back of the postcard finished!

 This is the other half of the postcard:

And this is what it'll look like when it's printed (and stamped and labeled):

Chased by Bees

Here's part of the finished illustration for 'chased by bees'.  It's half of the back of a postcard I'll be sending out to children's book publishers.

Chased by bees

This is a rough drawing that's part of the back of a new postcard I'm working on.

And here's the cleanup I did for it in Adobe Illustrator:

She's on the run with bees trailing behind her.

Soccer Family

This is a companion piece to the Tennis Family.  This was cleaned up and colored in Adobe Illustrator.  It's another contest piece for Dreamstime.  I didn't think I'd care for the topic this month of Family Sports...but just one week in and I've illustrated three pieces for it.

I thought it'd be okay to post to Illustration Friday because there is a trail - and it goes right by where this family is playing Soccer.  The previous illustration (Tennis Family) didn't have anything even remotely resembling the topic (unless I said something like the one team trailed the other)...but that would have been lame.  And this time, but only this time, I figured I'd only post something if it actually matched the topic.

Tennis Family

This is another illustration for the Dreamstime contest.  I originally did the basketball dad and son for the same contest, but decided against it because of how well I thought it turned out.  This one also turned out better than I originally expected (I was working with a style of character that was very stylized and that I hadn't done before).

I originally drew it without the girl in front - but I think she adds so much more dimension to the piece.  There's a lot of green in this picture, but I think it helps 'pop' the characters...and also, from the courts I've played on, the color scheme is very similar.  I drew each character separately in my sketchbook, and then cleaned them up in Adobe Illustrator and placed them on a tennis court I drew way back in 2006 (for a children's book that never went anywhere)...and I colored the entire thing in Adobe Illustrator (well, I did a first pass at color, then my wife took a pass, and then I finished it off by adding gradients).

And for those of you who don't know - Dreamstime is one of the big microstock sites - they hold a monthly contest where the top three prizes are hundreds in cash.  The contest is open to site uploaders (whether it be illustrations or photographs) with at least 50 images in their portfolio.  And even if your image doesn't win, it is still bumped up to a higher selling bracket...

Basketball picture done!

I was inspired to do this illustration from one of the stock illustration sites that I upload to (Dreamstime).  They hold a monthly contest that I've been uploading images to...but when I drew this one (in Adobe Photoshop) I thought it looked too good to waste on one site.

I also know that I won't be winning the contest (as photographs are heavily favored), so having to exclusively upload it on the off chance it'll place in the contest seemed like a horrible fate for this illustration.

Anyway - I really like how it turned out - the kid's face is a little more cartoony than the dad's face...but that's just what happens in their world - the older you get, the more realistic you get...or something like that.

Oh - and a big deciding factor was that it felt like it could sell well on Istockphoto - and because of all the elements (two characters, action, a full background with depth) that it would sell for a lot more per download.  I just uploaded it to the site, so it'll take about a week to get approved...we'll see how well it does.

And finally - I did the original sketch in photoshop (like I said above), but then colored it completely in Adobe Illustrator.  My wife Tracey did a color pass (because she's better at color than I am) and then I added all the shadows and gradients to round out the illustration.

Microstock report for May of 2010

This month had a couple of upswings.  Shutterstock was once again the best microstock site of the month.  There were no ELs once again (after three months straight with one....an EL is a $28 download), but it was a pretty consistent month.  And what's nice is that we're closing in on our next raise (from 33 cents for a regular download to 36 cents, and from $2.48 for On Demand downloads to $3.00).  And we should have our raise by July.

In second place for a year straight was Istockphoto.  They've been second since we got approved on the site, but this is the Best Month Ever for Istock.  Our previous high was back in October when the Chocolate Covered Strawberry sold as an EL).  With a sixth of the portfolio of Shutterstock, Istockphoto is really doing quite well with very little.  It's much harder to get a file on Istockphoto than it is on Shutterstock - the trade off is that you'll get more downloads per day on Shutterstock, but each download will earn more money on Istockphoto (which almost evens out the sites).  For example, this month we averaged about 13 downloads a day on Shutterstock and we averaged 1.6 downloads on Istockphoto.

Our regular third place finisher is, as always Dreamstime.  May turned out to be the second best month ever on Dreamstime...it always seems like we should be doing better on this site, but it tends to have stretches without any downloads.  What's nice is that Dreamstime has a monthly contest, (the illustrations I've contributed have to be exclusive to this site) and the images have been selling...slowly, but selling.  It's slower than the top two, but it's still worth contributing to.

The next in line was a bit of a surprise - BigStockPhoto came out of nowhere and reclaimed 4th place.  It has been pretty middling and, like Fotolia, threatened to compete for last place...but an EL on this site (which, for some reason, is only $16) helped pull it's numbers up.  I don't understand it though...this site, like Fotolia, continue to earn less than $20 a month (except for rare EL months) even though I continue to pump new files onto the site.  I figure it's just a matter of time when one (or hopefully more) of these files strike a cord with the site's customers.  In the meantime I'll just concentrate on the big three microstock sites (shutterstock, istockphoto, and dreamstime).

And to wrap things up - the rest of the show wasn't so bad.  Vectorstock is a site that a lot of Vector artists (people, like myself, who submit images created completely in Adobe Illustrator) warn against as they pay the least of any site (and have the most unrealistic raise goals)....and while I haven't uploaded my entire Shutterstock portfolio, I still have a pretty decent amount.  And each month it's getting better.  Last month was the first time I was able to request a payout (of $100) and it was also our Best Month Ever with $14.25.  It should take until August (at this pace) to finally reach the next level and get a raise (from 25 cents a download to 30 cents)...It's only taken a year and a half...

Family Basketball - cleanup

This illustration turned out better than I originally expected. I'm still going to go ahead and color it in Adobe Illustrator (which means that it'll have a bit of a simpler color scheme)...but only because I still want to submit it to the stock illustration sites...but to all of them, not just for the Dreamstime contest. Will it sell on them all? Who can say...but I'd like it to have the chance...

 that kid seems really excited about putting a ball in the hoop...

Basketball Time...the rough drawing.

This is another start to an illustration I'm doing for Dreamstime.  Their contest is family sports...so I have this one in the works, and a very rough version of a family playing tennis.  So once those three are done I'm going to sit back and not do any more illustrations for this particular contest.  My wife suggested I do a family MMA match, but I didn't think that would be a good usage of time.

As you might be able to see I had an easier time drawing the kid's head - the dad's head was a struggle (I ended up finishing it as a separate drawing in my sketchbook...and I just printed it out and will be adding a background and finishing the dad's head.

 

This is my second round of revisions after some illustrator clean-up.

Baseball time!

I did this illustration for Dreamstime and their monthly contest where photographers and illustrators compete for the best image.  The prizes are $300, $200, and $100 (for first, second and third, of course).  I went with a more painterly look with this one - usually i do an art piece in Adobe Illustrator (color and all) but decided to try a different approach.  This was a sketch that I did in Photoshop, then printed out and revised and then scanned back in and colored (in photoshop) directly on the scanned image.  It added a bunch of texture that I normally would have to fabricate myself.

I really like how the kid turned out, but I'm not so keen on the dad behind him.  I think there should have been more interaction between the two or something.  But I'm trying to stretch as an illustrator and draw more than just weirdly shaped animals and kids.  Gotta add some adults into the old portfolio...

IF: Slither...and baseball!

So I was working on an illustration for the new Dreamstime contest that started today.  Dreamstime is a stock illustration site that holds a contest every month (or so) where, just like Illustration Friday, they have a topic (this one is Family Sports)...and I started my illustration.  The only thing is that playing baseball has nothing to do with Illustration Friday's topic this week of slither...so I added a snake (that won't be appearing in my final dreamstime illustration).  And viola!  I can now post it to both contests!

of course this is just the rough - so it's not Dreamstime ready.  But I'm well on my way.

I sure hope someone does something with slytherin.  This week is just screaming for some harry potter posts!

IF: Early - wake up time

So I was directly inspired by IF.  Early wake up for the pup.  I guess it's a rather obvious one.  But I liked it.

Also - I was working on doing it a little different than usual - I drew it in photoshop and instead of taking it into illustrator to clean up (like I usually do) I colored directly on my rough and colored it completely in photoshop.  And I removed most of the lines (if not all of them).

 This is a slight revision of the piece - I changed the color of the walls to pop the character a bit more...and made the light coming through the sunroof a bit more transparent.

IF: Early Dog gets the honey

I've been working on this illustration for a couple of weeks now - originally I had walked across a bridge swarming with bees.  It just so happened to coincide with Illustration Friday's "Fearless" topic.  That got me to doodle my little dog character swatting at a bee hive - which, to me, is pretty fearless.  The next week (if you follow Illustration Friday as avidly as I do...which means, once a week...) then you saw that the topic was "equipment" and that almost made me cloth the dog character in a full bee farmer outfit (are they called bee farmers?).  Anyhow - this week's topic of early led me to the title of this piece:

The Early Dog Gets the Honey...

or stung.  It really could be that the early dog just gets stung.  Bees suck.

Bees - half way there...

There actually is still a lot to do, but I've finished with the drawing part (which includes too many rounds of revisions) and the color for the tree trunk and the little dog character....

But this is a part of what I have so far...(I still need to self color the lines as well, but I don't do that until the end when the color is set).

IF: Fearlessly facing down Bees

I always figured that if you didn't have many brain cells that you'd be okay with doing something like batting at a bee hive.  Everyone likes honey, but there's better ways to get some.

Now I've already posted a version of this - but that was my original thumbnail and illustrator cleanup.  Next in my process I print out the illustration (I either turn all the black lines into grey or make them 30% transparent which has the same effect) and then go back over it with my blue pencil.  I like this step because I always do very little detail to start with, and every time I attack the same illustration I add things to it, so the final one doesn't look so bad.  I just scanned this image and redid the clean-up in Adobe Illustrator:

And here's a close-up of the little dog character...

IF: Fearless

This drawing appealed to me as Bees are a weakness of mine.  So while I was waiting for someone to show up for lunch I drew a quick thumbnail of this:

And then cleaned it up.

I now have to revise it (I just printed it out) and re-clean it up.  And then it's on to color.  Hopefully I'll have it done soon enough to post this week while Fearless is still the topic of Illustration Friday!

Kids in occupations

The 3rd world countries have it right.  The kids aren't doing enough.  It's about time they stop listening to their ipods, or talking back to their parents - and started giving back...or at least earning their keep.  The most recent illustrations I've done for the microstock sites I'm affiliated with (Shutterstock, Istockphoto, Dreamstime, and Fotolia) deals with this problem by putting kids in jobs where they're needed and definitely qualified.  It doesn't take much learning to be a police officer or a doctor and it's terribly easy work...so why can't kids do the job?  Bring home a paycheck for mommy and daddy...that's a good kid.

Microstock report for April 2010

Here's the chart!

It's no surprise that Shutterstock, once again, dominated the chart.  It ended up with less than either of the last two months (which have been quite strong compared to the more recent months)...but only because we had an EL (a big $28 sale) each of the last two months.  We did have more downloads this month than in February and we ended April with quite a big upswing as well as quite a few new uploads such as these ones:

And on Istockphoto - it was a little bit down, but with more images accepted this month and with many more ideas (still in my head) on the way, we're bound to see better results. Almost $100 in a month isn't so bad...but I would like it to be higher and will be pressing towards that goal and beyond.

Dreamstime was disappointing - especially considering I've been quite involved in the monthly contest. I feel like it should be driving my sales up quite a bit more...but at least the images from the contests are at a higher selling point and are selling, so the contest images have pushed Dreamstime over $30 for the month...but barely...

And then there's the rest - Fotolia once competed for the third spot with Dreamstime, but now we barely get any sales on that site...and it's angling to be the worst among our stock image sites.  And it's sad because it's the 3rd highest portfolio online (behind Shutterstock and Dreamstime).  Strange...

Anyhow - that's the stock report for this month.  It was a fun showing on Shutterstock and a decent one on Istockphoto - it continues to be interesting, and it's fun to try and create new images to speculate on.  Some of the more complex images (such as the little boy and little girl praying) didn't ignite like I expected them to, but that only really affects Shutterstock...the other stock sites tend to have a slow ramping up for an image and it could get hot even months after it was originally uploaded...

Getting a head or two or three...

This is a vector illustration for a variety of stock image sites. I wanted to do a drawing about the diversity of the world's children.

Wheat Field and getting ahead

I did these two illustrations for the monthly Dreamstime contest.  This is my third month in a row trying to upload images to the contest (I haven't won yet...but it's not about that...exposure is more important...until I do win, of course).  The wheat field background was originally going to be the field that the farmer was standing in...but I went a little too far with the detail and it kind of pushed the Farmer completely out.

Then I had to figure out a background for the farmer - and instead of detailed, I went very simple.

The result fits with the style I was working in.

The contest started this last thursday - it's important, if you're going to be in the contest to upload images at the beginning to give yourself a head start on the competition.  First of all you get more views...half way through and even at the end there are too many images and they tend to get lost.  And secondly, the longer they're featured on the front page (each image randomly shows up on the front page of Dreamstime to promote the contest), the more chances a person has of licensing that image.

And finally - I usually start with a circle when I draw a head.  And this time, since I was drawing an older fella, I thought I should change it up and went with a different shape.  I think it worked out quite nicely.  The circle head tends to make my characters look too young (which is fine when drawing a kid, but not as nice for older folk).