Freelance Illustration - cartoon spec

One thing people in the illustration business have to do from time to time is work spec. I usually don't participate - because a lot of the time one's portfolio should be sufficient to show one's ability to tackle a job. But on occasion, when the job seems like fun (or a great opportunity), I'll work on spec (that means you're doing art for free, with no real guarantee that you've gotten the job. Basically you do the piece or pieces, turn them in, and hope the person or business will hire you). A couple of times it's amounted to nothing - but I've had some really good jobs come out of spec work.

Spec is also something that happens in the animation industry - but they don't call it that - they refer to it as 'testing'. You have to test for storyboarding, props, characters or any other animation job that's available. The worst part is that it's actually more time consuming than working spec in the illustration world...as some tests take an enormous amount of time. I had a friend recently take a storyboard revisions test and ended up having to draw over 70 pages (!). And they gave him a week to do it. It's crazy - but worth it if you get the job.

Anyway - here's the spec I did. I turned it in just a few minutes ago and I'm waiting by the phone...



It's for a cartoon that runs in several locations locally in the southern california area. All of the characters are copyright America's Kid Times. This cartoon (above) would run in February (I was going for a valentine's day theme). I did the original sketch in photoshop, and then cleaned it up on a different layer (also in photoshop).