Art Licensing: Commissioned artwork

Hello friends!

​I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about art licensing today, more specifically, working on commissioned projects! 🤓 If that sounds like your kind of jam, then read on...

The Basics

Briefly put, art licensing is when you "rent" out your artwork to a company, for an agreed upon fee and period of time, so that they can use that artwork on their products. Licensed art can be found on pretty much anything. Think wrapping paper, clothing, housewares, etc.

When I first started licensing my artwork, I had a vision of myself creating my own collections and working on personal projects all day long, creating a big online portfolio and licensing that pre-made artwork to clients over and over again... Show me the $$$! 

While that happens to some extent (minus a few dollar signs), the majority of my licensing income has actually come from commissioned projects. What that means is that a prospective client has their own vision for a project, sees my portfolio, thinks that my style would work well with their idea and asks me to create new artwork specifically for that project. 
    

Contracts

Even though this new art has been commissioned, it doesn't mean that you have to give away all of your rights. Commissioned art can also be licensed, just like licensing pre-existing artwork. It all depends on what’s negotiated in the contract. 

The three big T's to consider when negotiating any licensing contract are:

The type of product(s) that the license applies to (sometimes referred to as the industry, market or category).

The term (length of the license).

And the territory (where in the world does the contract apply? Just one country? Worldwide?).

All of these details, along with the size of the company and the amount of product being sold, will help to determine the overall fee, and, of course, the more rights you give away, the higher the fee!

I don't like dealing with fees and negotiations, which is one of the reasons that I prefer to work with an agent who does all of that for me (a post for another time!). But if you’re someone who is comfortable with that sort of thing then you can absolutely do it yourself. There is a ton of information out there about pricing your artwork. A great place to start is a book called the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines. 

All of this can get a bit confusing when you’re first starting out but just know that the more projects you work on the easier it is to understand the process and you will learn to make more informed decisions over time. 

Now let’s go through the process of how I work on a typical commission and see what it looks like…


The Brief

When I take on a new commission it often comes with a brief. A brief is how the client communicates what they want from you. It can range from very informal (you might just be given a general theme and not much direction) to a more formal written brief with varying amounts of information. Often a written brief will include the file specifications, any specifics about words or particular imagery required, past work of yours that the client wants you to reference for style, colour etc. and more. I've had briefs that range anywhere from 1 page to over 25 pages. They're also, generally, confidential and so I can't share any with you here unfortunately, but just know that every company is different and they all have their own ways of working so no two briefs are alike!
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Roughs

When working on a commission, you'll usually be expected to go back and forth with the client a few times in order to get things just right. These back and forth adjustments are called revisions and there will often be a few rounds of revisions within each project.

Most often I am asked to create a rough sketch, then the client will come back with revisions and once those are approved, I'll do a colour rough. Some artists don't create a colour rough, unless specifically asked to, because it doesn't work as well for their style or process but it's something that I find helpful to work out beforehand so I prefer to do so. 

Initial Rough Sketch

Revised Rough Sketch

The rough sketches above were created as part of a commission from greeting card company Compendium, for their Love Muchly range. In the brief I was given the card occasion (love) and the front and interior text. They gave me some general guidance on potential themes, one of which was animals. My initial rough sketch included a cat and a dog cuddling and the suggested revision was to change it to two dogs cuddling as the initial design was leaning too close to the friendship category. I was able to make the change fairly easily by adding a dog of similar size and scruffiness to the cat.

Initial Colour Rough

Revised Colour Rough

After submitting my initial colour rough there was just one minor request to change the colour of the grass from blue to green. From here the colour rough was approved and I was able to move on to creating the final artwork!

It can be hard to hear someone critic your creative work, especially if you're not used to it, but it is a very normal and common part of the process, so try not to take it personally. It helps to remember that this isn’t a solo project, you are working collaboratively. Your job is to help someone else bring their vision to life and their feedback is meant to clarify that vision, not to bring you down. In my experience, the end product is usually better for it.

Tip: If you're negotiating your own contract and you're feeling uneasy about revisions, it might be worth negotiating the number of rounds of revisions you will include in the agreed upon fee into the contract. The majority of clients are pretty reasonable but sometimes people can get a little bit carried away with changes, especially if they don't have a clear vision of what they want beforehand.
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Final Art

Ideally, all of the kinks will be worked out of the project during the rough revisions and the final artwork won't need any changes, but sometimes there might be a couple of small tweeks at this stage as well. 

Because my final artwork is usually in a layered Photoshop file, it is too big to send to the client via email. I use Dropbox to store all of my files and so it’s easy to create a sharable link for the client to access the final file(s) there. You can also use a file sharing website like WeTransfer to send larger files.

At this point, if all goes well, the client will love your work and one day in the future you’ll receive a nice big box of samples in the mail and finally see all of your hard work come to fruition!

If you are just starting out with illustration or surface design and are finding it difficult to start licensing your work, commissioned projects can be a great way to open you up to more opportunities. It will also give you more experience working collaboratively with art directors and give you a direct sense of what they're looking for and how they think about the artwork.  

Thank you so much for reading! If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to my newsletter and get notified whenever I have a new post on Ye Old Blog. You’ll also get my Free Guide: How to Draw Hands in the process!
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​- Meghann