It’s going to happen you you eventually – a client who doesn’t pay their bill. And unless the project was for a significant amount of money, the unfortunate truth is that many times it isn’t worth the cost of suing. The legal fees can very quickly outweigh the money you’ll get, and that’s the positive side!
Because of this, I make it a standard practice to ask for a 50% deposit for all work before starting a project. But this only covers you so far. I also do not transfer any high-resolution or vector art until the final balance is paid, but sometimes this doesn’t cover your butt – for example, the client may only want to use the art on their website, or may have no clue about proper printing resolutions and will go ahead an use the low-resolution JPEG preview images you’ve been sending them.
Continue reading 'Avoid Non-Paying Clients With Watermarks'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Lately work has become quite busy, and updating the blog has become less frequent because of this. I try to, for the most part, make sure the entries are substantial and well-linked, and that takes time. I thought that it would be preferable to slow down rather than add fluff posts just to fill my daily blog quota. Of course the occasional art or artist post will be published when I find something cool.
The automatic del.ici.ous link posts I thought would be a good way to keep the information flowing without having full posts. I am curious how the readers out there feel about the del.ici.ous link posts – should they stay or go?
And while you are posting in the comments, please feel free to offer suggestions for future posts you’d like to see or topics you’d like to see covered. Lately it seems I have been overdosing on the Adobe Illustrator topic, and I would like to get more focused on cartooning and illustration in general. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees…
I look forward to your thoughts.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 arrived this morning, and was immediately installed on both my trusty G4 and the MacBook. Here are my very initial thoughts on the first run of the main software applications: Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
Continue reading 'Adobe Creative Suite 3: First Thoughts'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Still using that pencil you found in the couch and an old dictionary as a drawing board? Don’t feel like the biggest computer wiz when it comes to graphics software? There are plenty of inexpensive tools out there that will boost your productivity and enjoyment level when drawing, sketching or just doodling. And you don’t have to spend a ton of money to expand your tool kit in ways that are sure to make your life much easier, giving you more time to draw.
Continue reading 'Ten Essential Low-Tech (and Cheap!) Tools for Cartoonists & Illustrators'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
There’s an interesting entry over at the excellent blog Drawn regarding a study done on copyright term lengths by a Cambridge economics PhD. He argues that 14 years is the optimal amount of time, due to production and other economic factors.
Head on over to the post at Drawn.ca for some interesting discussion in the comments, and also a link to the original article at Ars Tecnica which has a link to a PDF of the actual paper.
Copyright is a very interesting concept, especially coming from the creative/creator side of things. Part of me wants to own and control everything I create for infinity, but the other side of me can understand the need to stimulate creativity in society. However, patent holders only have 20 years to capitalize on their work. There seems to be a dichotomy there, but perhaps there are finer points which separate the two.
In the meantime however, make sure you always drop a © (that’s the “C in the Circle” symbol, which is Option-G on your Mac) on your artwork. You can include the date and/or your name, but don’t have to. You don’t even have to officially register the art to use the Copyright symbol (although it’s recommended for added protection).
Here’s a quick overview of Copyrights at the USPTO (United States Patent & Trademark Office).
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Fun list over at BittBox for all us designer/illustrator freaks out there. One of my faves:
23: You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
Be sure to browse around for some great tips and free stuff for Adobe Illustrator while you’re there.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
If you haven’t heard, Adobe announced the imminent relase of Creative Suite 3. Since I spend most of my time in Adobe Illustrator, obviously it’s the software package I am looking forward to most. To be honest I really haven’t dug into the fine details of all the new features in Illustrator CS3, and most of what I know I got from Mordy Golding’s video podcast on the new Illustrator CS3 features over at his Real World Illustrator blog. But there are a few I know about, and boy are they sounding cool. One, in particular, has been a recent pet peeve of mine that has finally been addressed.
Continue reading 'Adobe Illustrator CS3: The Feature I Am Looking Forward To Most'
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
…intimidating, but exciting.
So what’s this all about? Well, it seems you almost HAVE to have a blog nowadays, at least for the next few months before something else gets popular. I guess it better than having to have a MySpace account. Can’t hurt in Google ranking either.
I’ll be posting some random artwork, mostly stuff not found on my cartoon illustration portfolio site, and hopefully this will contain all new artwork & sketches, like this cool zombie I need to finish:
I’m just setting this up, so that’s all for now.
Technorati Tags:
cartoon |
illustration |
sketch |
drawing |
art |
zombie
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio • Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
So I saw a Twitter post the other day where someone mentioned Bigfoot was the new Olympics mascot - I thought it was a joke. Browsing through my RSS I stumbled on an entry over at Cryptomundo where I learned that indeed, the Yeti - or precisely Sasquatch - is (one of) the mascots for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Pretty cool.
