Until this moment, I did not have to search for freelancers, I was on the other side of the barricades, which helped me a lot, so I decided to write a small guide for people who found themselves in the same situation for the first time or had bad experience. My story will be not only theoretical: under the cut are real cases with comments and conclusions.
This article is for those who are looking for freelance illustrators who "cannot draw", have little interaction with "creative people" and have little understanding of illustration in general. The word “illustration” can be replaced with “logo”, “landing page”, “website”, “animated video”.
For convenience, I have broken the story into eight parts :
- How to conduct a visual educational program for yourself
- How to write a TK
- How to work on a task
- How much to pay an illustrator
- If something went wrong
- Where to find an illustrator
- How we drew the Java mascot in a scarf and panama hat
- Bonus: a selection of awesome illustrators
1. How to conduct a visual educational program for yourself
The goal of the educational program is to begin to understand the topic more freely, and not to become a subtle and demanding art critic.
Why it is important : to be minimally oriented in the issue, trends, to understand the specifics of the visual of your product means to make the final result more successful, and work more effective. Illustrative examples will help you better formulate your wishes and guide the illustrator in his work.
Where to spend a minimal visual educational program and look for references
I have prepared a list of sites to draw inspiration from. Most of the resources presented need authorization, let it not scare you. You can even designate yourself in status as an employer. In addition, it is much more convenient to save the examples you like. Keyword search is our everything. I use the first five resources regularly to find ideas and explore new threads.
- Dribble is a platform for graphic designers, web designers, illustrators, 3D visualizers. In fact, the most targeted database of references for the web today, in the format of shots.
- Behance is an Adobe platform where people share their web, media, photography and illustration projects in project format.
- Pinterest — , . , , "<cat> illustration" .
- Awwwards — - . , .
- Lapa Ninja — , , .
- One Page Love — , .
- Instagram — , , ..
On Dribble, collections are called buckets.
2. How to write TK
TZ is the fastest and safest route on the map, along which we come to our destination. Time-tested: without a clear TK - the result is HZ. TK is needed first of all by the customer to answer the main question: what result do I want to get in the end? This checklist will help answer most of the questions that both the customer and the designer may have.
Consciousness of the customer before writing the TK
Checklist of questions for writing the TK :
- Type of work - what exactly do you need : illustration, series of illustrations, redraw an existing illustration, draw an illustration in accordance with the existing style?
- : ? ? , -, ?
- : (1–3 ), ? ? , ?
: , , , , . ? , ?
- : ? ? ? ? ? , ? , , 18:00, ?
- : , ? , ( , ) ?
: ( ), . , 2 3 — ( ). .
- : ? : , , , , , . , .
- : ? ? , ? ( )?
- : ()? 1000px 1000px? 20px 20px? , ? 1 1? 3 2?
- : ? ? Png? Svg? Jpeg?
,
Illustration on Habr for an article about Java . You need to draw a Java mascot - Duke in a scarf and connect it with Panama and the Panama project. Canvas size in width - 780px (Habr's requirements), proportions as in the reference, png format. The style reference is the already existing illustration for the article about Python - line graphics with a black and white texture brush.
Reference attached. Term: two days. Work process: the illustrator throws off the conceptual sketch - I will approve the sketch - the illustrator draws the illustration - I approve the drawn illustration and give edits, if any - the illustrator completes the pre-final edits - the final approval. Postpaid.
This is how the official Java mascot Duke looks like, which we proposed to beat in the illustration
And this is the style of illustrations that we wanted to
get.Pro process : we see that until the final result I have several touches with the work to correct it and make sure that we are moving in the right direction, plus the illustrator will not be able to postpone the task until the last moment, since you need to go through several approvals. This is good for both parties: the client has control over the situation, the illustrator has additional time management.
3. How to work on a task
After the illustrator has been found and contacted, if you have not seen his portfolio yet, ask. Is always. If not, ask for at least something showing that the person can hold a pencil / stylus in their hands. Then you can be calm about the result or part in kind before it's too late. After viewing the portfolio and its mental approval, the TK goes. You need to approach it as responsibly as possible and write in advance. The same is with the work process.
The volume does not always speak of quality, you should not be afraid that there are 10 works, not 200, as well as delude yourself beyond measure, because the best works are selected there
How I do (and it helps) :
- I try to lay the maximum on work with a freelancer the amount of time, and not looking for it on the night before the delivery of the project;
- I keep at hand a ready-made TK template and a description of the process;
- I clearly discuss the price and whether it includes edits;
- I clearly discuss the deadlines and lay the time reserve if there is a tight deadline. I don't use the phrase "ASAP";
- I write in the project format and am interested in how the work is going, when the time is right for the sketching / drawing / editing stage;
- I write the edits in a numbered list to make it easier to track, I attach screenshots if necessary;
- I give constructive feedback:
instead of "well, now something is wrong" I write "does not correspond to the task and the topic, because ...", instead of "I can't say for sure, but I don't like it" I write "I don't like the shape of the hat: you need to make it round, and the size of the cloud: it's too big, ”
instead of “somehow gloomy” I write “the red color is not bright enough, and make fewer black fills”.
4. How much to pay an illustrator
There are two approaches: some illustrators have a fixed price for a specific type of work, others proceed from the amount of work and the calculation for each illustration occurs by the hours or days that will be spent on it. The cost of an hour of work usually depends on the relevance of the author's work, their popularity, portfolio, the number of orders, the average price for this work in the segment (which no one knows), the complexity and timing of completion. And it is usually set by the illustrator.
Example : An hour of work of an illustrator costs 700 rubles, it will take him five hours to illustrate, which means the net cost of the work is 3500 rubles. If the work is urgent, the price will be higher, as in any other work.
Here are some good articles on the cost of work: - How much does an illustrator's work cost? -
How much does a commercial illustration cost?
- How I calculate the cost of my work
- The cost of the services of an illustrator - there is still an exhaustive commentary from the reader with the calculation, although without the average figures for the market:
5. If something went wrong
The golden rule : if you can't agree on the shore, it's better to say goodbye right away. This will save all participants time, money and nerves, because it is almost impossible to come to an agreement "later".
What are the problems:
you wanted one thing, but the illustrator sent something completely different (sketch, drawing) : if the problem is not in the technical specification, then this problem is usually solved with additional references and clear wording, which is not right now.
The illustrator does not fit into the agreed time frame : it is decided by monitoring the pre-agreed terms. If this is an illustrator's cant, then it is necessary to find out the circumstances and based on them make a decision.
The illustrator cites an unreasonably long time to complete the task: find out the loading of the illustrator and the reason for the long execution - the complexity of execution, volume, etc. On average, it takes from several hours to two days to complete an illustration in digital, depending on the complexity of the task, excluding the artist's current workload.
6. Where to find an illustrator
- The most trivial and effective way in practice is to ask around friends and acquaintances. FB to help.
- Websites of vacancies, behance, dribble, websites of art universities, VK and FB groups. The great thing about Behance and dribble is that you see the work first and, if you're happy with the level, write to the freelancer. Minus - you are ignored or answered after 100 years.
- If you have a familiar illustrator, but you didn't have to work together before, read the instructions for the TK, look at the resources for the educational program and go ahead.
How I was looking
After studying a dozen pages of search results, I got discouraged and decided to turn to the good old and hateful way to me - word of mouth. I wrote to a familiar illustrator, told about her situation, she forwarded a message to a closed group of illustrators, and within an hour four people wrote to me, and then two more. Networking won. Since multiple fallbacks are better than one, I gave a test to everyone who responded. All details are below.
7. How we drew the Java mascot in a scarf and panama hat
Below I will give an analysis of four situations with freelancers in order to show possible difficulties and ways to solve them. Let me remind you of the TK: it was necessary to draw with a texture brush of the Java mascot - Duke. They love to customize it, so the JUGNsk meetups of the Novosibirsk Java / JVM community are presented by Duke in a blue scarf. Since the article was about Project Panama, I suggested playing it up by putting on the stern Siberian Duke, in addition to a scarf, a frivolous lime-colored panama hat, like the state of Panama in the article. I also sent them a link to the article, but I suspected that the text for programmers would cause more stupor among illustrators than inspiration. And so it turned out.
Freelancer 1E
I wrote almost immediately after my request, said that he could make an illustration at the required level, named several days - a week in terms of time, but "if it's super urgent, you can do it faster." As soon as I threw off the detailed TK in the refs, very strange questions followed: “what are we drawing” and “but this ref was not thrown off”. I should have been wary of this moment, but the joy of the feedback covered my eyes, so I believed in the power of art, remembered what it was like to be an illustrator on a freelance basis, let out a tight tear and didn't ask for a portfolio. But in vain. The next day I clarified the terms of reference, literally sending the editor-in-chief's quote with an explanation of who Duke is, where he lives and why he is cool, and received the question "what kind of character is this." Everything was written in the TK, the Internet had already been invented by that time ...
As a result, 1E sent the sketch of the composition later than everyone else and in the most deplorable state:
For the price I charged for this rather simple task, it was a shock.
Since by this moment I had already been sent several good options for sketches and the favorite had already been outlined, I did not focus on this. And don't forget about understanding and empathy, because you never know how much work he still has.
On Tuesday evening, two hours before the deadline, they sent me the pre-final, which, ahem, was not at all about the technical assignment, which I chewed: there was no b / w, no texture brush, no borrowed style. To my answer that now this is not quite what was in the assignment, there was a question: "So we don't paint over the background?"
I bit my compassionate tongue, which promised to pay for the test.
prompt: in this situation, only patience and breathing practices will help. It is important to refrain from harshness and non-constructive aggression and to explain as clearly as possible what is wrong. Simple but difficult.
As a result, they sent me at 22:07:
Time, and the desire to ask to redo everything and explain why it needs to be redone, I did not have, and other illustrators had already sent their versions and they were much better. In a different situation, of course, I would have given a couple more chances to player 1E with the edits, but he has already retired.
What 1E did wrong : the illustration was not done in a graphics editor, a regular pencil was used instead of a raster texture brush, the execution was not at the desired level, the lines were sloppy, the panama color was not lime, the image size was not the same.
Epilogue: I answered late - I didn’t know what to answer, and as a decent person I paid half of what I promised. The result was not at all what was needed and did not correspond to the set TK. Therefore, we remember about the portfolio and are not afraid to back up at the dating stage.
Freelancer 2U
Didn't cause problems, immediately offered to show the portfolio and asked a question about terms and prices. He behaved confidently and was seen experience in such matters. The ironic approach to the problem at first touched me a little, but this did not affect the result. Conclusion: do not judge a book by its cover.
The sketches were sent pretty quickly and in good quality, you could understand what was happening, plus the case when the individual style did not interfere with the task. We noticed insane dynamics in the images, the skill is visible. The first option was chosen.
Note to illustrators: very cool when there are several options (provided that a clear composition was not part of the technical specification, but in practice, if you offer your own good option, they usually choose it, the main thing is to understand the customer's need). This helps both the illustrator and the client to better understand what is needed in the end.
Hint to the customer : if possible, make a postscript in the TK - "you need this, if you have cool ideas how to beat it - well," you can get a cool result.
Returning to 2U, in the end we did not find anything to complain about, too strong work, there were no edits, the illustration was sent in advance - we take the illustrator's note:
Epilogue : everything was so comfortable and smooth that there was nothing more to write about and nothing special.
Small update: just yesterday 2U wrote to me and asked if there were any free tasks. It was cool, because reminding the customer about yourself can be useful and not ashamed, it shows that you are ready to work.
Freelancer 3L
I had a small head start: I knew him personally and was subscribed to his creative Instagram account, so I calmly and confidently decided to try. A very big plus was the number of sketches he offered - here the illustrator collected all the extra points. And since he sent the sketches before anyone else, he quickly got ahead. When there is plenty to choose from, it is divine. The stylistics were immediately visible, which is also valuable, so we don't look at the presentation format, I was warned in advance that the sketches would be by hand, and I was mentally prepared (if illustrator 1E had warned or explained why the sketches were in such a state, I would have received points).
The first option with a yacht was the most accurate hit of all the options, in principle, it was exactly what I wanted to get, we were "heard". And of course we took it. But the rest of the options were also quite suitable in terms of presentation and other things. Several small edits were implemented quickly, and each time we moved forward, rather than marking time.
Fact : if you find "your" illustrator, hold on to him with your hands and feet.
As a result, this picture was a favorite, both in style and composition. The only drawback is that it was not the right size (780 px).
Note : bring the work with the illustrator to the end, otherwise you will adjust the size yourself in Photoshop.
Freelancer 4P
He was extremely polite and this successfully compensated for the lack of courage in the compositions.
In general, if not for brighter rivals, he would have been the favorite, since did not violate the terms and followed the TK, however, without a spark. Most likely, this is a lack of customer experience and professional experience. The sketches were not sent too quickly, but not too late.
The final result can be described as "ok". Not great, but according to TK. The player did not bring anything new, but he is far from mistakes 1E.
Quick Memo
When looking for an illustrator, it is important to remember:
- Networking is a terrible force, use it.
- To understand for yourself what result is needed is half the battle.
- A well-formulated TOR with examples is the second half of success.
- Ask for a portfolio, even if the person is good and with recommendations.
- . , , — , , . — .
8. : ,
- Nathalie Lees — The Economist .
- Timo Kuilder — , .
- Vector Design Inspiration — .
- Malika Favre — «vector illustration», .
- Sebastian König — .
- Manuel Bortoletti — The Economist.
- DigitalOcean — .
- Craftwork — .
- Zara Magumyan — .
- Anna Yashina — .
- Lina Leusenko — .
- Aga Koniuszek — , .
- Brad Cuzen — « — ».
- Ramotion — , Firefox.
- Piotr Kaźmierczak — UI, .
- Pavlov Visuals — .
- Oleh Harlamov — .
- Thanawat Sakdawisarak — .
- Sua Balac — .