Monday, March 22, 2010

Patronage Art Project

For the last month I had discussed various methods of subscription based stock art and methods of making it work. Even though I kept the discussion open, I couldn't make the numbers work way before I even posted about it publicly. That said, something of interest that did come up was the idea of a Patronage project.

So, here we are now as I try the "Patronage" model out and see if it works or not.

Details: The first project will be for a set of creatures. The set will include 20 different creatures/monsters. Monstrous humanoids are allowed, but not standard humanoids. What does that mean? Well, and orc would be a monstrous humanoid, but a dwarf would not.
The set is for fantasy based monsters, although I'm sure many of them will be easily placed into any setting. All images will be 1/4 page in size and fully colored. Both B&W and Colored versions will be provided to patrons. All files will be 300dpi tiffs.
Images will be created at a rate of 2-3 per week. Images will start being created next week, patrons after that will receive all images predating their donations.

About the Artist: Rick Hershey is the owner and operator of Empty Room Studios. He has worked as a freelance artist for over 10 years for such clients as Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin Publishing, Platinum Studios, Mongoose Publishing, and many more.

Patronage Levels: There will be two levels of Patronage, with different benefit.

$10.00 Patronage- The $10 Patron will receive all 20 images in B&W and Color. They will receive a license to use the pieces of artwork once in a single publication. The copyright to the illustration remains with the artist, who is granting permission to the patron to use the illustration once.

$25 Patronage- The $25 Patron will receive the above but will also be able to make a request on a single creature to be drawn. Give ideas, watch the sketch process, be a part of it's creation. For every $25 you contribute you will gain access to another creature to help create, as long as spots are available. You will also receive all 20 images in B&W and Color as mentioned above.
$25 Patrons are bound to the following License Agreement upon donating. please read and if you have any problems with the license, please do not participate. You can view the license here: http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/9835/licensestockart.jpg

$25 Patrons will be asked to join a private forum where they can interact with the artist and view work as it is produced.

$10 Patrons will be added to a mailing list and sent links to the images as they are completed.

Patrons send the Contributions to paypal: rick@emptyroomstudios.com





Patronage Level






ATTENTION: If You sign up for the $25 Patron spot you will receive a bonus image this week only! Offer ends Sunday!.



Questions A few questions have come in, so I'll be answering the relevant ones here for everyone.

Will these Images be bundled and sold as stock art at a later date?
Answer: They will be sold as stock art, but will not be bundled. Each image will most likely be sold as a single product with a price range of $10-$15 each. So, to buy all of the images that way, it would cost you a minimum of $200

Are these just going to be generic creatures?
Answer: The $25 patrons might request more "generic" creatures if it suits their purposes, but overall, that's not the goal. What you most likely will see from me is new takes on generic creatures, brand new monsters, and possibly some popular monsters that never get drawn in stock art. But I'm creative guy and want to have fun making these.

What are the options for combining multiple images into one image? I.e., Let's say you do one image about a half page in size of a character lineup. Could you count that one image as "worth" 3 standard images, essentially instead of getting 3 images that week, you get only the one larger image?

Answer: All images will be of a single creature, full body. you are welcome to combine the characters yourself, but I will be providing single characters in all their glory- no short cuts.

7 comments:

  1. I run Rite Publishing; I generally support any patronage project on principle, because we do so many. We use patronage to create original exclusive artwork for our patronage projects but I do use stock art in my retail products and we even have a complimentary product for our patrons based on Reverse Design where we create new things from Stock art.

    I wanted so much to become a senior patron on this project. Then I read this line.

    "You will receive a license to use the pieces of artwork once in a single publication."

    When I buy stock are I want an unlimited usage, with no restrictions, I can do what I want when I want with the image. I may do a PDF product and then 3 months down the road put it in a compilation for POD, or manipulate the image and have it fit somewhere else again.

    I hope you will change that stipulation for senior patrons.

    Steve Russell
    Rite Publishing

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Steve,

    That actually was something that got carried over by some quick "copy and paste" on my part. Senior members have a non-exclusive open license on the artwork, as long as the don't compile it and sell it as stock art. I have a full license that will be up today. Thanks for pointing that.

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  3. Here's a question for you. What are the options for combining multiple images into one image? I.e., Let's say you do one image about a half page in size of a character lineup. Could you count that one image as "worth" 3 standard images, essentially instead of getting 3 images that week, you get only the one larger image?

    ReplyDelete
  4. All images will be full body single images. So, it will always be 2-3 full figures. You are free to combine them on your own if you need. But i won't be short cutting the work like that. Hope that helps, and if not I'll discuss more.

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  5. Now it is perfect for me. Looks like a purchase of Saturday for me.

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  6. Awesome!
    Seth Drebitko
    KoboldEnterprise.com

    ReplyDelete