With so many out of school Oliver Jeffers, Mac Barnett and Mo Willems, Tony DiTerlizzi are doing a daily read, chat, draw of their books and characters.

How cool is that‽

Oliver Jeffers reads and discusses one book per day on Instagram Live:
https://www.instagram.com/oliverjeffers

Mac Barnett reads and offers a running commentary on one book per day on Instagram Live:
https://www.instagram.com/macbarnett

Mo Willems does a drawing and shows dummies, sketches and finished art for a character each day on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/RmzjCPQv3y8

Tony DiTerlizzi is doing a live drawing each day on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/TonyDiterlizzi/

Watched the video. My verdict: I don't know.

There are two different issues being blended in the video. Content vs arrangement of information.

As for content -- I've never seen Dunn's book but nothing he highlighted was unique or original to me. I've been drawing, learning, and teaching a long time and these are simply concepts and techniques that I've learned over the years. They are fundamentally facts. Facts are not protected by copyright.

Arrangement of information: Given that this is a fact-based book that is designed to teach, the arrangement of information is important and is more readily protected by copyright. From the video there appears to be a basis for a claim on this point.

BUT Dunn has not seen the finished book. Amount and nature of infringement matters. The only way to properly evaluate is by putting each book side by side and carefully evaluating both. Ideally, done by an impartial third party.

Instead we are only seeing one side that is clearly highly biased.

Thought I'd share a recent master copy study. The top image is by Kenard Pak. There was a fairly spirited discussion in my agent group about mediums and techniques he used to create it, so I decided to have a go at how I would have made the image. (FYI -- a whole bunch of physical media pieces that are composed/layered digitally)

But the great bit is how master copies like this give you permission to do things that you might not otherwise think of. I will definitely be incorporating elements of this method into future work!

Every so often I try out new assignments for myself. I love the idea that by simply changing the lighting of a scene you can alter the experience for the viewer. I recently had a go with this european village photo I found. Starting with this bright, sunny daytime scene ...

I spent a few hours turning it into this moody, mysterious night scene.

Pretty fun! Just thought I'd share.

Call this a shameless plug for my SVS Dynamic Expressions class if you like (enrolling now) -- but I'm kinda' excited that the new Venom movie is coming out. I've been fairly mixed on this so far (still wounded by Spiderman 3) but gotta' say the trailers make it look pretty good!

I spend a lot of time dissecting picture books. Trying to understand why I love certain ones and why I'm non-plussed by others. Then I try to bring that insight to my own books.

This is a page turn from one of my favorites "Nothing" by Jon Agee.
Check out how he uses the slow build of sequential images on this spread . . .

. . . to really pay off the utter insanity of this one*.

*That said, I do think there is a missed opportunity here.
Dutching the camera to shift away from the perfect 90 degree angles of this spread would have added to the overall sense of frenetic energy, and the kind of social pressure craziness that ensues for the next few pages.

This is a super smart book. Totally worth a check out from your local library.

@Laurel-Aylesworth There are no rules to laying out a dummy. Every book is going to be different. I'm a fan of taking various books that are either similar in subject matter or that "feel" similar to the book I'm dummying up. Photographing each page and laying it out as thumbnails. Then looking to see what choices the illustrator made. I find it's easier to see patterns in pacing, compositional choices, color scripting etc.

For example in Dan Santat's BEEKLE it's clear the choice to deviate from full bleed spreads is a choice rarely and carefully made. Everything is full bleed spreads except two where he uses vignettes to both speed up (pg 21-21) and slow down (pg 36-37) the action.

The first time I read it, I found the tree spreads on pgs 26-27 and 28-29 to be oddly flat and out of place with the other illustrations in the book. It wasn't until I laid this out that I realized Dan was trying to mimic/foreshadow Alice's drawing of the same tree on pg 35.

Also the desaturated/monochromatic quality of the images starting on pg 18 and continuing through pg 23 becomes more obvious.

I'll also often go through and try to simplify the images into simple black, white and grey shapes so see how value and silhouette affect the experience of the book.

When I did that to BEEKLE I realized that the little white shape of Beekle always appears on the right page of the spread -- except for pg 18-19, 22-23, 26-27 and 28-29. These are the moments in the book where Beekle is feeling unsure or overwhelmed.

These are some of the highlights from this particular book breakdown. Do this to a few other books and you'll start to see how other illustrators approach laying out books.

I think it's fine to post about this. Will did a FB live video this morning talking about this very issue. He has a characteristically calm and reasonable response to the change in the project status.

As for your question about making/selling fan art: There is clearly a market for fan art out there. But it is important to understand what you are doing when you make fan art and even more importantly when you try to monetize it.

Whether you are making money or not -- the mere act of creating fan art is a copyright infringement. The important bit is whether the fundamental infringement rises to the level of an "actionable" infringement.

I was drawing comic characters from the age of 8 when I got my first X-men comic from a friend at school. While all those drawings were "technically" infringements they never rose to the level of "actionable infringements". Along the way I got more invested in the Marvel characters, I became a little "cooler" to my friends at school, and I learned how to draw.

So yes -- I think that fan art can be a useful and productive thing.

It's when you try to monetize fan art that you need to go in with eyes wide open. Understanding that the fan art you make is fundamentally an infringement. You are creating copies and derivatives of intellectual property created and owned by someone else. If you are going to use and generate income off fan art, without negotiating a license beforehand with the Intellectual Property (IP) owner, you need to have a full and complete understanding of the Fair Use Defense. And in the case of some characters, you need to understand Trademark Law.

Which goes to the second half of your question -- is it worth the risk trying to sell it?
I have made concerted effort to study copyright law and how it pertains to illustrators. In the absence of a license from the original IP holder I have landed on -- No -- it is not worth trying to sell it.

It is, in my opinion, always better to negotiate a license with the IP holder if I want to sell fan art.

And I want to clarify -- the term "negotiate" can vary in it's meaning. Most people think it means "pay" (and often it does) but it can also just mean "ask and get permission".

This is simply a variation on the @demetrius post above but one of my favorite methods is pulled from Norman Rockwell. Basically he renders the "imaginative" part in a higher key than "reality". Definitely color casts it as well (usually in the old-timey yellow ochre)

So I imagine the post being referred to by @NessIllustration and @Molambo is Dunn's recent IG post.
As some SVS members may go over and read it I feel compelled to make the same correction here that I did on his post:

POOR MANS COPYRIGHT is a myth. Do not do this. Please research copyright law. It is not hard, and if you are a creative it is the basis of your job.

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

I love copyright. The concept of it, teaching it, using it in my job. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing 25,000 people getting fed misinformation about it.

Edit: So he posted the same thing to his YouTube channel. Now there's 600K people "learning" this stuff. . . . sigh. . . .

I was reminded of a resource that I came across recently. It was a kind of formal taxonomy of narratives which, while not unfamiliar from reading stories all my life, will make you sound super smart at your next picture book cocktail party:

https://www.slaphappylarry.com/progressive-narrative-art/

And it also touches on your initial question of showing the passage of time. Scroll down to "Progressive Narrative".

@jdubz Great to read reviews like this. Thanks for sharing. And that is a great price! Please keep us posted on successes and frustrations.

@theprairiefox That's a really good question!
I get what you are asking about. Like using images with a yellow-brown cast to quickly communicate "olden times", or a shape with curved edges positioned above a character's head to mean "thinking"

I'm not aware of any books on the subject. I have created class resources that touch on it, but nothing specifically for "passage of time" or anything quite so specific.

Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist though. I'll be interested to read if others are aware of something like this. And it would be pretty interesting to create!

@xin-li Sorry for the confusing terms.
By "cover price" I meant "the price on the cover of the book", also called the "retail price".

I was just doing a little math. Do you know what the cover price for the book will be?

And if you don't know specifically, then what is the cover price for a typical 32 page picture book in Norway?

@NessIllustration Would never have guessed that english was a second language. No worries! My reply was as much for all the people who read your posts as it was for you.

And BTW, I only know this because I used to read a board where an IP attorney was constantly reminding illustrators that the difference between these terms was super important!

@NessIllustration said in Question about contract & copyright:

I sold her a non-exclusive license to sell up to 1000 copies worldwide

This is going to seem like I'm nit-picking your message, and I'm really not trying to. You alway offer great advice and knowledge.

Okay that said, because these board about about education I want to make sure information is clear. It's important to know the difference between the term "sold" or "sell" and "license". The two terms mean significantly different things in a contract.

In short "sell" means the client "owns". While "license" means the client "rents"

https://www.clariclegal.co.uk/the-difference-between-licensing-and-selling/

Ignoring the difference between these terms may allow a client think you mean something different than you intended in a contract. Should any kind of legal institution get involved they will side with the industry standard meaning.

@Neha-Rawat

Interesting! How would you keep track of their sales? "Good faith, trust, and honesty" seems too easy to take advantage of when it comes to money (sorry!).

This is pretty much what you are agreeing to when working with any publisher, big or small. The "stick" behind this is that the license is limited to the 1000 copies specified in the contract. Selling one more copy beyond that is outside the scope of the license and is an infringement. What's more it is a "willful" infringement which carries potential statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringement (per book)

Can I ask what your alternative is? Not arguing -- genuinely curious.

@LauraA Always interested to hear how things work in other countries!
Would you really need to do all that formal work simply to use a written contract?

Let me offer an alternative -- what if the casual agreement among friends was that you would license the image for two years. See how it goes and then license it again for some other period of time? Would that work? Or in Italy is it generally understood that without a contract any casual agreement is a transfer/sale of the artwork?

@LauraA I would recommend not assuming it is Work For Hire.
It certainly can be, but only if both of you agree. Otherwise I recommend licensing only the uses the client intends to use the artwork for right now.

After all, if the channel becomes successful enough that the client needs to use the artwork in other ways you can always negotiate that later.

I agree with feature creep that @Nyrryl-Cadiz mentioned.

I'm not aware of a going rate in the US. You can find people doing avatar drawings for $20- $1000. Based on my experience you are going to find that the budget is low. Your hourly rate may even be deemed "too high". Which is why I would again recommend limiting the rights licensed.

By licensing the artwork to (for example) a YouTube banner and avatar use only for 2 years for $200, the initial investment by the client is very low. If the channel fails they haven't spent any significant money. And you made enough to hopefully break even.

BUT if the channel succeeds and they start generating real revenue, then re-licensing the image for 5 years for (and I'm just picking numbers here) $500 is great for everyone. Client continues to build a brand and you continue to generate income from work already created.

And while you (likely) lost money on the initial license of $200, you start to generate profit on the relicensing of the same image over and over.