Standard reply to "royalty-offering jobs"

Hey everyone! It's my birthday, yay.

Anyway more importantly:

Today I took the time to actually write out an e-mail to an royalty-based offer I got. This particular person seemed very professional and literate, so I felt like writing out my thoughts and the simple truth.

If you're a freelancer, I encourage you guys to write out and inform clients of why it's not going to happen - even if the deal is not on. Most of us will probably just ignore royalty based offers 100%, but if anything, write a standard reply like the one below and then send that off at least. Informing people helps.It does sound like a bit of a rant, because it actually is kind of one. But an informative rant at least, I hope.


Here it is:  

 [Hello X]

    I don't take royalty based offers. It simply does not bring food on the table. This work would be work, and take time, even if it's in my "free time" (which I don't really have, and I wouldn't spend it working more, on another project, especially with an NDA) If I wanted to make portfolio work I could just pick something myself and make it actually an intelligent decision that steers the kind of work I get, which would be much more lucrative for me.

    Fact of the matter is simply that royalty based offers almost never turn around any revenue at all; and if they do, it's probably not even close to the amount of work put in. I get offers like this very often, so I just have a simply policy for them, I hope you understand.


    I really hope you can some day muster a budget (and advise you to) and then of course, I'd love to help out! I'm saying this obviously for myself but also as a tip for you - I've been in and seen numerous project crumble and fall, and the simple fact is that the people who claim to be freelancers and then take on royalty/non-pay jobs like this are probably not the people you want on your team anyway.

    Anyway - My prices are really quite fair compared to what I should be asking, even if I say so myself, I encourage you to consider it! If not for preproduction, then definitely invest some money towards marketing illustration -- it's worth it when the time comes.

Animating some dwarves

Today, I wanted to mess around with animating a painting!

This is a mere 5 or so frames, doing a small loop of static animation (breathing, wind, etc) it took quite a long time for what it is but its really cool to see a creation of mine come to life! :) Nothing too serious, just having fun.

Click for a larger view!

Expanding into freelance private tutoring

I've decided to branch off a little and try my hand at private tutoring!

Here's the gist of it: I aim to personally teach you any of the following skillsets

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DP - Digital painting (Photoshop)
DS - Digital Sculpting (Zbrush)

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I have my art tutorial series called "Art Stuff" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTXCTiY8Lus&list=PLvyNhjrDadI_Wqc9AzhoOpYOHA-jsTtDu
This series will hold all theory and information for free - always.

The private tutoring or mentorship is a feedback type thing. You will be "hiring" me to give personalised feedback and paintovers, honing to your personal weaknesses and strenghts. You can hire me for one paintovers, or we can do a longer term relationship with weekly assignments and feedback, which is probably a smarter idea.

All categories are highly customizable, so if you only want to learn the basics of anatomy, then that is fine. Prior to beginning lessons we'd communicate in as much detail as needed on what the subject matter should be. Examples of more specific areas:

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DP - Concept art, illustration - composition, anatomy, colour theory, line art, b&w painting,    speedpainting, rendering, freelancing/marketing tips.

DS - Anatomy, rendering, detail-sculpting, game-related sculpting, speedsculpting, basemeshes,    decimation etc...

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Of course there can also be software package lessons, and each category can have a beginner or advanced approach. I can also approach the often overlooked psychological/mindset aspect and share insights into the industry, importance of contacts, discuss goals and strategies etc etc. These might be simply exchanging long mails with one another. Again you are simply hiring my time, and I would be sharing any info you want to know in your personal situation. There is no one course, so it's more of a ask-what-you-want-to-know sort of thing within the bounds of my personal skillset!

Lessons are telecommute, video feedback and using e-mail, for pratical reasons.

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This may be specifically interesting for students at DAE (my old school) Who are struggling with a certain class, or aren't, but want to advance more rapidly than the school's rate. I've graduated at DAE so it is definitely beneficial to have a tutor who knows the people, assignments, and skills needed!

All tutoring can of course be in both English and Dutch.

You may think that I'm lacking that decade of experience, to start teaching - but I've come to realize that it is often more beneficial to have a tutor 2-3 years ahead, than a personal Donato Giancola. It's good to have someone who is in exactly the same boat, only a little bit further down the ocean, towing you closer.

Applicants can mail me at lakierejordy@gmail.com. Any questions whatsoever are welcome, no obligations of course. Note that not everyone will be accepted! If you are interested, please state what you'd like to learn in broad terms (at first), in what sort of timeframe, and perhaps some of your work so far, if you have any (if not, that is totally fine too) I'm hoping to see some dedicated people who want to learn!

The power of crits!

Here's my latest finished piece (for once!) This is a freework piece, for my portfolio, since I'm starting to look for some freelance work.

I think it's a great showcase of the power of crits, hence the blogpost

Here's what I ended up with at first -

I had a large crit/paintover on the Awesome Horse livestream, by a few professional artists, and a number of great crits on fora/in person etc. Instead of taking them in and keeping them in mind for the next piece, I took all the time I needed to apply (almost) all of them!

Here is the reworked/updated piece after critique.

I might make a video about this piece as I've done before, talking about how I tackled it and checking it out layer by layer!

Thanks!

www.jordylakiere.com

Overview & rundown videos of 2 paintings

Decided to get back into producing a few videos here and there.

Here's 2 after-the-fact rundowns (layer by layer) and talking a little about how I approached them and such. Feel free to comment with ideas for future videos - what would you like to see? More rundowns, realtime painting, fast forwarded with narration? etc. Comment, like, share, sub, favorite and all that jazz!

http://www.youtube.com/user/LakierosJordy

Bunch of new environment paintings

Here's an update/collection of paintings so far I've been doing for an animated short project.
These paintings are supposed to be animated by layer at the end - and a voiceover narrative should pull the thing together. A lot of them are pretty loose - but I can't linger: the postproduction and even animation will probably suck up a lot of time. If I have any time left after that -- although unlikely -- I can easily go back and tighten up the paintings.

Self portrait day 2011

Hey folks. Here's my self portrait for the international SP day 2011!

Bit different than usual - me as a baby. Babies are hard to paint. I'm not really satisfied with the end result (Especially in the thumbnail it looks off, which means there are fundamental errors), but either way, here's some steps:

Intial (quick) sketch. Still major proportion errors, but I will fix the big ones later on.

Here's a real-inthemiddleofit- shot of some colour blocking. I do this with the sketch on top (not shown in the image) With the sketch on top, it looks quite alright, almost like a comic book or cartoony portrait.

Now comes the time consuming detailing/rendering. A bit closer, still revising proportions every now and then. Focusing on the eyes mainly at first, but I still jump around relatively randomly to places in the image.

 

Major proportion review this time. Started selecting and moving around parts (the big benefit of digital painting) and fixing the seams it leaves.