Homeage to my Dad. Thanks to him, I have climbed up more mountains in my life than I'd be able to remember to count, and got lost miles from the correct turn in the trail many more times still. Back in the early 2000s when GPS systems weren't as advanced and convenient as they are now, and the loss of signal and misread of the map would lead to the occasional hickup.

So many amazing entries this month!
I finished this a week or so ago, so I thought I best post before I forget.

Here is my submissiiiooon!

I too haven't had much time to take slowvember really slow this month, but I am still happy to say I spend a fair bit more time developing and working this one out. I needed bookcover examples for my portfolio, and this is gonna be one of them!
Hope you like it. Lots of great work this month!

Here's mine! Struggled to come up with a concept for this one, and didn't have a lot of time in the end, but here we are! I'm still pleased with the image at least from a render standpoint I guess.

It took me forever to finally compose an image i was somewhat happy with for this month! Phew! But it's done and I'm happy I could hand in something.

I'm doing mine in bulks because I often don't have time for several days in a row! I'm also not following the prompts but inking cute halloween animals every day. My goal here is to create cute animal examples for my portfolio and mostly to just manage to finish 31 drawings consistently! So I hoped to pick an achievable theme.

These are my first batch!

Besides a few fantasy commissions, I am slowly struggling my way through this illustration this month:

Hey guys!
Everyone's pieces are looking really promising, I look forward to seeing them all.

It's pretty late for me to ask for feedback as this is pretty much finished, but I still wanted to post it to get a general opinion whilst there's still some time to rework minor or even major bits or even rethink the concept.

Here's what I came up with!

I'd love to hear what you think

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences! I found the "allow reposting" idea very interesting, I'd never considered it in that light before. Great to hear some new ideas for social media. Hope your page continues to grow!

@Lee-White Thanks Lee! Can I ask if this is your approach for within the duration of the project, or even for after? Whilst the project is ongoing I am in the same boat that I would discuss artistic decisions in a conversation and generally make endless changes that I believe would benefit the overall product.

The crux of the matter here was that everything was signed-off, concluded and paid for, and revisiting the project is now cutting into other projects I have moved onto.

I thought I'd give everyone an update too, since maybe how this turned out is interesting for anyone in a similar boat.

I opted to reply yesterday and very cautiously asked if I might be able to charge an hourly fee to cover my time. I didn't name a number, but really only had a small amount in mind, and made sure to mention that I am navigating this as a relatively debut illustrator and would appreciate their guidance on how they would normally handle something like this. (I figured if I gave them that out to say "we expect this normally", then I could go "Oh, new-Illustrator-me didn't know, that's fine" without too much extra argument. )

The response completely surprised me! I was offered a fair bit more money as a flat-fee than I would have dared to ask for myself, and my editor (who has been really wonderful all project, honestly), stressed that changes post sign-off and typography are an absolutely rare case for them, are avoided as much as possible, and that they are normally allowed to pay extra in such cases.

Thanks everyone!

I know deep down you're all very right, and I'm probably just going to have to have that uncomfortable conversation. I hope since I already have done some free revisions for them without complaint I have garnered enough good will to broach the topic carefully.

I'm only honestly not sure what I'd do in response to a "No" - since after all I do want to make the changes.

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Thanks! I don't have an agent, no. (If I did I'd agree to make the most of them since their commission would likely be way more expensive than doing the revisions XD) But yeah, I'm in a similar boat where I'm normally just inclined to agree to do them.

@lpetiti This cover has been a tough one from the start, because there always seemed to be more feedback when it moved up to a new department. In this case they're going to be discussing the book in a bi-annual meeting in a large round where they discuss the program, and the people responsible for selling the books on to book stores have had some more input. The problem is mostly that they want to change their own treatment and placement of the title-text, and to optimize this elements of the picture have to move. (A decision I generally greatly support because I think the new layout idea is much better. But as you say, I'd also agree this could have been caught earlier XD)

Hey guys!

I'm hoping for some advise on how to handle this situation.

A few months ago I worked on the first title in a book series of minimum 3 titles that I signed onto with a decently big Publisher. I really love the project, and I am getting royalties from the first copy sold so I am naturally very hopeful that these books will sell well.

After we concluded the project, my editor has come back a few times with some revision requests or additional requests. First it was separating out text from the images that they hadn't known to be a requirement, then I was asked to remove a character from an image entirely because it was noticed that they shouldn't be in the scene, and now I am being asked to revisit the cover because they had additional feedback from external distributors.

I'm curious how revisions like this should be handled. Revision conditions are not covered in the contract at all, and from how these requests have been formulated to me I am not obliged to make them (at least it's been formulated in such a way that I'd be doing them a big favour.) Of course, I want the project to go well and the book to be as good as it can be, so I am happy to do them.

The first two requests have also only taken me about an hour each, so it wasn't that much fuss. The cover I fear might be a bit more complex and require a lot of chopping and repainting, but even there I am usually confident that I can do fast work.

So I was wondering how other illustrators would handle requests like this long after the project has been approved and paid for - would you ask for additional compensation and go through the potential hassle of working out the billing for that, even if it might only take an hour or so to do the job? Or would you just do it for the sake of the project quality and the good working relationship?

Thanks!

These are absolutely stunning! Well done, and congrats on the funded project. beautiful vector patterns like that would scare me so much, it's all come together fantastically.

Welcome! The character is super adorable and well rendered. I'd also say that perhaps the neck is a bit too stiff. I understand why you'd draw a pigeon that way, but there is so much haste and action in the image that I think I'd want the whole body to follow suit. Maybe the neck could have bent forward or backwards a bit, or he could have looked quite closely and with shock at the watch.

I think from a storytelling perspective having him **realize ** the time and be shocked might be more engaging than just after he realizes it, when he is speeding up. (this you've communicated really well, but there could just be even more emotion!)

@Jeremy-Ross I am! Just not had a lot of responses. I had a few "We like your work and we'll keep you in mind if a suitable project arises" kind of replies, and I am currently working with one of Germany's biggest publishers on a series (super exciting!) It may very well be that I'm just not sending enough emails in quantity, and I fear postcards aren't working atm.

But whilst there's a big lull between such opportunities self-published work lets me make some savings and practice my hand at working on whole projects at least. ^_^' I figured there's enough benefits to keep that up.

Thanks so much for the compliment!

Thanks for all your great answers, those are all very good points. I'm glad for the confirmation that I'm at least not "unreasonable" for not naturally including book design. Type makes me a little nervous! But I am also curious about giving it a shot sometime with a budget-minded client and seeing if I could add to my skillset with this.

For now my process is normally transparency of saying "I could help but I'm no pro at this", and hoping that I don't lose the projects! XD

I totally agree that I've seen some of my first published clients make choices with the book design that I wouldn't have agreed with - but ultimately Rachel is probably right and the illustrations will ultimately shine

Hey guys!

So over the past year I've had a fairly steady stream of requests from self publishing authors, and although that's not ultimately my goal it's definitely been able to pay the bills very nicely for me with something I love. Some of the results have been great portfolio pieces for me and it's all been pretty fun to do!

But as I get more of these requests and I'm navigating how much I can charge (I am trying to get at least £2000 for a 32 page book, but this is already too much for many independent clients). One issue I keep deliberating with these clients is that I am never certain if they understand that my illustration services don't include designing the book layout and text. If I say I won't handle the book design, this means another cost for them and turns away some of these clients.

I've been doing this in a bit of a vacuum and now I'm curious what you guys might do when you work with self published authors (if you do): Is Book design a skill we should offer as well? Is it maybe not even that big a deal to learn and include in the price? Or is it very fair to say that that's not our responsibility and the client will need to handle this or outsource this themselves?