A Primer to Commission work - The Question of Content

In 2005, great controversy was stirred through the publishing of a series of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed by a danish newspaper. This was during the aftermath of the US interventions in the Middle East, at a time when anti-muslim propaganda in the Western world was still scathing. The caricatures were not shocking in the least, especially considering that parodies of other major religious movements in popular media have been much more crass (think of the character of Jesus or God in Family Guy, or the depictions of jews in Drawn Together).

The reaction from muslim organizations was unprecedentedly violent. Death threats, boycotts, protests. One is left wondering the shock experienced by the artists who created those images, simple drawings made for hire. Their intent was certainly to cause controversy and provoke conversation-- they may have gotten more than they bargained for.

Earlier, in 2003, the videogame webcomic Penny Arcade ran a fake ad that portrayed Strawberry Shortcake in a BDSM context, parodying the trend of certain videogames of that time of taking well known characters from literature and making them 'edgy'. The company that owns the rights to Ms. shortcake immediately threatened legal action against the artists if the image was not taken down at once, even if said image was well within the parameters of parody and therefore completely legal.

The fact remains that images are powerful. Art appeals to our emotions first and foremost, where instinct hijacks rationality. Add to that the fact that most of the content we enjoy is owned by large corporations who are quite willing to throw their lawyering muscle around in order to maximize their profits whether they're in the right or not, and you're left wondering if you should have a tighter grip on the kind of content you should create as a work-for-hire artist.

Without going down the path of 'being true to your artistic ideals no matter what' (that is a discussion for another time), we have to agree that the kinds of content you create as a public, commercial artist matter, especially in this Internet age where once an image is published, it exists forever. So what can one do? When taking commissions, you WILL be asked to draw things that may be of questionable taste, artistic or moral. So it pays off to have thought of this ahead of time and decide what you are comfortable drawing, and the possible consequences of you doing it. If a customer asks you, maybe offering a lot of money, would you be willing to draw...

• Violence - Fighting, shooting
• Gore (horror, or  extreme violence) - Possibly involving blood, viscera, dismemberment
• Political statements on controversial issues, like abortion, gay marriage or elections
• Religious imagery - Of your own faith or others', in a traditional context
• Parodies or critique of Religious imagery
• Parodies or critique of Celebrities
• Racist imagery and other types of discrimination and hate
• Drug use and abuse
• Toilet humour
• Sex humour
• Fan art - Your own renditions of characters you don't hold the copyright to
• Rule 34 - Explicitly pornographic depictions of copyrighted characters
• Wish-fulfillment - Drawing the customer or one of his characters
• Sexual fetishes/kinks - Your own, or others'
• All possible combinations of of the above

Everybody has a different threshold of what they are willing to draw, for money or otherwise. Some people don't bat an eyelash at drawing realistic renditions of bone and muscles being torn due to violence, but won't touch religious imagery. Some others will gladly draw any fetish under the sun, but would not feel comfortable drawing a caricature of pro-life activists as a political statement.

And speaking of content that was banned for no reason, Song of the South has been off the shelves for the longest time due to containing a portrayal of rural America when slavery was the norm. No DVD release is planned for this movie by Disney, although there are some bootlegs around. I personally don't care much for the live action sequences, but the animated ones are a delight. This doodle of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox is from that.

 

A Primer to Commission work - Revisions (and more Disney doodles)

Revisions. The word sends a chill down any creator's spine.

Maybe it is because of my background in Engineering, but I'm used to customers requesting changes, and the stress they put on a project. In the art for hire world, it can be very similar. Art-work can be purchased as part of a larger project or as a one-time request, but regardless of whether deadlines are firm or loose, it is very hard to estimate the impact a requested change can have on your timeline.

Working on commissions one is usually facing a loose deadline (but it is in your benefit to make it a hard one. More on that later), but changes can mean a lot of work for an artist. It is up to the artist to ask for as much reference and details regarding the work in question-- vague descriptions and a lack of commitment on the commissioner's side can quickly turn into a revisions nightmare.

It is fair to assume there can be a number of changes when you're developing an image for someone else. But how many of those changes are reasonable, and how drastic can they be?

For example: A commissioner (let's call him Bob) gives you a couple badly drawn references of a D&D character he created. In the references, the character is an anime-style knight girl named Lucrezia with plain armour-bikini and a sword. Bob asks you to draw 'just any action pose' with her.

You sketch an action pose and show it to Bob. "Hmm, I don't know", Bob says. "Could you make it more 'action-y'?". This usually means the customer has no idea what he wants, but what you showed him is not it, and so you go back to the drawing board and sketch another different pose. "Oh that's better!", Bob chirps, "But could you turn Lucrezia's face to the viewer looking sexy?", despite the fact that in that pose it would be anatomically impossible for the character to turn her head toward the viewer, and so that means sketching another complete pose that makes sense. And this is assuming, for the sake of this thought experiment, that you and the customer have the same idea of what "sexy" means. In custom art made for fans, anatomical impossibilities are often overlooked for the sake of T&A.

You finally hit a pose that satisfies Bob and continue working on the image, giving Lucrezia the same kind of plain armour and sword as in the references. "Oh wait", Bob interrupts alarmed, "the armour should be golden and with wings" or "I want her to have triple nunchucks instead of the sword". You can see where this is going.

This can go on for any number of revisions. Depending on your skill and proficiency, this can quickly spiral into many extra hours of what amounts to design and development time for which you're not being paid for, if you agreed upon a price when your services were requested. Depending on your skills and rep, you may be able to get away with telling a customer that the price will be calculated at the end, but even most professional artists usually can not do that.

Therefore, it is critical for you to have what amounts to a "Terms of Service" type agreement that the customer needs to be aware of, at the very least. In my personal case, when the customer doesn't ask for a specific pose, I allow for two different pose ideas at most without charging extra, I specify that if there are no references there is a design fee, and I try to leave any detail work until the very end when the commissioner has seen the final pose and given the go-ahead to continue working on it. This may sound a little harsh, and naturally as an artist it is your duty to ask for all the information you need to work on something before you start. There is a balance to be stricken between charging by the line and letting a customer walk all over you asking for infinity changes.

Ultimately, it is not possible to 'quantify' how much work goes in a piece of art. Maybe you're doing it for a friend and you want to put in a little extra effort at no charge, and accommodate unreasonable revisions. Maybe you're drawing something you utterly despise and want to get it out of the way as soon as possible. More in this in a future post-- since I mentioned you may be drawing things you may not enjoy, I have to talk about what types of content you're willing to draw and how this is relevant to you as an artist.

Here are a few warmup doodles from Bongo.

See the full gallery on Posterous