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Paula's avatar
Paula T Community Member

Illustrator Hiring Guide

Thank you so much for taking my suggestions on the Children's Book Hiring Guide.  I've already seen a difference in the specificity of job requests.  I can't THANK you enough!

 

However, I'm still encountering the same kind of problem with other types of illustration.   AI can be super helpful for a lot of things, but sometimes the AI exact repetition of the job listed below is so demoralizing, that I've often thought of completely giving up on Upwork.  

 

"This project requires creativity, attention to detail, and the ability to bring characters and scenes to life.
    Skills required:
    - Strong drawing and sketching skills
    - Ability to illustrate characters and scenes in various styles
    - Understanding of color theory and composition
    - Excellent communication and collaboration skills
    - Ability to meet deadlines and work within a budget..."

 

ANY halfway decent illustrator above high school age already knows they can do ALL those things.  Even with the US Only category, job descriptions like this are so vague that artists like me feel we are desperately gambling our Connects on the dim hope that we might come up with a living wage.  If you want to keep me and others on your platform, here's what artists REALLY need to know.

 

  • What style does the client want?  If you could ask them to download an image of the style th0e like off the internet and include it, that would be SUPER helpful.  Words like "colorful" and "whimsy" could equally be applied to Beatrix Potter or Manga.  If images are hard to put into words, give us images.  

 

  • How many pages/pictures/pieces does the client need for fixed-price contracts?   This is a HUGE issue.  Without that information, it's like asking a plumber for a quote when he's never seen your bathroom and has no idea where the leak is.  For example, I often come across high-budget projects.  If I know how much work is involved, I can divide the number of pieces by the total budget and see if it's anywhere close to a decent rate.  Often what seems like a promising opportunity comes down to something horrible like $4 a page, before the Upwork fee.  Those are just the jobs where I know the scope of work.  Most of the time, artists have to go through all the time to apply and just hope it's a living wage. 

  

  • Does the client want digital art or traditional media?  I didn't even know traditional media clients or artists were on this platform, but I recently had a very time-consuming and frustrating encounter with a client about it.  A lot of corporate clients already know about digital, but not all private commissioners do.  They need to understand that digital art is made ON a computer, usually with a stylus and graphics programs.  Traditional media is real paint on canvas or drawings on paper.  My client didn't know why a digital artist would have answered her ad and got angry at me for wasting her time.  I explained that digital colored pencil-style drawings look exactly like traditional media, take less time and money, and are easily uploaded through the platform.  Traditional media either needs to be shipped, or scanned or photographed before upload.  If it's a large work, scanners are rarely large enough to scan the entire image, so you have to do multiple scans and digitally piece them together to upload.  I've done it, it's a horrible, time-consuming process because scan pieces rarely match properly.  It's better than photography, where unless you have a custom camera set up and lighting, you get distortion and loss of image quality.  All that time and specialized equipment means extra expenses for the client and they should know that.   When I explained all this to my angry client, instead of getting mad at herself or Upork, she got mad and blocked me.  I was lucky she didn't give me a bad review to "shoot the messenger."  
  • With digital art, size doesn't matter.  I've had a lot of clients think small drawings should be cheaper.  It takes time to explain that digital art can be scaled to any size.  Also, drawing smaller is very hard.  Imagine a traditional media miniature portrait smaller than 5 inches.  Could you do that?  I'm a **bleep** good artist and I can't.  My dad was a miniaturist, so I know what I'm talking about.  If you have miniaturists on this platform, they are an expert specialty and should cost more, not less.    

Think about how long it takes for an artist to apply for a job.  We need to adapt our cover letters to fit the project, upload images, and add Upwork jobs or portfolio links.  It's a LOT of time.  Time we'd prefer to make your clients happy by giving them the art they want and saving them time and money while doing it. 

 

Please help us do that.  Artists won't give up on Upwork as often.  

 

P.S. I've attached some digital paintings and drawings I made ON my computer.  Could you tell the difference between traditional paint or pencil?

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

6 REPLIES 6
Ronna's avatar
Ronna P Retired Team Member

Hi Paula,

 

Thank you so much for sharing your insights here in the Community! We'll move your post to the Client Board so it has a better chance of finding the right audience. We appreciate your feedback about what job posts descriptions you're seeing out there and will be taking note of it to share with the team.

 

~Ronna
Paula's avatar
Paula T Community Member

Do you want to hire me as an Art Hire Whisperer?  Or at least to help flag job posts that are so vague as to be completely unhelpful?  If you don't want me, specifically, I can't stress how much Upwork needs somebody like me.  Maybe not permanently, but definitely right now. 

 

I have an unusual background as an illustrator.  First of all, I'm a human-camera quality artist who writes well.  I have a university education in fine art not just a Vo-tech graphic designer certification.  I've studied professional writing at the University of Limerick.  My current backup job between freelance gigs is as an AI Writer, grading LLM Responses for Outlier and Data Annotation.  So I know the crazy hallucinations or vague generic responses AI modules sometimes spit out.  

 

Freelancer artists expect some of finding clients is going to be a numbers game.  With the AI hiring guides as they are right now, it's 100 times more frustrating because we're seeing almost exactly the same vague posts over and over and over again.  As I said, it's a demoralizing, expensive waste of time.  And if artists are going to give up on it.  So will Hirers.

 

Right now trying to make a connection with the right artist for the right job is like trying to hit a dartboard blindfolded in a stadium.   Imagine a Hirer looking for a pretty realistic landscape and having to go through scores of applicants sending them everything from cartoons to abstract art to portraits and anime.  They're gonna give up and start giving bad reviews.  Then we ALL lose.  

 

I'm happy to help out if you think I can.  Think about it. 

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

Paula's avatar
Paula T Community Member

Sorry about that, I should have sent the resume with no contact information.  Here you go.

James Thomas's avatar
James Thomas G Community Member

I'm not giving up, just becoming more discerning. And I don't need an "art whisperer" to know when I am being given an AI contract or one based on a template. It's obvious because the "song remains the same."  

With the recent uptick in connects per job, most if not all of us now are being motivated to be discerning. When a job was 4-8 connects, we could afford to be a little more lax in our reading of the statistics of the job posting, but now, well, proposals are money. What I try to do is simply make my proposals as personal and interactive as possible. There are some things AI has not yet been able to replicate, and I will capitalize on it. 

As far as helping to flag vague posts, Upwork should (if they don't already have) the top ten ways to spot an AI-generated post. 

William T's avatar
William T C Community Member

Go to the Job section of the site to post a job or apply for a job.

James Thomas's avatar
James Thomas G Community Member

Just my less than two cents after taxes.

I haven't seen that much of a difference in the children's book job postings. Could be just me, but the same issues abide. I would surmise that a great many first time authors looking to hire children's book illustrators may not even know there is an Upwork forum discussing this issue.  Or that there are resources they can google as well like "Basic Children's Book Format" and the like. And there is no easy way to contact and inform them. And not many freelancers are jazzed about burning connections to give clients the 411.

In regards to your guide:

Yes! We illustrators are not mind-readers. Please give us the name of an illustrator you like or a favorite book and this can help us immensely. If you are open to all styles...make that clear as well. Do you want a more abstract artist or one that is more realistic? Uploaded samples will help us greatly. Even more exceptionally will it help us if you are looking for an illustrator for a second book of a book series where you lost the first illustrator due to a job conflict or family emergency. This almost should be a given that you upload samples of your previous book so the styles can be matched.

Regarding fixed projects. One of my earlier projects was creating sixteen cartoons for a holiday raffle in about fifteen days for 650.00. That sounded like a great project for me because I was still at the beginning of my career. But along with it came revisions. It was roughly 40.00/illustration and each one took roughly four hours to complete and some required excessive revisions. I was smart and offered rough sketches initially, and was proud of the work I completed, but still, it was a ridiculously small amount for the time and effort I put into it.

3. Most people on Upwork know that either they will get digital work, or a digital file of the work, but I could be wrong. I have been on this platform for almost five years now, and never had a client give me their address believing that all correspondence will be through snail mail. Those that work traditionally, know how to take decent pictures of their work with proper lighting. I've learned some of this myself when introducing followers on Instagram to some of my older traitional work by cleaning it up in Photoshop.

In regards to size. I have not encountered this issue either. The clients that I have dealt with usually give me the size details. With vector artwork of a logo, I usually offer multiple sizes as part of the logo package.

For my children's illustration work, resizing images isn't that difficult, unless there is an extreme change from, say, portrait to landscape. That would be painful. But change from 8x10 to 8.2x11 isn't too big an ask. And with my illustration work, we want the project to be as successful as the author does. 

Clients and artists all have their issues they have to deal with. On the client side, they are the ones paying for the service so it is incumbent upon us, the freelancers to offer them the best evidence to support our ability to "do the job." I endeavor to update my portfolio as much as possible to ensure that I'm still "upskilling."  And this benefits me and the client.

Just as giving a potential client these tips, because they can avoid wasting their own time and energy.