A boy and his dog

I did this illustration for Dreamstime's latest contest:

Dreamstime is a microstock site - where they license photographs and illustrations.  And while i have every intention of winning this contest...it's usually the photographs that dominate.  There are a select group of artists that submit illustrations to the contest, but it's few and far between that any of us have won.

The payoff for just entering is still worth it - if this file is ever licensed (and my past entries have been a few times), they sell for more - on the low end the price can go from 36 cents to $1.26.  So it's a good incentive to participate.

The contest this month is "children with pets."  It's important to be one of the first entries (the contest started on friday) so you get more eyeballs on your piece.  I submitted it Friday night and as of Sunday, I'm still waiting to have the illustration approved...

This illustration was drawn in photoshop, but cleaned up and colored in adobe illustrator.  Microstocks like Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime sell more vector files than any other form of illustration.  So it pays to work in that media.

Microstock report for February 2012

Here's the fancy microstock report for February 2012!

I started last month by including the lifetime totals each site has brought me.  I've been selling my illustrations through microstock sites since February 2009 - so it's been 3 years and it's brought a total of $11,744.67 since the beginning.  It might sound like a big number - but it's just about $3900 a year of extra income.  What's nice about it is that I don't spend much if any time at all these days creating new illustrations.

In February I uploaded this image and two others compositions using the same laptop icons:

Shutterstock is the best site to upload files to.  Like all of the microstock sites, you have to sign up and upload several images that they'll evaluate to see if the work is good enough.  Shutterstock makes you upload 10 images for evaluation and you pass if 7 or more are approved.  Other sites vary as well as the time it takes to approve images.  Istockphoto has the hardest process to pass (even though they only evaluate three files), and I didn't get approved the first two times I tried (because of open paths).

Anyway - Stock Illustration sites are a good source of extra income - and it all depends on how much or little you put into creating new files and creating good files.  When we first joined, we aggressively uploaded and posted our biggest monthly numbers...since then we've uploaded about 1 or so files a month and average $250-$300 a month.

The line of "All Other Stock" refers to Stockfresh, Veer, and Thinkstock which are all sites that I signed up with later on and which don't sell too much between the three of them...I might just add Crestock to that mix as the income from that site is very minimal.  The lifetime earnings from "All Other Stock" are boosted by Stockxpert which was sold to Istockphoto and shut down (but not before I made $300 there).

more t-shirt designs!

My wife and I collaborated on these designs.  What that means are these were her ideas, her drawings, and I helped out a tiny bit (and she made me upload them to the site).

For the final t-shirt design we decided to lose the balloon as we wanted to make a clean and simple design that appealed to both men and women and felt the balloon 'babied' it up:

Please vote for this design by clicking this link to Deviant Art and then clicking "I'd wear this"

And then she drew this:

Which we turned into this design:

And this is what it looks like on the t-shirt:

And vote for this one too!  There's no limit to the amount of different t-shirts you can vote for...but I'd appreciate the votes for ours!  Make sure you use this link to Deviant Art and click "I'd wear this"

Thanks!

Deviant Art: Cute Monster T-shirt Contest

Click here to vote for my t-shirt design!  Click on "I'd Wear This" to vote.  My design will only be capable of winning if you vote!  You have to be a member of Deviant Art to vote - but it's well worth it!  So come on...what do you say?

A friend of mine told me about this contest that Deviant Art was holding (the deadline to enter ends tonight at midnight).  I did a bunch of quick roughs:

But I didn't like how any of them turned out so I kept trying and did a series of really terrible drawings that I won't post here...but then I drew this one...and while it's still kind of wonky...it demanded that I finish it:

and that led to finishing it in Adobe Illustrator.  I did the drawing as I wanted to finish it (the one on the left) and then because the rules of the contest strongly suggested that the illustrations be confined to 7 colors (which is easier for them to print) I changed my color palette to comply.

The color swatches at the top are all the colors in the drawing...my original finished piece had 13 colors, so I had to really pare it back to get it to seven.

And this is how it looks if it was on a t-shirt:

My friend, Leonard Dill,  also entered the contest - His illustration is almost as good as mine (and some would say it's better) - Click on his name and also vote for him!  Do your good deed for the day...or two good deeds...don't be lazy, it's totally worth it!  Here's his t-shirt design:

Random Background drawing

I was working on some layouts and came out with this...I liked enough to post here:

It's pretty rough - but I like how the colors came out.

IF: Capable of napping

How can he be capable of sleeping in the middle of such a good book!?!?

I created this in Photoshop.  I might attempt an acrylic painting, but we'll see...

Originally I just drew the tree as I'm trying out a variety of styles to figure out what things in this world will look like.  I liked it enough to add the little panda napping after a good read.

Squaremania - evening lanterns

I was doodling this out a bit - and decided to finish it up a bit more...I started out with the dark blue background color - and played everything else off of that so it could, hopefully, have a nighttime feel.

it's still in rough form, but I thought it was kind of a cute idea.  I have to give credit to my wife as she's the one who suggested that I draw something like this.  "How about those square characters holding lanterns walking across the roof of a house".  So there you go.

IF: Suspense

I always liked the idea of a character thinking that the glasses and mustache would be a believable disguise.

This is part of a suspenseful scene as our little disguised hero builds up the courage to round the corner and face the room beyond.  Nobody would recognize him...or would they...!?!?

Microstock report for January 2012

Here's my latest microstock report:

This month I've decided to include lifetime totals for each of these stock sites.

I thought it would be informative to see what each of these sites has actually made.  It might help anyone looking to submit photos or illustrations to microstock to pick the right ones - or at least focus on the ones that pay the most.


Shutterstock leads the way this month and every month.  They've been the top money maker with licensing my illustrations from the beginning.  They were the easiest company to get approved on (you have to submit 10 images).  My wife and I have been submitting images for about 2 years now (we got our first sale/download on January 31st of 2009) and there have only been a handful of days (less than 5) where we didn't make at least one sale.  In the Spring of 2009, when we were at our freshest and we devoted hours a week to uploading, we were making almost $300 a month.  But now, sitting on a big portfolio of illustrations, and not uploading anything new - we still make at least $100.  And that's why I got into stock illustration in the first place.  I had drawings that were just sitting around on my computer collecting dust - so I brushed them off (colored some of them) and uploaded them and now they're making money.  Some make more than others...but it's nice that they all have a chance.  And by uploading to several sites we increase our chance of having that file make more money.  And our ultimate goal with Shutterstock is to reach the lifetime total goal of $10k because we get our final raise from 36 cents per download to 39 cents.  It's a small raise, but it adds up - and, as you can see, 2 years (or 24 months) of those small downloads have made about $5,500.

Dreamstime and www.istockphoto.com are the next two big companies.  Istock used to be my second best performer and, at one time, threatened to overtake Shutterstock - but last year they changed their royalty structure and they slipped below Dreamstime in the amount of money they bring in.  I hope it comes back around, but it doesn't look likely...Dreamstime is probably the company I upload to and focus on the most - but only because they have a monthly contest that I like to participate in.  I have yet to win, but all the images accepted into the contest sell for a higher price point which still makes it worth it.

The rest of the companies are hit and miss from month to month.  I still upload to them because the money adds up eventually.  And ya never know when a big sale could come.

Anyway - that's all I have this month.  Hopefully I'll never be this long winded in another microstock report...

Squaremania: Lil' Square Bear

I drew this bear originally as a mean old crotchety character...This is a different take - where he's a little more friendly and not so prone to ripping into flesh:

Sorry about the copyright nonsense, but you can't be too careful these days...

Laughing kids

Dreamstime has another contest - this time the subject matter is about body language - I just finished this rough using a wacom tablet and drawing in Adobe Photoshop:

I drew the one boy with the front teeth missing, but I'm not going to do that in the final drawing.  Because it looks dumb.

This is the cleaned up version.  I did it in Adobe Illustrator. I rounded out the blond boy's cheek (it was a little too stylized) and removed the gap teeth.

Microstock report for December 2011

Decembers are usually a really bad month for stock licensing.  The holidays and vacations keep people from downloading.  This December brought a couple of days on Shutterstock where we didn't get any downloads, and while it was down from last month, it was still a fairly good month.

Shutterstock once again carried over 50 percent of the sales this month.  Bigstockphoto rallied after last month's disappointing fifty cents showing by coming in 3rd overall for December.  When we first started with Bigstockphoto we consistently had months like that (where regular $3 dowloads happened each week), but recently it's been a struggle to sell anything on that site.  Hopefully this is a sign of Bigstockphoto picking back up.

I decreased the sizes of a couple of portfolios because I had an illustration on several sites that I've decided to take in a different direction:

I drew this a few years ago with the idea to turn it into a vinyl toy.  I put that idea on hold for a while because I started pursuing other avenues - and recently I've teamed up with a couple of friends from work to create apps and vinyl toys.  This one eyed blob monster will be our first vinyl toy.

And what's interesting is just as I took this image off the stock illustration sites, I was suddenly contacted by someone that wanted to do an Ipad game with this character.  So I was able to negotiate a license with the person directly.  So this year could see this character with it's own toy AND game app!

In October, I found out that you could drag any picture into Google.com (in the image area) and it will do a search based on that image.  I found several of my stock illustrations being given away for free or being used by blogs illegally (or at least without any credit)...This year I'm going to start including a copyright on each image.  It's kind of lame, but it's a good way to ensure that people won't use these images without permission.

Quick Sketch

Today they passed around a sketchbook for everyone to sign as a going away present for the doorman who just retired.  I did this quick little sketch of my panda character for him.  It was a sad day to see him go - but hopefully he can find some happiness and fulfillment in his time away from Nickelodeon.

November Microstock Report

This is November's Microstock Report:

Shutterstock led the pack once again.  Along with Istockphoto, they're one of the biggest agencies that deal with licensing photographs and vector illustrations.  It's strange that all this time Shutterstock has maintained an average over $100, whereas www.istockphoto.com (which had a couple of months with the century mark about a year ago) has faded, and was overtaken by Dreamstime last month.

Vectorstock is a site that a few vector artists don't care for - the reason why is that the payouts are very low per image.  I'll have a ton of sales each month (which i like because I visit each site at least once a day, and it's a lot more fun when the dollar amounts change, even if it's just a little), but it only amounts to just over $20.  I like to stick with them though because sales are sales - and Vectorstock is one of the more consistent selling sites I'm affiliated with.

There are a bunch of other sites that I signed up with that aren't really doing much of anything.  Crestock is one of the original sites I joined and it's made zero monies in four of the last five months.  Some other dud stock sites (for me) are Stockfresh (which just started, so I'm waiting to see if that changes) and Veer (another new site, but another one that doesn't sell much).

With that said - I think it's better to have a portfolio of illustrations across a variety of microstock agencies.  It means that more businesses and people in need of images have a better chance of finding your stuff and purchasing the license.  If you're thinking of selling your own vector artwork (or photographs) - I'd say start with Shutterstock - it's one of the easier sites to get into (you have to have 10 images approved, but their approval process is lax compared to an agency like Istockphoto).  But once you get going, I'd suggest at least signing up with the big three (Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime) and then think about the rest.

A boy and his puppy

This is another illustration that I did for Dreamstime.  I had an idea to draw a kid with big round eyes getting a puppy on Christmas so I drew this on my wacom tablet using Adobe Photoshop:

What's great about using Photoshop is that you can easily lighten and darken the lines and work on separate layers to quickly and easily draw and edit.  What isn't so great is using a wacom tablet to do it.  But it still gets the job done - because it's just a sketch that I transported to Adobe Illustrator (in stock image sites like Dreamstime, they always like photographs and vector drawings...vary rarely will a raster illustration do as well).

I might have made the eyes too big and round...but he looks happy (if slightly alien).  Anyhow - I wanted to do a very subtle background, so all of that color (not the ornaments) is a gradient mesh with a few lines for the fireplace.

Squaremania: Panda has an Epiphany

Here's the final illustration:

I think it turned out quite alright!

Squaremania: Happy Panda

I printed out the rough drawing and revised it with a red pencil:

After scanning it back into the computer I completed the revisions in Adobe Illustrator and then transferred the lines into Photoshop to color.  So far I'm done with the Panda, and now I have to work on the background:

Feeling Great, Feeling Happy...with a kite!

This illustration is for the Dreamstime contest.  This month's topic is "Feeling Great, Feeling Happy."

This is the rough I did in Adobe Photoshop:

I took that into Illustrator to clean it up and color it:

I, personally, never got into kite flying as a kid.  I had a couple of kites, but  each and every time I took them out a tree came out of nowhere and swallowed them whole.  I felt like Charlie Brown...all I needed to find was a jerk girl to pull a football away when I tried to kick it.

Anyway - kites don't agree with me, but these two kids seem to be getting a kick out of it.

Here's a variation:

Happy Panda Rough Drawing

This is the baby panda surrounded by sunlight.

The ears will be a little smaller in the final version.

This is Halloween, 2011

Last year we got a group together to do a Mario Brothers theme.  This year we visited the Tim Burton exhibit at the LACMA.  It inspired us to make our own costumes using the Nightmare Before Christmas as our theme this year.

My wife and two friends were Lock, Shock, and Barrel - the three little kids who kidnap 'sandy claws'.  I wanted to be something a bit harder and went with the Mayor.  Every year at Nickelodeon Animation Studio (where we work) they do a costume contest.  So while we were waiting for our turn, a girl dressed as Sally joined us and we all went together. 

We won for 'best entertainment characters'.

There's also a pumpkin carving contest that we entered:

My wife stayed with the theme and carved a Jack Skellington head and painted it white.  It also won!

I changed my plan at the last minute and went with an Angry Birds theme:

the red bird is an orange and the little blue bird is a lime.

 Angry Birds in their natural habitat.

This was part of the process of painting the Mayor head - I did a layer and then hung it to dry while I worked on my pumpkin.  I cut out the pieces for the eye, the nose and the mouth (which is where I saw out of).   The other cone (the white one) was the bottom part of the hat.  The material I used was a light weight black foam, so I had to do an undercoat before painting it gray.

And here are a few pictures of the making of the pumpkins:

The pear was too difficult to work with, so I ended up not being able to do a yellow bird.

precision cutting for Jack Skellington's eyes