magazine Editorial Illustration”, which is broken down into B&W/1 color and color categories for national, medium or small circulations. It also contains very useful generic contract agreements for almost any kind of graphics job, including magazine illustration. The book is a must have for any professional illustrator that wants to know what they are getting into for the contacts alone.

Unfortunately, the very next thing I tell people after recommending the book is to basically forget about the comparative fees they list. My copy of the PaEGH is the 10th edition circa 2001, and most of the fees I’m able to get are just now in the low end of the range they quote. Maybe some magazines actually pay more in the midrange, or the mythical high end range, but I’ve never worked for any. Granted, I don’t have Time, Newsweek, People or Sports Illustrated in my resume, but I’d be surprised if even they paid the kind of rates the PaGEH quote for national circulation. My advice to those who get the book is not to expect to get those kinds of rates unless you have a long resume and are a known name in illustration (like a Payne, Brodner, Cowles or similar). Most of us are not. The lowest end of the rate ranges seem to be the most realistic rates to expect to get in most cases.

Sounds like pricing your illustrations is a guessing game, doesn’t it? The good news is that it rarely is. In fact, it’s my experience that most art directors that call looking for a job to be done have a budget already for the art, and they come clean with you on that budget right away. You either do it for that amount, or turn it down and they move to the next illustrator. This happens with 90% of the jobs I get these days. Art directors don’t want to dicker, or bother trying to hope you will lowball the rate if they ask you to give them a quote. They want the job done, they have X amount of money… interested or not? I will ask an art director what their budget is first, and if they ask me for a quote instead I give them a high one, perhaps the midrange of the PaEGH recommendation. However I find that if I get asked for a quote first one of two things will happen. Either they will say it’s out of their range or they will say it’s higher than they can pay and will I “take X amount instead?”. It’s also been my experience that clients that ask for a quote end up not being very good clients even if the job does come through. Publications that buy art frequently know what they can afford to pay and know what they are doing, and don’t mess around tying to play used car salesman games with freelancers.

If an illustrator gets told what they are going to get paid, then how can they work up to a higher rate and make more money? There are two ways to do this. The best is to become a famous illustrator who’s work is instantly recognizable and who can both dictate their fees and who are called by the biggest publications in the world on a regular basis… good luck with that and when you figure it out write me with your secret. For the rest of us grunts, the only way to raise our rates is to try and move up the food chain as far as the type of client we work for. Since an illustrator is just one person, there is a limit to the volume of work that artist can realistically do. Of course step one is to get to the point that you have more work than you can handle at most times (that doesn’t happen all the time, but to be busy MOST of the time is the goal). It follows then that the only way to get a “raise” is to get more money for the amount of work you can realistically produce, and that means working for larger magazines and publishers. How do you accomplish that? The only way is by working up the food chain, starting by taking jobs from smaller clients. By doing a great job, working hard and being professional, you will gain a reputation as a solid illustrator. Then by marketing yourself to bigger clients, you hopefully will start getting better paying jobs. When that happens you’ll have to start turning down the smaller clients so you have time to do the work for the bigger ones, and so forth.

That sounds easy but it is often the slow work of years to accomplish, unless you are one of the very lucky and skilled illustrators who break in with a bang. The artwork itself is a big factor, of course. You have to be realistic about the professionalism and quality of your work and it’s stylistic appeal to art directors. For example, my work is very cartoon orientated, and as such I probably will never get work from magazines like Time or People, which tend to like either a very painterly, realistic style, a graphic, design orientated style or an artsy, underground style at least in terms of caricature. Unless I alter my style I am probably never going to see my work in those types of magazines. Some illustrators “engineer” a style so what they do is appealing to the current tastes and trends, but they either have to continually reinvent themselves or see their jobs dry up when that flavor of art style becomes passe. The longtime successful illustrators develop a personal style they stick with, and it becomes timeless and remains appealing despite current trends and tastes. That’s the goal, but it’s a lofty one.

While there seems to be a long list of factors and extenuating circumstances, illustration pricing isn’t as complex as it might appear. Most of the time pricing is just a matter of what the client you are working for can afford to pay and what you can afford to do the work for.

Thanks to Chris Grant for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

Here’s what’s cooking in the studio right now:

• MAD parody- Wrapping this up this week, can’t reveal the subject until it’s out in MAD #514.
• TV commercial character design- blogged about this earlier.
• Major book project- This was pending for a while but it looks like a “go”. Not a MAD book—I’ll be illustrating another author’s concept. This will take months.
• More Jeff Dunham art- Ongoing project.

One thing I have always had to fight against with respect to my professional work is my tendency to visualize a single solution to an illustration project and just run with it. While that is the least time-consuming way to go about things, it is also just plain lazy. It is always advisable to force yourself to come up with a few other ideas, if for no other reason than to explore the concept and exercise your conceptual skills. The magic number I always adhere to is three… I want to come up with three different ideas for an illustration that communicate the message and address the needs of the client. I may or may not present the client with a choice of the three, but internally coming up with at least three ideas makes whichever one I go with stronger for the exploration of other angles. Also, it is not unusual that the act of coming up with two other concepts beyond the first one that pops into your head will yield a better one in the process.

Working on coming up with different angles or solutions to the same dilemma is called “brainstorming”, and a good illustrator should start out each job with a brainstorming session. Here’s an example—a few days ago I posted this spot illustration I did for Seattle Business Magazine:

The concept was to create a visual for a short story about Seattle developer Michael Mastro, who disappear along with his wife and a number of assets including two diamond rings weighing in at over 40 carats from his bankruptcy hearing. The illustration needed to show them on the lam, with the loot, in a humorous way. Here are the three ideas I brainstormed for this spot:

The first two don’t actually show the Mastros at all, but tell the story of their absence in different ways. I kind of like the TSA screener idea best, but the client went with the beach scene. All three demonstrate the thought process and exploration of a solution to the assignement.

Sometime I am just plain lazy, though. This is the way it should always be done.

December is often one of the slower months for illustration work. It might just seem that way because I am usually slammed in October and November with projects for the “Year End” issues of publications… or maybe it’s because many magazines work on a yearly budget and by December they are tapped out for illustration money. I suspect the latter is one of the big reasons.

Not that I have nothing going. Here is what is on the rather light drawing board at the moment:

• MAD Parody- This one is of a very popular TV show that (as always) I can’t reveal until publication. I’m glad to have a “continuity” piece to work on for MAD again (that’s what the staff call the movie/TV parodies), although it was nice to have a little break from them the last two months. I did that Supreme Court video game feature in MAD #512, and the upcoming MAD #513 will have a two-pager I did for the “MAD 20″, but before that I did nine movie or TV parodies in a row (if you count “Toyota Story” and “The Wizard of O” as true parodies). Anyway, after that beat it will be fun to do another continuity.
• Jeff Dunham Art- Jeff keeps me hopping. Working an various illustrations and art for a variety of uses. Hopefully soon I can link to somewhere that will have some of his merchandise using some of my artwork.

I just finished up not one but two of those workplace posters for The Marlin Company- here are the roughs, inks and finals for both. Click on any image for a closer look…

My most recent workplace poster illustration

Here’s what’s cooking on the board this week:

• Marlin Co. Workplace poster- Not the one above, but a new one.
• Animated MAD show art- new segment character designs
• Seattle Business magazine- Series of spots for a “best of” article
• Jeff Dunham art- More stuff for Jeff, hope to get to post some of this one of these days

Last week I wrapped up the above workplace poster, illustrations for Sports Illustrated Kids, Cleveland Magazine and Penthouse.

Q: Hey Tom! I sometimes find myself drawing fairly complex settings for many of my cartoon layouts and more often than I would like to admit I frequently end up illustrating things -especially oval related objects- using Photoshop tools. Earlier this year you posted an illustration of some folks washing dishes with stacks of plates all around the sink area. Do you use tools like the “Elliptical  Marquee Tool” to help you achieve some of your artwork or is everything done freehand?

A: Here is the illustration he’s talking about:

Click for a closer look…

While I am all for using the computer to make doing things faster and easier, I won’t do anything to interfere with the cohesive feel of the piece. In other words, if doing something on the computer will make it look out of place in the illustration, I won’t do it that way.

In this illustration, I had to draw several stacks of plates and platters of different sizes all about. The figures and the rest of the illustration were hand-drawn and inked, then scanned and the color done in Photoshop. It would have been easier to leave the dishes out of the inked drawing and use the ellipse tool in Photoshop to create them digitally. Then the dishes would have been perfect ellipses, easy to do and gone much faster. The problem with that is they would have been “perfect ellipses”, with uniform and perfect contours. That would have looked very out-of-place with all the lines and forms inked by hand. They would have looked “digital”, something I try to avoid.

I did use a trick in this illustration to simplify the stacks of dishes. Using an ellipse template (the old-fashioned plastic kind for drawing ellipses of different sizes) I drew just the top plate of each stack in pencil (no food or scraps on it, just the plate) and then inked it with the rest of the drawing. Then after I scanned in the drawing and separated the lines onto their own layer, I selected each top plate line drawing and cut/pasted each to their own layer. Then I created a new layer under each plate and colored it, then merged each with the lines above so I had a single full color plate on a separate layer at the top of each stack. After that it was a simple matter to copy the layers multiple times to create the stacks. I was able to make them “lean” and be somewhat uneven. I would maybe turn one of the layers slightly to break up the monotony. Then I added drips and scraps here and there.

The results are convincing as being totally hand-drawn and in keeping with the rest of the illustration because the lines defining each plate ARE hand-drawn. Using the ellipse template for the pencil drawing keeps the shapes accurate but hand-inking it gives it the right look, imperfections and all. In the same spirit, I hand-ink all the straight lines in the cabinets, flooring and tiles for the same reason… a cohesive, hand-drawn look.

Thanks to Nick Nix of Cicero, ID for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

Q: How has technology changed how you work?

A: It has revolutionized every aspect of it, from how I get work to how I communicate with clients during the process to how I deliver the art.

I became a professional illustrator in 1990, right as the personal computer was starting to take hold in the world of publication and print. “Desktop publishing” was just starting to get serious, having been mainly a curiosity in the late 80′s and not used by professional publishers. That all changed as the years went by and the software became more powerful and easier to use. Keylining, layouts, paste-up, half-toning, stat cameras and drum scanning became things of the past. The internet also became a giant game changer for other aspects of freelancing.

Getting Work- Time was when you either physically brought in or shipped your portfolio out to a client who was interested in your work. Portfolios are things of the past now, replaced by websites which contain unlimited images and are instantly accessible 24/7. Marketing yourself has swung to using a strong web presence/virtual portfolio as a base, driving client traffic to it via a combination of the old method (direct mail, illustration sourcebooks, etc) and web-based methods (internet search engines and online “sourcebooks” like the iSpot). The versatility, unlimited volume and instantaneous/anytime access to your online portfolio makes a website the perfect showcase for an illustrator’s work.

Doing the Work- Communicating with clients during the job is faster and more efficient than ever before. Only the advent of the consumer fax machine had a bigger impact on this aspect of freelance illustration than when the internet came around. Imagine, before the fax machine, the simple step of sending the client sketches for review and direction took days of shipping back and forth, unless you lived in the same area. The fax and then the internet made it possible to live in Timbuktu, LA and be able to do a job as efficiently and timely for a client in New York City as an illustrator in Brooklyn could do. E-mailing scans, getting direction back, emailing revised sketches, etc., has become a process measure in hours no matter the distance apart. A huge difference.

You would think doing the work digitally wold be the biggest revolution that the advances in technology have afforded, but that is probably the least important. Yes, it’s easier to do certain things digitally than in traditional media, but art is still art and artists make tools conform to their demands not the other way around. There has been no increase in the skill or talent of illustrators because many use a stylus and digital tablet instead of a paintbrush and canvas. The biggest revolution here is that the end results can be revised and reworked much more easily, and if it is already in digital format even the simple process of having it scanned is eliminated.

Delivering the Work- Digital delivery of artwork has replaced the old method of delivering/shipping physical artwork that then needed to be color separated before being stripped into the final print. That saves days of time at the back end, extends deadlines and makes corrections easy and nearly instantaneous. I not upload a CMYK TIFF file of my artwork to some FTP site and the clients retrieves it, plops it into their layout in Quark or InDesign, and it’s off to the races.

More than anything, at least for me, the advances in technology means I can live here in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN and do work for clients on either coast or anywhere in the world without compromise.

Thanks to Adam Nuñez for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

Q: In the illustrations requiring text, such as background signs, posters and the like, do you illustrate them free-hand or use the computer?

A: That depends on what feel or context I am looking for. In cartooning, no matter how “hand drawn” a particular computer font might look, it still lacks the warmth and truly hand-drawn charm of lettering done by the artist. If I want that sort of feel, I will do the lettering by hand. For example, I do basically all the “sound effects” lettering in my MAD jobs by hand:

A panel from MAD #492′s Ironic Man parody with hand lettering

More hand lettering from “Yell’s Kitchen”, MAD #470

In the case of lettering or text that are supposed to represent professional signage or printed matter within an illustration, I would use the computer to create precise lettering, but would then try and make it blend into the image by fading or “distressing” it so it wasn’t an obviously pasted-in element:

A recent poster illustration

Close up showing doctored text

another example of an inserted computer font

I am a pretty lousy hand-letterer, so I will use computer fonts when and where I feel I can get away with it and don’t need the hand-lettered feel.

Thanks to Ken Best for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!