microstock report for August 2010

This month was a little bit down in some places, but big in others...

Shutterstock rebounded from a slow July to once again take first place (which it's been every month since we started Stock illustrations).

In second was Istockphoto with $79, but we finally broke 100 images.  This is the site where you want to have more illustrations on because they sell very well, but they are also very critical and turn away quite a lot.  But once you get them up, it's worth it!

Dreamstime almost lost out to VectorStock this month.  I couldn't believe how few sales we had on Dreamstime.  But this month they did their contest with a subject matter that most of us illustrators didn't think we could be a part of...so I really didn't add any new images this month.

VectorStock has come on pretty strong (for being one of the bottom feeders for so long).  It's had a best month ever - and can be counted on to have at least one sale a day.  We also just recently got a raise on the site (from 25 cents a download to 30 cents)...so that definitely helped.

And the rest were pretty standard - Fotolia and Bigstockphoto both just inched into double digits and Crestock pulled in the rear with 75 cents.  Ridiculous.  Crestock also took almost 5 months to approve the last nine images I uploaded to the site (which is a big reason why I stopped uploading).

All in all - it was still another $300 haul in Microstock.  That's pretty low, but since I've been on hiatus I've been focusing on licensing for real and not this small time stock image licensing (and it's only small time because I'm not investing more time into it).  But it's nice to still be pulling in as much money considering we really haven't added anything to our portfolios, and the images are still getting downloaded.  And I added a couple of new stock sites that still haven't recorded sales, but I have images on them!  Veer and Stockfresh...so we'll see how they do in the coming months....

IF: An Atmosphere of cute

The atmosphere around here is relief.  I've been working on finishing this project for the last three weeks and I'm finally done.  There are some loose ends to tie up (I just revised the parade illustration and need to recolor it), but it's all up and ready to be viewed.

I've been drawing the characters for just over a year...they started out as the sidekicks to another character I draw, but then they really felt like they deserved their own world.

Anyway - we'll see where it goes...

Squaremania: It's finally coming together

I want to say that this will clinch it - but I think I have a couple more things to do before I can submit this stuff to licensing scrutiny...

These are the first four characters...I have about 44 more characters running behind them...

This is the cleanup of all the characters together...I'm getting towards the back, so it's almost done...

it's just silly cute!

I did a series of these with the panda and the skunk...but this is one of the best...

There's this guy on an illustration board I'm on (where we critique each other's childrens book drawings and paintings) named Steve Harpster who does the most amazing eyes.  Just by studying his technique, I've been able to make the eyes that I paint (in photoshop) look a hell of a lot better than they did just a year ago...and I thought those were pretty well done...I'm still learning, but I love how dimensional the eyes look now.

Panda in an egg

I'm finishing up some stuff in a series - I already did the skunk in an egg - and this is the panda in an egg:

Tusken Raider Baseball...and caged

My softball team had our playoff game last night (we lost) - I revised this illustration to hopefully spur us to victory - but apparently Sand People with baseball bats inspires no one.

Then I thought this looks like a guy who belongs behind bars:

 The Tusken Raider was painted in photoshop, and the cage was drawn and colored in illustrator.  He was originally going to be in a cage on the ground, but someone of his character needed to be suspended from above in a dark dark room, so he can't hurt anyone anymore.

IF: Caged - behind bars...

Sure I'm going with the very obvious interpretation of this week's Illustration Friday - but it's fun to see cute animals looking so pathetic behind bars....that's why zoos are so popular.

I was actually working on a different project with this character and thought his pose would be good to add some bars to.

IF: artificial...

Something that sells well on stock image sites are realistic looking vectors.  The artificial reality is quite good for the buyers as, unlike the real thing, it allows for scaling (without losing image quality) and they're easily edited.  So far we've created realistic baseball caps, desserts (like one of our most popular pieces, a realistic chocolate covered strawberry),

and yesterday i finally got around to creating an artificial corkboard:

What's nice about this is that I can use this piece, and add more paper or different types of paper or even add words to add a variety of different stock image choices for perspective buyers.
You can find these and many more on stock image sites such as shutterstock, istockphoto, dreamstime, and fotolia.

And it's nice to do these every once in a while because they're completely different from the children's book illustration stuff I usually do.

revisiting old characters

I'm putting together a new project - but its making me revisit older illustrations and revising them.  This is the first one I just finished - I wanted to do two versions and I needed them isolated on white - so I took out the background and redrew the eyes for the second version.



The one on the left is how I feel about running...and the elephant on the right is where I wish I could get.




Anyway - these are done....and I'm moving on.