Freelance Illustration: 5 Things I WISH I KNEW!

In this video I discuss 5 things I wish I knew when I started my career in illustration. I’ve been working as an independent illustrator …

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hi my name is Chris biasic and around 12 years ago I accidentally became an illustrator and I’ve been winging it ever since in this video I’m going to talk about five things that I wish I knew when I started out as an illustrator so I say I accidentally became an illustrator because I never set out to be an illustrator I always thought I wanted to be a designer and that’s what I went to school for and that’s what I was doing before I became an illustrator I previously had a career as a graphic designer everything I knew about pricing projects came from my graphic design experience and that’s not really relevant the way graphic design is priced is very different than illustration when you’re a graphic designer and you’re making logos and things like that you’re giving all of like you’re making it and then handing it off to them and it’s theirs they own it they can do whatever they want with it illustration however is priced based on the usage so what that means is you’re not giving in most cases I say in most cases because there are situations where you are giving away all your rights but that’s a whole other topic for another video but in most cases you are licensing the rights to use your artwork for a specific purpose this is often referred to as value-based pricing that doesn’t really fully cover the full extent of it so in value-based pricing it just means that you’re being paid based on the value that your illustration is provided so for example an editorial illustration the budgets are lower than in advertising because the value they’re getting from your illustration is much higher in advertising than it would be just for uh standard editorial illustration in a magazine in illustration you’re paid for every different usage of your artwork so in advertising this can make a huge astronomical difference in how much you’re paid based on how they’re using the artwork some of the different categories for usage include where it’s being used if it’s just like in the northeast of the United States or if it’s you know across the whole country or if it’s worldwide these things dramatically affect how much you’ll be paid other things are how long they want to use the artwork for this could be a year or two years sometimes in perpetuity meaning forever there’s also what they’re doing with the artwork so maybe they’re running it in print advertisement but then also on social media and then also in outdoor like on billboards or like bus signs or in-store things like that so all of these different things are different things you are being paid for so if you don’t know this and you just charge for your illustration you’re leaving an exponential amount of money on the table to give an example of this a recent project that I worked on that I can’t name because one it hasn’t come out yet and two they probably wouldn’t be psyched about me just like tossing out the numbers there’s a large beer company that I did some illustrations for that are being used on packaging as well as advertisements just the fees for the illustration work we’re about seven thousand dollars however all the different usages for that illustration whether it’s on packaging and all the different areas of advertisement adds another thirty eight thousand dollars onto that budget you need to know that illustration is priced based on usage when I first started out I had no idea and I’m sure there were some projects that I definitely way under charged on the second thing I wish I knew was to always ask if there’s a specific budget for a project you may feel uncomfortable with it but it’s a very common thing and it can save everyone a lot of time and it can also give you a huge amount of information that may drastically I think I said drastically a lot this is a very serious business we’re talking about here but it can really impact how you’re pricing something it’s really nothing to feel weird or awkward about it really can only go a couple ways one is they say uh no we don’t really have a budget in mind yet we’re hoping that you could provide an estimate or two they say yes this is what we were thinking this is what we had in mind either that is a number that you are comfortable with or you realize oh they are severely undervaluing how much illustration could cost and this isn’t a project I’m going to work on and then you save all the time of putting together an estimate thinking about the project starting to like come up with ideas in your head and just letting it consume all that space in your brain right off the bat you know oh their budget is absurd another reason why this is something that I wish I had started doing earlier in my career as an illustrator is because the first time that I did I had already like put together an estimate but I hadn’t sent it yet and I was like sort of worried that my estimate was too high and I was like scared I was going to lose the project or something like that so I said oh hey I just wanted to see if you had a specific budget in mind so that I could sort of cater my estimate to that and you know make sure that I priced for whatever you needed or it was something awkward like that instead of just saying hey do you have a specific budget in mind but anyway I was stressed out because I had priced it at like twelve hundred dollars in 1250 and they were like oh yeah we were thinking it’d probably be around six to seven thousand and I was like oh uh yeah that’s um that’s that sounds that sounds uh what I was that I was gonna that was actually I I would it’s funny you say that because I was thinking six seven thousand two that really was eye-opening to me and helped me to to know that hey I should always ask just in case it can’t hurt no one’s ever been offended or gotten mad about it number three on my list specify revisions the larger Point here is to like have a contract and use a contract but that’s a broad topic on its own and I just want to dial in on this one specific thing that I did not do or even include when I started even using a contract and it took me a long time to to just fix this simple simple problem when you are estimating a project and you know putting together a contract or you know anything like that specify what is included in the process so this could be as simple as this price includes two to three revisions in the sketch phase and then one to two revisions during the the comp phase I have since made it a little tighter where I say two rounds of revisions in the sketch phase and then one round of adjustments and the final comp stage I do that because I don’t want them to be giving me like full-on revisions once I’ve like tighten something up and got it to the like final illustration level this is really annoying and takes a lot of time I want them to focus on the sketch even though it’s not the final artwork and tell me if they have different thoughts there having this in writing when they’re a client that gives tons and tons of feedback you can say hey at this point we’re past the agreed upon revisions that we have in the contract so I’m gonna have to charge you um an additional fee to do more rounds of revisions and then you could either estimate a flat fee and tell them how much it’ll be to do another round of revisions or you could do like an hourly rate based on those things I think in my contracts I have it set that like F once we exceed the allotted revisions anything else will be billed at 150 an hour or something like that you should specify that too under contract but all of this like letting them know how many revisions they get super important there were instances when I first started out where there was just like constant back and forth back and forth and I was spending just an exorbitant amount of time on a project and I felt like there was nothing I could do about it so don’t make that mistake specify how many revisions are included in a project and then specify what happens if they exclude that like either they’re executed or they just have to pay you a certain amount of money to finish I also specify that after a certain amount of back and forth within the sketch phase if we can’t come to an agreement then we will end the project and they will pay me a 50 percent kilfi to end things as I’m saying all this stuff there are so many tangents that my brain is like trying to run off to and I’m realizing there’s like a hundred topics right here so do you have any more specific questions or want to hear videos about specific things let me know because I’m realizing that I could each one of these things could be a video on their own oh hey um are you still watching hey can you just take go ahead take this hammer and just and and just smash smashed the living heck out of the like button um really helps get this channel seen by some more people and uh you know I really really appreciate that maybe ring the bell all right back to the five things number four on the list of things that I wish I knew when I was starting out as an illustrator this is a very simple one it’s not complicated at all but boy howdy did it save my life when I did it so my first year as a freelancer they got time to do taxes and I I’m a mess I’m just gonna be honest with you I am not a Savvy organized business person I cannot deal with paperwork um if you haven’t if you’ve seen any of my other videos I guess even just from this video you could probably tell that I have ADHD and I cannot like paperwork and all that stuff is so hard for me like the idea of documenting things is feels borderline torture I can’t I can’t even I’m getting like sweaty thinking about it can’t do it can’t do it anyway my taxes that first year were a nightmare I remember meeting with an accountant and they were just like what what do you what do you have like what are you doing do you have do you have anything and he told me something that made my life so much better he was like listen just go to the bank and open up a business account and I was like a business account he’s like it’s the same thing as a normal bank account you’re just opening another bank account click ok I’m like it doesn’t matter if it’s the same bank he said no same bank is good just open up another account just say you want another checking account and this is your business account and I was like okay I like this and he’s like now anytime you get paid deposit that money into that new business bank account and only that account don’t accidentally deposit into your other account and then anytime you need to buy something for your business whether that’s computers papers Wacom cintiq iPad Pro camera books research I don’t know all kinds of stuff anything for my business you pay for it with that same account and now you know all of your business income because it all went through that one account and all of your expenses came out of that same account so if you want to go even further you could just get like QuickTime not QuickTime QuickBooks uh self-employed and you can just like link that bank account and it’ll just be like and I’ll just sort all that for you and it’ll just be like here’s all your information everything’s done you don’t have to do anything business bank account do it right away for even thinking about being an illustrator just do that account can’t hurt number five a list of things that I wish I knew when I was starting out now this one is something that I still struggle with it is gotten a little bit easier but this is a tricky one for me this is going to sound basic and simple too but here it is ready enjoy the slow times and before you click away and be like all right okay that’s the stupid thing whatever nearly every year there’s like a couple points where things just slow down and I don’t have many projects or any projects at all instead of just being like and enjoying it because you know there’s some super busy times where I’m just like going non-stop feeling super overwhelmed being like Oh I just need a little bit of a time to just decompress blah blah blah well those times happen naturally every year and instead of enjoying it I’m like well this is it career’s over pack it in I gotta go find a job I knew it was too good to be true I knew it could be an illustrator what was I think it’d be an illustrator I don’t know how to draw do you remember me in figure drawing class I was awful at it I hated that in high school I try to draw the Apple Katie and Amy’s apples are so much better than mine mine looked like hot garbage I shouldn’t even be an artist what am I doing I went to school for graphic design I’m not a real illustrator and then I panic I start like trying to sell things I’m doing all kinds of things I’m saying yes to projects that I should never say yes to that aren’t paying enough and then all of a sudden some big good projects come in and then I’m just like oh my God I got all these crap projects I got this good project I got all this stuff and I’m super busy again and I’m like oh this is crazy blah blah blah I wish I just had a few moments to decompress well you had like two weeks and what did you do trying to sell bikes on Craigslist I have so many more things on this list of things that I wish that I knew when I was starting as an illustrator so I’m gonna make another one of these videos so make sure that you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out on the next one and while you’re here uh check out this other video that um YouTube thinks that you should see all right good talk

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