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CHARACTER BUSTS 
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[Cost] = $25 USD per character bust
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From what I've seen you seem to directly paint colours for your digital painting style. I was wondering if you've ever instead used things like multiply layers or greyscaling? If so, I'd love to know your process or if you have any information/tips/advice on it.
I'm more of a cartoonist rather then painter, so I always used this like multiply. I also mostly do commissions, where commissioners want colours a specific way or may need a lot of changes, so it makes it very difficult/impossible to do direct painting as it's much harder to fix things (being a furry artist primarily, I have markings I may need to tweak as well), I also just find it more difficult to directly paint on it.
I've more recently switched to greyscaling, where I keep a folder with all my shading, and half paint, half cell shade. Then add colours on top, but I'm quite new to doing it this way and can't seem to find a good balance. It either looks too cell shaded, or doesn't really look painted. In the end it often looks too simple, and yet at the same time is really busy and took a lot of work, so I seem to be missing something! When I look at your work, because it's directly painted, there's not always a huge contrast in places, like say an arm, yet doing similar it looks pretty simple on mine.
Of course, I'm sure I'll get it with lots of practice and experimenting, I've already improved in this style quite a lot.
But, ya, multiply/greyscale is different then directly painting so I was mostly curious if you had information on how you'd do it with that style or if you had examples.
i never do the greyscale thing though. i just feel like that technique completely takes the life out of the colors. maybe it's because i'm not very good at that technique - haven't tried it very often - but i just prefer going straight for the colors! i think in order to get a painted look you really just need to merge all the layers at some point and just paint over the whole thing. or just paint on top, on a separate layer.. but it's just really hard to fake it. if you're keeping all your layers separated it's gonna be really hard to make it all come 'together' as if it were a painting on one canvas so to speak. it sounds like your technique is great for commissions but you could try playing around with the painted style (no greyscale and basically working on one layer) for your personal work? just so that you don't have to worry about tweaking things after?
Before you answered, I did start playing around with a sketch I had, doing both greyscale and direct painting, and then did one commission offered as a painting commission, direct painted. It turned out pretty well! I think it might be a little difficult with characters with heavy markings, but it might be quite doable!
Now that I've done it a bit, it gives me another question if you have the time. A lot of your art does have a bit of lineart to it (Like here: blog.loish.net/image/147093011…), do you fix that and add it in or go over lines during/after the painting? I'm doing the method of sketching, put colours on a layer under, then merge all to blend, which can make the lines disappear or look off, so I'm curious if you just fix them afterwards.
I thought I recognized your art on their boxes here in the U.S.?
so now, I am trying to make ends meet by doing freelance works/commissions, mostly children's illustrations.
my question is, how do you price your work? Is it by how big the image is? Where will it be printed?
I have read alot of articles regarding this but I still don't know what should I follow? (I have only started taking commissions earlier this year so I am kind of a newbie XD )
just wanna ask how you deal with pricings with client so I will
have an idea, too. I hope you don't mind and also, your work is inspiring. I have been following you since i've saw your works on a facebook page!
regards
things that are important for pricing are:
- how much do you think an hour of your time is worth? count up the hours you will put into the project and do the math
- consider costs of living, costs of maintaining your business (computer, tablet etc), and also the fact that you might have spent many years/lots of money on an education or learning to draw.
- are you keeping the rights to the art or does the client want the rights? the more they want from you, the higher the price should be.
- what will it be used for? limited use for a small-scale project is different than using an image for an international advertising campaign.
- what kind of client is it? a small indie publisher is different from a huge international company that will make a lot of money off of your work for them.
good luck!!
Re the rights.. i'm kind of unsure how to deal with clients about it. I've been doing freelance for almost a year now but I must admit that I still don't use legal documents when working with clients. I get my clients mostly from the internet so basically, they're from other countries so I don't know anything about this. Do you have a specific document that you are sending to clients when you'work for them? regards
how I handle it is this: I ask them before getting started what they plan on using the artwork for, and ask them to describe this in as much detail as possible. so for example, if they want a book cover done: how big will it be, how much will the image be modified by the graphic designer who adds title/credits, how will i be credited, how many books will be printed with this cover, where will it be sold, will the cover image be used to promote the book, etc? if you're OK with their proposal, say that you're ok with the image being used WITHIN those parameters. that way, if they decide to use your artwork in more ways than they originally described (for example: a 2nd run of book prints), you can contact them and let them know that this wasn't what you agreed. (and the general rule for situations like these are: if the client uses your work in more ways than originally agreed, they need to pay extra.) ideally, once you've reached an agreement, you could put everything you guys agreed on in a document and sign it (so just sign, scan, send over to them, have them sign/scan it too). but they could also just verify it thru e-mail - as long as you have it in text, it should be ok.
and basically if they want full rights to the image (as in: you make it, they take it and do WHATEVER they want with it), you should charge extra. this is called a buy-out fee and could range from 25-100% of the commission fee. most of the time, clients think they want all the rights to the image, but once they realize they have to pay extra, they're willing to be more specific about how they want to use the artwork and no longer want full rights.
hope that helps!
I am thinking of going to the HKU myself and study animation ^^
Since you have gone to it as well, how would you describe your experience there?
And was it a good/fun school? Did you learn a lot?
Sorry if these are too many questions ;u;
I'm a big fan btw!
I hope to become nearly as good as you one day, you are a huge inspiration to me ;u;