How I handle a freelance illustration commission in 3 points

A lot of times people ask me how I manage the commissions, “ Dude, how does it work?” well, handling a freelance commission, drawing an illustration from scratch for a client is not that hard.

First off, the most important thing to understand is that the illustration is gonna be in my style, this means that if you checked out my portfolio you’ve built some sort of expectations, and I’m here to meet them.

Quick chat:

It’s very important to carefully listen the client’s idea, and transform it into something that might have came from you in the first place. I’m gonna ask for visual examples, references, competitors’ links and screens/links from my portfolio. This is gonna help me to understand their expectations, their needs and how I can handle them both.

Deposit:

We’re all set, the idea is clear and we’re good to go. This is the moment where I ask a 50% deposit to ensure that we’re going forward. I’m gonna ask the final 50% just before delivering the final files. During the process I’m gonna send some sketches and stuff, in this way I’m sure that I’m not gonna lose my time ( can’t count how many times I’ve lost time and money working for someone who magically disappeared who knows where)

1) The sketch step:

We’re all set and good to go. Here’s where I literally transform our chit-chats, visual refs & ideas into the first sketch. Is gonna be quick and rough so don’t worry about it, we’re gonna adjust it before going forward. Small fixes and additions are allowed in this step, concept changes are not allowed. This means that if we agreed to work on a skateboarding tiger I’m not gonna draw a skateboarding octopus.

We can always agree on a multiple subject kind of commission before starting, of course.

Let’s pick this T-rex I did as a collab with Redwood St. as an example:

Dino Snapback, sketch step

2) Inks & Colors:

The core, the soul of the piece. You can use a Fudenosuke by Tombow and a Fude by Pentel on paper, or your iPad with Procreate, but inks are the living soul of an illustration. Lines are gonna be more precise, in my case also thicker, and the whole thing is gonna start looking as more “final”.

Dino Snapback - inks step

Then I’m gonna start coloring, here comes the fun.

I started playing with colors almost 10 years ago, not a lifetime right? But enough. Before that, I had a long B&W hardcore punk/metal stage. Then the colors came and I spent a lot of time studying the work of a lot of legends from the 80s, plus, the color contrasts from the poster era of the 60s, literally created to fry your eyes, or make you company while frying if you know what I mean.

Now I have a couple color palettes that I play with, warm, cold and one that is kinda make you think about fall.

Dino snapback - colors

As you can imagine, all of these three different color combinations could work, but you gotta change the background colors, match them with the brand identity or the target you wanna reach. You gotta think about that, and I can help you.

3) Delivery

When we’re ok with the colors, I ask for the final 50% payment and I send all the source files.

Usually it’s 300dpi .pngs with transparent background, together with a version with a suggested background color, sometimes on a vintage paper texture by True Grit Texture Supply.

In this case the file was also available as a vector in .ai & .pdf, it’s soemthing that I can do when the illustration is not too detailed. With a vector file you’re not gonna have any troubles with embroidery or any other thing that requires scaling the artwork.

Dino Snapback - Hat

Pretty easy right? Hit me up to joetamponi@gmail.com to chat and discuss your idea/project, always available to work one some new cool stuff!