Daniel Solis

  This is extremely important: What you draw today is what you'll be hired for tomorrow. If you draw spaceships, you'll show up on searches for spaceships. If you draw dragons, you'll be sorted with the dragons. If you don't want to draw spaceships or dragons, don't post them in your portfolio. As an art director, I have to search through hundreds of portfolios for each project, looking for the right potential candidates. If I don't see what I need in your portfolio, you don't even appear in that initial search, let alone get further consideration.  If you're in a financial position to just work on your portfolio so you can build up your skills, that's totally valid. Just make sure you're posting consistently and that your best work is visible first. You can also delete older work that doesn't show your current skill level. (I see a lot of portfolios with years-old freshman-level work that never got cleared out.) To get paid will building you...

First of all, never work (for someone else) for free! I'll break those four ideas down below, but just remember that only you can determine what your time is worth. You can always go lower, but it's hard to go higher. I recommend starting high. Never accept the feeling of being underpaid for your time and skill. You'll be surprised how quickly you can fall out of love with art. That said, both of these questions require an honest assessment of your skills, availability, the client's personality, and your enthusiasm in a particular project. Skills : Browse "open for commissions" tags on social media and look for artists with a similar style and skill level as yourself.  Try  to do this with a healthy perspective. This isn't an attempt to make yourself feel bad or good. Think of it as co-workers organizing for better pay. You're just assessing a fair pay rate. Even if all other skills are equal, you might still opt to charge more for the same project tha...

Planning an art budget for your board game? Here are average estimates I'm seeing lately, as of the end of 2022. But first, a caveat: Quotes vary by many factors, including but not limited to the following: Dimensions: The bigger the art, the more expensive it is. Medium: Traditional paints and inks cost more than digital. Style: The more you make an artist work outside their expertise, the more it will cost. Complexity: A shot of a superhero flying in the open air is cheaper than the full super-team defending a city.  Color/Ink: Some artists will cut you a deal if you only need linework. Terms & rights: If you want full work-for-hire rights to the art, expect to pay for it. Size of cast: Each character multiplies the complexity of the scene. If you want a big battle, it'll cost more depending on how many participants there are. Detail: Photorealists charge more than cartoonists, typically. That's not always the case though. Timeline: The sooner you need it, the more ex...

Art Director tip: You can prevent tangent lines by adding a lighter secondary stroke around the foreground characters. (Example: Action Comics 1034, Christian Duce.)  Without this outline, the panels would directly intersect Superman directly, which may muddle the perspective. Most often, I see this technique with a light stroke alone, without an extra black line as Duce has demonstrated here. Either is fine, depending on the job. Image Description: Close up of Superman. His pose breaks through his panel and overlaps a bunch of other panels. A light outline around his body prevents the lines of those panels from intersecting him directly.