Here's my Lunar Fairytale heroine, and her trusty tortoise sidekick (who still needs a name). Thanks for all the help and solid advice, everyone. I'm blown away by the work here.

Here goes with my yeti house! I'm learning a lot by participating. Good luck everyone!

@NessIllustration this is such useful information! Thank you for sharing it!
@LauraA congratulations on your success from unexpected directions! I hope you get a good gig out of all these requests. What a potentially exciting problem to have.
I'm sure you've build a great list of agencies to contact. A while ago @skillydan posted a list of 30-ish agencies to the forum, and I've added a few more to it. Maybe it'll be useful to you or somebody else here? Here it is:

Advocate Art Agency
Allied Artists/Artistic License
Arena Illustration Ltd
Astound Illustration Agency
The Art Agency
The Artworks
Bath Lit Agency
Beehive Illustration
The Big Red Illustration Agency
B.L. Kearley Ltd
the Bright Agency
Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency Ltd
the Cat Agency Inc
The Catchpole Agency
The Copyrights Group Ltd
David Higham Associates Ltd
David Lewis Agency
Elizabeth Roy Literacy Agency
Frances McKay Illustration
Good Illustration Ltd
Graham-Cameron Illustration
Inky Illustration
Jenny Brown Associates
Kids Corner
KJA Artists
LAW
Lemonade Illustration Agency
Maggie Byers-Sprinzles Agency
NB Illustration
The Organisation
Painted words
Plum Pudding Illustration
Purple Rain Illustrators
SPi Global US, Inc.
Storm Literary Agency
Sylvie Poggio Artists Agency
Symmetry Creative Production
Tugeau2
Sheldon Fogleman Agency
United Agents LLP
Vicki Thomas Associates

Hello everyone! I'm new here at SVS, bingeing on the podcast and getting tons of great info from these forum posts. Thank you to all the friendly and hardworking artists here!
I've spent the past few weeks exploring the possibility of a career transition to illustration. I've been a scenic artist and set designer for the past 17 years, painting and designing scenery for live theater. In that line of work, your paintings are prized for their versatility of style, not for their consistency of style.
So I've been sketching in gouache and pen and ink and Procreate for the past few weeks, trying to get comfortable working in my natural style and learning how to compose images with compelling characters. Here's a collage of some recent explorations. Each a sketch is between 2 and 5 hours of work, and originals around 8 inches max. I'd love some encouragement about what things are working well right now!
Thanks in advance!
Val

I've been thinking about the new Mars rover, and I imagined it had a personality, and wound up with this. I'm in love with it.

Doing a digital rework of an acrylic painting I made for my nephew last summer, adding characters, trying to control focal points.

I am living vicariously through all of your amazing beautiful art mascots. Thank you so much for sharing these! Here's my bird-legged houseplant, which is the closest thing I've got over here in my no-pets apartment.

@Asyas_illos You were absolutely right it was way too busy.
Last night I re-watched the December yeti character design critique arena, which really helped me see some examples of how to clean up my design and make things more clear and simple. You all do some inspiring work.

Here's a value study sketch of my updated design.
One thing I want to address is how her O2 tank and her backpack fit on her back, because I'm not sure that's reading clearly right now. Also need a few more tries to get the turtle to have a non-sedated facial expression. What else needs clarification as I finalize my line drawing?

In under the wire! Thank you to everyone who shared such helpful advice while I was working on this, and even if I didn't follow all the excellent advice, I'm thankful for it. You all are so inspiring.

more of me working on controlling edges, establishing lighting, and maintaining focal points. I love this burglar bunny.

Here's my Lunar Fairytale heroine, and her trusty tortoise sidekick (who still needs a name). Thanks for all the help and solid advice, everyone. I'm blown away by the work here.

I'm a total novice at this, but I recently got a ton of great information from Anoosha Syed's youtube video about how to price illustration work. She has some great perspective on how to break down an hourly or fixed price for yourself and your budget. It's an hour long and she talks fast! Have your notebook ready! Here's a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WjDl9BCgBk

@lizardillo It doesn't look to me like this thing has you beat! I think the ball joint/ aviator hat flaps are a great solution. I also really like that when you do the close up of his face for the character design page, his head might have a silhouette that's similar to a little bumble bee already. That said, I also really dig the moth variation, too. I think you're on a great track!

@chrisaakins Thank you! No it's just the Plimsol brush in Procreate layered over some gaussian blurred color layers, and a medium hard airbrush for the eraser and edge control.

@HeatherBouteneff Oh awesome! Let me know if I get the official Mira seal of approval from her!

I'm really enjoying the range of gritty to simplified that you're working in here. Like skexis/gelfling range. Great to see how many explorations you're going through on your way to deciding on a direction. Thanks for sharing your process.

@Melissa-Bailey-0 I tried out the spot illustration from a 3/4 view like you suggested, and of course you were completely right that it's much more engaging! I'm so grateful for the tips! Is the foreshortening on the right arm working, or is it distracting?
This is a color rough- she's not quite consistent with the character design page- something with the eyes to fix, but progress!

@jenithornhill Your otter is adorable. He's got an awesome hat and I like his fishing pole bindle. Maybe it would bend a little under the weight of the frogs and bags, and make a more dynamic line? I also wonder what it would look like if you pushed the body shape a bit further toward otter proportions, with almost no neck, and arms more on the front of his chest? That's just my reaction- feel free to ignore.

These are really cute! I really love the possum and the unicorn- is she holding short swords? Really you could develop any of these. They're adorable.

@lizardillo He's great! I also like the proportions of 3.
He reads like a maybe 8 year old kid in those proportions, which sounds great for a fairy tale. I'm in favor of giving him antennae- that could be great for expressive face with minimal features. I do love his head/wing silhouette, like you mentioned, though I'm interested to see how the wings meet on the back of his head- do they spring from one point, or is it 3 pairs of wings coming out of 3 points?