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).

Lil' Girl Praying

This is a variation on the previous illustration - I wanted to do another kid kneeling and praying.  So, to get the effect of it being a completely different illustration I changed the boy into a girl and the shades of blue into pinks and purples.

Links to religion

I've been doing a series of 'spiritual/religious' illustrations for Dreamstime.  They have a month long contest that just ended...and I wasn't able to finish this one in time.  So instead of just posting it to Dreamstime (a contest entry means you have to have that image be exclusive with them), I'm going to upload it to all the stock sites I'm on.

This illustration has been in the works for the last two weeks.  I originally did a drawing of a little girl praying and got a lot of feedback about how kids are usually shown kneeling in front of their bed before bedtime.  So this illustration reflects that feedback.  I scanned in a pen drawing and cleaned it up and colored it in Adobe Illustrator.  I've only been able to upload it to one site so far (Shutterstock) because they take Illustrator 10 files and all the other sites only accept Illustrator 8.

I'm using Adobe Illustrator CS3, but because of the nature and slow evolution of the stock image market, they only accept illustrator 8 files - so I always have to back save it.  Shutterstock has taken a small step forward and (only in the last month or so) started accepting Illustrator 10 files.  That means that for all the sites you cannot use the new filters or effects (such as transparencies) or when it's reopened the file is corrupt or, at least, ruined.

Take, for example, the image above.  It's fine if saved as an Illustrator 10 file.  But if you save it as an Illustrator 8 file - all the blends I did to get the highlights on the kid turn from 2 circles (to get the effect) to 25 or so circles.  It ends up looking like a sloppy color job and raises the file's size.  And then the transparency to get the light effect rasterizes (which is death for vector files) as does the lens flares that went into making the light in the sky.

So - I spent the last two hours last night changing all the blend effects on the boy to gradients and changing the transparencies to a series of different shapes to fake the effect.  And I'm stuck on the light...I might have to completely redo that part.  But we'll see.  Stupid Illustrator 8.

Bedroom Background

Recently on Shutterstock we've been getting a lot of downloads on a bed line drawing I did for my Adelia children's book.  When we first signed up to these stock illustration sites I went through my entire library of illustrator (vector) drawings and pulled out all the characters (such as Adelia) that I wanted to protect (and not sell) and ended up with a bunch of background element illustrations.

So I thought I'd dust off this old illustration and redo it (my wife helped with the color) as a complete image.

Bedroom Background

media: Adobe Illustrator

Holding up the World and Linking Hands

For this image I had to dip into my archive of stock images - the likes of which I've submitted to Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime.  Actually - Istockphoto turned it down because I used a map and they need copyright information on it, even though its my own drawing based on a map...So nuts to them.

But anyway - I did a series of earths last year - as circle globes, and as hearts...and then I did some as green worlds (capitalizing on the whole green fad...which I expect will fade soon enough...fade as the globe warms and we all dry out).  And about a month ago I drew a series of kids - a variety of boys and girls - just each individual little kid standing - and redrew them holding hands.  And voila...instantly a new image (I also took some grass that I had done as a set of gardening icons).

Illuminated Spirituality

This is another image I've uploaded to Dreamstime for their monthly contest.  I wanted to create an illustration (in adobe illustrator) that fit the topic (religion and spirituality) that was also not specific so it's appeal could be more universal.  Of course those familiar with the three wisemen on their way to pay homage to the birth of Jesus are going to draw those parallels.  But it could also be a small group of pilgrims traveling towards a religious place...guided by a light.

My wife originally did a space illustration - and I wanted to use that as my sky (as I really liked the colors she put into the radial gradient that makes the light).  So I wanted to post this image (which we uploaded to all the stock illustration sites) to give her credit for her color choices (and illustrative skills).

Chocolate Dipped Goodness

This is an illustration for Shutterstock:

This was a collaborative effort by my wife and I.  She did all the realistic strawberry stuff and the choco drip down the wall, and I used a gradient mesh to make the chocolate on the strawberry.  It was done completely in Adobe Illustrator - using a lot of blends.

Microstock Report for March 2010

Microstock is still alive and well.  Maybe I shouldn't be the person to toot this horn too loudly - because while I'm involved enough that it's not just recreational, I'm not that far into it that it accounts for any 'real' money...but it's pretty terrific month after month.

And quickly - Microstock agencies are websites where you upload your images (photographs or illustrations).   Then people pay per download to use one of your images.  It can vary from site to site and even from download to download.  We've had sales of .25 cents and up to $28.

Shutterstock, once again, leads the way!  We bumped up our portfolio with almost 50 images this month - and it paid off with our first $200 month since last April!  This ended up being our third highest month ever, which is pretty great considering just last November we were struggling to make $100.  This month was also the third EL sale (which is one of those $28 ones).  They are few and far between, but they're always nice to receive.

Second on the list - and coming in with it's best month ever was Istockphoto.  This is the second time we've passed $100 (this is our newest site as it took the longest to get approved...we've only been up and running since May, whereas we've been members of every other site since the end of February of 2009).  And while it's still the hardest site to get an illustration approved from (this month two different images were denied because they thought it was too hard to see the illustration in the preview window.  I completely disagreed and challenged the rejection...so that's still pending.  What sucks is that it's a page of fish and marine life and it won't sell as well if I have to break the fish into smaller sections and into pages of fewer fish.  I actually tried that and got one approved and the other was rejected for being too simple).  Istockphoto, while hard to upload, is still completely worth it.  And the more images we have on that site should net us more money.

 This is the illustration that was too hard to make out in the preview window...

Third place, as per usual, is Dreamstime.  I originally hated this site because of their uploading method.  You have to upload a high quality jpg and add an illustrator file at the end.  And then it takes about 3-6 days for the jpg to get approved and another couple of weeks for the illustrator file.  And while it's a process, they make up for it with consistent sales.  This was the most sales we've had for a month...but because a lot of them were subscription sales (which are cheaper) we ended up not making as much as some other months.   What makes this site unique and which commands a lot of my time is that they hold a monthly contest (or about every month and a half) where the prizes range from 100-300 dollars.  This month we've slowed on uploading images to all the sites so I could concentrate on this contest.  So far we have three images in, and we'll see how they do (results are tallied in a couple of weeks).  The contests, even though I haven't won, have paid off as all images approved for the contest go into my portfolio at a higher price point (and, about 4 images from contests in the past, have sold multiple times so far).

The rest is a jumble of good and bad.  I've had a best moth ever at Vectorstock, and it replaced Fotolia for 4th highest total.  Everything else rounded out around the $10 range for the month.  They've all been sort of disappointing as it means that most don't sell an image for days at a time.  Vectorstock is different though because they are only a subscription based microstock agency and each one sells for .25....so making 10 dollars is a lot of quarters per month!

Disappointing me most of all (besides the closure of Stockxpert last month) is Fotolia.  It used to work quite well, but now, even with more and more uploads, the sales have been few and far between.  And it's gone from a solid 4th place to 8th (and it'd be lower if I was on any more stock sites)...

Overall it was a great month.  It was my best month so far overall - with a total of $417.  Last April was a great month, and hopefully that proves to be true once again this next month!