Yesterday, I found out really discouraging news about the website Upwork. I found a children's book deal for $1.5K and I was really excited to hear that the authors saw my proposal and were interested in hiring me for the job.

It all seemed to work out until we approached the "exclusive rights" myth in the conversation. From what I've learned from @NessIllustration's freelance cafe, copyrights are not customary in children's book deals, and actually require compensation to the illustrator up to 6-figures. I tried to be smart and speak from a place of authority and experience that this is not commonplace and that as first-time authors I do not recommend them.

All of a sudden, they linked me to the website's rules and conditions which stated that "Upon Freelancer’s receipt of full payment from Client.... Freelancer hereby automatically irrevocably assigns to Client all right, title and interest worldwide... Freelancer retains no rights to use, and will not challenge the validity of Client’s ownership"

https://www.upwork.com/legal?fbclid=IwAR163GFVA9k-6ntvMNyj4OyMNcb735r5xVrvVW0LtAHGTf-E0IpLxbHeaHk#optional-service-contract-terms

After that I freaked out and did not respond to the client, as they bombarded me with materials to make the book, assuming that I was okay with this current set up. I waited a couple of hours until I could call someone with experience over the phone and tell them about the situation. What they recommended was that if I could not enforce royalties for obligatory selling of rights that I either adjust the price or I adjust the number of pages. (Shame on me for trying to negotiate a deal under completely unethical terms?)

I offered both options to my clients, and they calmly told me that they were no longer interested, impulsively withdrew the contract, but that they valued my work as an artist. So what does that mean? Are you going to seek another vulnerable, naive, and inexperienced artist and devalue them so you can get your book made? They told me if I adjusted the price it would be too expensive, and they told me if I adjusted the pages the "educational content" would be lost. This was for a 22-page book with cover and back.

While I am disappointed that I am not going to earn $1.5K, I am glad that I did not produce work that I could not legally even put into my portfolio. I completely blame websites like Fiverr and cultures on Facebook for perpetuating this type of mindset in small authors that illustrators can be asked to give away their work, but not be properly compensated for it. I don't think I'll ever use Upwork again. I should be able to retain my rights to the images, and not give the author power to disagree. There are a lot of authors who want exclusive rights to their books, but so little willing to pay a realistic price.

Hello, I have been freelancing as an illustrator for about a year now and want some critiques on my Halloween piece.

I know there are definitely areas where I can improve. I will start by admitting that I sort of rushed myself on this piece. It took me about a week to finish. I wanted to make sure I could publish this on Halloween.

The description of this piece is what would 'Halloween look like in the Philippines?'. It depicts Filipino children of all colors and sizes walking among monsters of Philippine mythology on Halloween night during the Covid-19 2020 pandemic.

I tried my best to make every character's gestures be expressive. This is meant to be a busy piece intentionally, so I'd like to know if I executed that aspect well enough to be justified. This piece is also formatted to fit on Instagram, so it's split in half. I was hoping that formatting it like this would not have disrupted the flow of the drawing.

If you need full descriptions of what is going on:

1. A tiyanak is hung over a window grossly gobbling down candy while wearing a mask.
2. A sirena is wearing a scuba mask, as people dive into a minipool to grab some apples. She's standing next to a 'siyokoy' with more 'cthulu' features and there is a female berberoka hiding in the pool.
3. An aeta person dressed as an American soldier receives candy from a wak-wak, while berbalang grabs a piece with their tail while she's not looking.
4. The 'white lady ghost' drops ghost candy to three 'kumakatok' children.
5. A Filipino girl dressed as a Filipina suffragette 'Josefa Llanes Oscoda' walks by with a duwende.
6. A pugot hides in the background in the middle of the picture, lit only by a candle.
7. A bungisngis hands out candy to very young Filipino children dressed as nurses.
8. A mestizo pinoy boy helps a sigbin how to sanitize their paws.
9. A kapre blows away one of the corona viruses that he sees while sitting on the roof of a house.
10. A religious Filipino boy dressed as a pari prays to a cross with a rosary necklace on it, next to candles and a haunted framed photograph of the virgin Mary.
11. A brunette Chinay Anggitay helps pull the tartanilla of a tikbalang dressed in a barong-tagalog.
12. Black butterflies represent death in the Philippines.
13. Various manananggals fly in the sky, some are holding pumpkins, one young one is peering over by a palm tree.
14. An amomongo passes by carrying too much candy than he can carry.
15. The covid-19 is inspired by Filipino symbols such as the sun of the Philippine flag.

@Melissa-Bailey-0 Thank you for clarifying that up.

I really hope this deal was really worth letting go. I think I was just obsessing about the previous client that I sold my rights to. We were working on a children's book with 18 pages (with lots of revisions) for $500 that was later uped to 40 pages for only $900 (with a lot of revisions still). They were very clear to me that they did not want me to share anything about the book until everything was absolutely published.

They have yet to publish the book (we finished everything last year in August) and they still haven't uploaded it on Amazon KDP or Ingram Sparks. It was a lot of work and while at first I thought the paycheck was lovely, I did feel a little underpaid by the end. I just didn't want to get into another situation where I would be working for a long time on a project for so little, and by the end, not have any material that might help me jump to the next project.

Then again... this client did come across as impulsive, so maybe I dodged a potential bad review if I worked hard and still dissapointed the client? In my experience so many self-publishing authors that I have met or worked with have a really bad attitude or are just plain disrespectful. But I know not all of them are or else I would have never proposed or continue using the site.

Hello Nyrryl, I love the tertiary pastel color palette you've chosen for this concept art. I know that I'm still working on my own skills art skills such as gesturing and emoting, but I think the feedback I can offer will focus more on the color options you've provided, since I personally feel like color theory is my biggest strength, if you can agree...

If I were to narrow your options down, I would pick somewhere around the 3 to 5, with 3 being my strongest pick. I say #3 because I think it helps pronounce the main image with the castles and children riding on mythical creatures. I think the orange on #4 is a bit too strong and kind of distracts me just a bit. I think #5 is a good option too, but I feel like the sky is too simplified, and kind of makes it not as exciting as the two other options. Also, I think the palest yellow at the bottom right corner of #5 kind of makes the white castles blend into the background. I think is also an issue with #3 as well, but perhaps you could remedy this with shading.

Are you going to add a lot of shading to the final piece?

My only suggestions here is to find ways to make sure that certain pieces of the image don't blend into each other. I think the dragon's tail might get lost because the purple at the end is too similar to the color of the roof it's overlapping with. I'm sure shading will fix this. I think for the valkyrie-esque girl on the dragon, you could also add a yellow hue to her fluffy skirt so it doesn't blend in with the dragon's skin? The unicorn's body also kind of blends in with that one castle's roof. I understand that you probably diluted the color on that roof to convey distance, but maybe make the horn bigger and more white, with the purple streaks being more subtle on the horn?

My only issue with anatomy for this piece is the girl on the unicorn. I hope you can understand my advice on this.

Where is she looking at? It feels like in this thumbnail she's supposedly waving at the bear, as the bear is also waving and looking at her. But she's below him and her eyes don't look like they're directed at him. Is she waving at something off screen? The unicorn looks like it's looking at the bear prince. Maybe if you shifted the pupils up just a bit, this could work. I hope this was useful to you in some way and I wish you the best of luck on your catalog

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Could you... perhaps... offer a suggestion and explain to them why this other version you suggested is a much better cover idea than their horrible cover, without necessarily telling them their original suggestion is awful? You words wouldn't necessarily come across as you shitting on the original cover or whoever was responsible for it. Try to come across as if your coming from a place of experience in design and that you're essentially trying to "enhance" the awful cover by offering tips and techniques from your years of education and working in the industry.

Try to say "I think this is better because..."

And not say "this cover has issues/flaws/just completely awful".

@Nyrryl-Cadiz My favorite part of this piece is how one of the kids are rushing to get their chicken to be part of the sleigh ride haha.

These are all from the same artist, and they had to modify their style so that it could fit the tone of the book they were illustrating, but despite that I would say the artist is still recognizable.

Hello @carrieannebrown, I think the issue with this specific piece is probably the style. The man's torso and head read to me as "derivative of human anatomy" which is good, but his legs do not. His legs read as more "cartoon, exaggerated, stylized" which makes the style of this piece inconsistent.

So I am not sure which route you want to work with. Do you want to commit to a style that incorporates some rules of anatomy, or do you go full-on out with a stylized look? You cannot really have both.

This is what I recommend if you prefer the former...

Or the latter...

Also a couple of other questions. Is this supposed to be a piece sign? Why does he have three fingers out? Does it mean anything? I think he should be making a clear and recognizable gesture with this hand.

My last comment would be color scheme. While I think the color scheme is okay, could you perhaps experiment by adding a contrasting color? I think his blue shirt and indigo shorts are too monochromatic to the muted teal background, and I think experimenting with the color scheme just a little bit more will help the picture pop.

Here's some experimental colors.

Blue goes great with orange, but since this is not a pure blue, I thought it would go great with a shade that leans towards more yellow.

Aqua green might also be a good option. Overall, I do think it's good piece, but only needs a couple of tweaks and some clear direction with your style.

@NessIllustration I always find it weird when non-Asian people get Chinese robocalls. These scams are targeted towards people of Chinese descent or Chinese last names trying to trick illegal Chinese immigrants into giving them money by claiming to be part of the government or claiming something about checking their records to make sure they are legal. I guess they're just targeting anyone at this point...?

Unfortunately, because of my ancestor who left China at the beginning of 20th century, I have his Chinese last name and I keep getting these robo-calls despite being Filipino-Born American because of that. I did however get a scam call from a real person who wanted to talk to me in Mandarin, and I immediately hung up after I told them they had the wrong number.

Hello, I am a freelance children's book illustrator on Upwork, and I use Paint Tool Sai to illustrate my children's books. I have been illustrating for almost two years, and I recently got new digital brushes.

I am drawing this ghost, and I realized that as I was compositing her, I gave her dress a very specific texture and her hair, but the face's texture is rather smooth in shape. Is this considered an undesirable technique?

I also realized that I drew two other background characters, with less textured and smoother outlines. Should I redo these characters before moving forward?

@glenfx

Welp goodbye Paint Tool Sai, you were a great art program for beginners but now I am a professional (RIP used 2011-2021).

Hello PaintStorm Studio!

Oh I also considered Clip Studio Paint as well, since everyone says it's basically an upgraded version a Paint Tool Sai, but that's $60 for the basic version versus $19-$29 for PaintStorm. Although I might get the deluxe version of CSP if I ever end up committing to becoming an animator.

Thank you so much @glenfx for introducing me to PaintStorm Studio!

@Frost-Drive

Well... let's try to break down what it really means to be a "Bad" artist in the realm of the illustration industry. Bad can mean many things, it can refer to a deficiency or lack thereof a quality that is objectively required to attain and maintain an attribute that which is the ideal goal of that person's occupation. Philosophy, philosophy... this is what I think they could possibly be referring to when referring to what makes an artist "bad".

1. Skill (Pretty broad topic, refers to basic art rules)

2. Morality (Hacks, motivated by views, likes, money, not passionate about art)

3. Misleading (Bad advice, not leading followers towards the right goals for their careers)

Skill

In art school they teach you the pretty basic rules right? Certain colors work together and some do not (color theory); a head is a sphere, the limbs are cylindars (anatomy); Don't pick the darker version of the base color to act as shadows (shading) and etc. Some might agree that to break these conditional rules we are essentially creating "bad art" and to a degree I agree. But it really depends on the medium and style you're going for that we can really judge the quality of one's art. What I've learned about children's book illustrating is that there is a diverse range of styles that a unique from each other and have their own set of rules.

Take these two books for example. One style is rendered incredibly well while the other leans towards capturing a child's juvenile drawings from childhood. From an art school perspective one is technically "superior" to the other, but in the illustration business context that does not apply.

Now, what is really bad art for a children's book in terms of skill? Well... while yeah you can have drawings that capture juvenile art from a children's point of view there is an extent where going extreme on one side to another might not be appropriate.

You can fight me about it, but I want to say that this is objectively badly-skilled art for a children's book, because:

1. The text design is too poor to be justified.
2. And the fact that this looks like it was just scanned with a printer really turns me off and I think is a detriment to its quality. Even ignoring how simple the protagonist is drawn.

Another thing to take note about designing children's books is subject matter and storytelling. Your art skills communicate how good you are at creating appropriate subject matters and telling those subject matters through your art. If you cannot tell a story for children, you aren't exactly the worst but you aren't exactly being the best type of artist for the illustration agency. Let me try to make an example of bad subject matter and storytelling.

This is a sphere.

This is a grey sphere.

Now I am a cube. That is my story.

THAT'S NOT STORYTELLING.

Morality

A morally-bad artist I would argue is simply someone completely motivated by their own self-gain and has little to no interest in the work they produce or at least favor something else more than the art itself. An artist that starts a KickStarter for a big project and doesn't manage their funds, failing to deliver on their promises is a morally-bad artist. An artist that draws art without passion and meaning, but does so anyway because it makes them money or gets them attention is a morally-bad artist. An artist that traces someone else's work and claims it as "their own" is a morally-bad artist.

Misleading

A misleading artist is someone who is giving other artists bad advice and leading them towards the wrong direction in their audience's own career paths. If you say an art is bad or needs improvement but cannot specify or clarify the issue with them, they cannot grow from that advice and may actually get stuck obsessing about what you meant. Advice that does not promote growth or even stunts it is a bad artist telling you to self-sabotage.

What makes an artist "bad" is broad but objective.

I think this video helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kKZoSNsUdw&ab_channel=ArtBusinesswithNess

@NessIllustration

Have you ever used Paint Tool Sai anytime in your life? High school? College? During your career?

To be honest it really sucks that printers cannot produce a lime green or a saturated shade of blue. I did a test on a couple of my latest works I haven't shared yet!

@carlianne

Gosh, I really need to invest. I won't approach another agency until I can get a hold of these programs.

Right now I'm just scrambling for work.

@lpetiti yeah but I don't have a iPad...

@Melissa-Bailey-0 No Paint Tool Sai got an update and I am using the "Ver. 2".

But I see what you're saying. I have considered buying ProCreate since that's what everyone else is using. But I am so BROKE, because the pandemic has made it extremely hard for someone like me to find work that I cannot afford to buy a new tablet, program, etc. There's actually a lot of things I need to buy for myself to probably boost my career, but I don't have the financial means of attaining them and I am really sad about that.

I haven't had a job since Feb 28 of last year. I'm really bitter about that

@Melissa-Bailey-0

Oh Paint Tool Sai is pretty old, at least in my opinion. The program was released in 2006 and it became very popular among DeviantArt artists. I watched a lot of speedpaints videos on Youtube when I was in high school, so I quickly latched onto the program.

@NessIllustration I'm not seeing a CMYK mode on my Paint Tool Sai interface. Maybe I need to upgrade...

@Melissa-Bailey-0 @NessIllustration Yeah I can definitely live with this one and chalk it up as experience. My client asked me to design the cover and told me that the text should be a shade of green.

I really hate the limitations of CMYK. If only there was a way for our art programs to work in a setting that already has printing set in mind. I feel like it's going to be tricky trying to figure out what colors work and what don't. Well at least it primarily concerns blues and greens right(????)