A New Client

[nemorathwald]

I have a new, continuing source of supplementary income, cleaning up pieces of Illustrator vector art which my new client, a professional designer, originally created in Flash and merely exported and/or auto-traced. He doesn't know Adobe Illustrator.

I purchased an illustration of his through a super-affordable royalty-free art site, iStockphoto to use as the background for a flyer. It wasn't possible to tell from the preview image that his workmanship was sloppy. I improved the art and emailed it to him. I thought that would be that.

He responded by asking me to clean up his whole back catalog as work-for-hire.

I did the business math and presented it to him to justify my rate. I'm charging him two cents per vector point in the original art, which is peanuts, but he in turn is charging peanuts selling them on iStockphoto. These are not professional rates, but they add up.

Yesterday he Paypal'ed me a bulk payment as a "retainer" and I sent him the first cleaned-up illustration he has paid for. Nice.

Now, to discuss how the "crowdsourcing" phenomena is discouraging to creative workers.

At the weekly Denny's last night, I discussed this with other professional artists. We all agreed that cheap stock photography and illustration is making it impossible for a professional to to make a living entirely on their art business, in a field which was already over-crowded and super-competitive to begin with. I used to bemoan that for years as I tried and failed to get very much freelance work. But that's a fact of the marketplace. Unless you are the top percent, you will either be incredibly poor, or you will have another day job and your creativity will be a hobby.

If all the millions of genuinely talented creative people were to conspire to commit collusion to artificially jack up the price of art beyond the reach of the vast majority, most of us still would not get work. I'd venture to say 99% of art school graduates still couldn't support ourselves with that as a day job. If we unite to commit to a workable price, they just will do without any photography or illustration. I should know, because I'm one of them: I have freelance clients who want me to design publications with photography, and I am not a photographer. So I am not only a seller on iStockphoto, I'm also a buyer. I benefit twice.

iStockphoto charges $1 to $5 for a photo or illustration. That's how much my talent is worth as one drop in the vast sea of talent. At least with crowdsourcing the vast majority of us will not go to waste and will take some financial advantage of our talent, and thousands of cheap publications (including mine) will get nice photos and illustrations when they previously would have lacked.

Comments

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

shekkara is a photographer, if you ever need something shot to order.

[gregvb.livejournal.com]

You probably know about this already, but you might want to check out a magazine called "Computer Arts Projects". It's a Brit mag that's available at Borders, B&N and probably other places. It geared for people like you: artists/designers who are trying to get a business going; How to create or liven up your portfolio, finding and dealing with clients, copyright issues, etc. etc. Not only does it advise on the business side, but on the technical side, too; Tutorials on Photohop, Illustrator, InDesign, 3D programs, etc.

Sorry if I'm sounding like an pitchman. I've been reading CAP for several years and I think it's very informative.

Good luck.