IPA - www.cheapillustration.com


	Search Articles by Author


	Search Articles by Content

www.cheapillustration.com

by Dugald Stermer

April Fools Day, 2001

All predictions are liable to be wrong, including any that might sneak unbidden into this column. For example, when computers first starting showing up in the studios of illustrators and photographers, it was widely forecasted to be the image-making tool of the future. It followed, according to accepted wisdom, that hand made illustrations and photographs, created with traditional non-digital tools, was obsolescent, if not already obsolete. For a time, I felt distinctly Jurassic, until I remembered that the same thing was said, back in the early seventies, about the airbrush.

Then too, the phonograph was predicted to replace live concerts, motion pictures would take over live theater, television would in turn finish off the movie business, and all of them together would spell the end for books. And after the invention of the automobile, horses would become extinct. Of course, none of that happened. What does seem to occur is a transformation. Similar to evolution, a technology or process changes its function somewhat when faced with a newcomer, adapting like raccoons to the city. Recorded music is simply a different experience than attending a concert or playing an instrument oneself, but they work together nicely. There are more horses in North America today than at any time in the nineteenth century, but now they serve more of a recreational function than transportation or work. Painting was never the same after the invention of the camera, but it hardly vanished. Usually, the results of any changes are in flux and largely unpredictable; the process continues.

Back to illustration and the computer. What we largely missed in our initial frenzy over this lavish new airbrush and filing system were the entrepreneurial possibilities inherent in the damn modem and the internet. But they certainly weren't lost on the MBAs and their cousins, the dotcommers. They didn't give a damn about Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark and the rest. Instead they immediately saw a chance to promote and sell anything and everything, worldwide, instantly, with no sales reps, no overhead to speak of, and little or no real inventory; and this includes pictures. Almost overnight a glut of images were posted for sale, through huge stock and "art" houses like Getty, Corbis, SIS and their ilk.

How did we react, and are still reacting? We debate among ourselves, often angrily, about what all this means. Is stock here to stay? ("No," predicts Jim McMullan and a few others; a larger group says not only "Yes," but that it will take over the whole business.) Is it good or bad for the business? ("Bad," says nearly everyone, but for different reasons.) Will it finish off assignment illustration? (Loud arguments over this one.) Some say, a bit wistfully, "If we just continue to do good work, charge reasonable fees, it will all work out," as they softly whistle their way past the graveyard. Many of us gleefully read reports that detailed the decline of e commerce. (Decline, but certainly not disappearance; the marketplace was only thinning out the herd, once more demonstrating the survival of the fittest.) And the big one, the subject that everyone has an opinion on, will all this result in lower fees across the board for all illustration, assigned or pre-existing? ("#@*$$*#@!")

Here is one of those prognostications I warned about: Stock illustration will continue to be a viable business for some, and will have a huge effect on the field of illustration as a whole. Exactly what that impact will be is still hazy, but it's probably not a welcome one for those of us who love assignment work, and like to think that we might be able to raise our fees, for maybe the first time since 1910. Buying the use of an image, for print or on line, risk free because it can be seen in advance, with no pesky sketches to tweak over, instantly available, is simply too attractive an option to disappear. That many of us also sell that use cheaply, extremely cheaply, is deeply regrettable and ultimately self-defeating.

By the way, stock doesn't necessarily equate to: 1. Cheap; 2. Always replaces assignment work; 3. lowers quality; 4. is, by definition, always a worse fit for a particular use than something commissioned; and 5. less appropriate for the second use than it was the first time around, if there even was a first time around. Would a series of theater posters, originally designed and illustrated by an artist to promote the productions of that theater, be less expensive, replace the potential for new work, seem of inferior quality, and be unsuitable in any way if reprinted and sold as a portfolio of high end prints? That's also "stock." Pictures I made for magazines and books have been subsequently printed in calendars, on t shirts and tins, as cards and prints, none of which superceded the potential for new work, or were inappropriate to their use, or were, in my opinion of course, mediocre or sold cheaply. I have also had the pleasure of selling the rights to a series of pieces, some of which I originated for that series, some done previously, each for the same fee. Under those circumstances, I feel exactly as Seymour Chwast does when he says, "I get paid and I don't have to do the work. I love recycling."

There is certainly great potential, as current practices give witness, for all the horrors we associate with stock, and much of it is made possible by the internet; no, all of it is. Large corporations have bought up hundreds of thousands of images, mostly photography, but also a considerable amount of illustration, and are selling rights to these with virtually no bottom to the prices. Illustrators are asked to take less than fifty percent of those already unconscionable fees, leaving the better half for the house; that is, if they don't sell all rights outright. Artists who mildly question why they are being encouraged to compete against themselves for poverty level money, and then turn over usurious commissions to the stock house, are told that this is the wave of the future; take it or leave it. Further, the impressionable ones are advised to re-work their style to more nearly approximate that of successful illustrators, because, "that's what sells." In other words, plagiarize on spec. This is surely not why anyone got into illustration in the first place.

Copyright abuses abound throughout the world, and under our current ways of doing business we are very nearly powerless, with each of us fighting individual battles when and if we accidentally stumble over the infringements. We simply cannot easily register everything we produce, ferret out offenders across the globe, hire attorneys, risk the court costs, pray that our lawyers are better than theirs, and hope that the judge has respect for intellectual property, not at all a good bet today. Composers recognized the problem, way back in 1912, long before the web, when they formed ASCAP to protect their rights and collect royalties and fees. Obviously, illustration currently doesn't have nearly the impact on society that music does, if it ever did, and the potential for royalties is infinitely greater for songs than for the repeated re-use of illustrations. Nevertheless, the principle is the same; the originator of a work of art, whether painted, written, performed, played or recorded, should continue to benefit from its continued use.

Reacting unilaterally, in the time-honored way of artists, ferociously protecting our individual independence against all comers, worked pretty well for a long time, primarily because there just wasn't enough money in the illustration game to attract large schools of sharks. We could, one by one, fight for ownership of originals, for limited publishing rights, for non-tampering of images, even for clients paying within thirty days, if we had the clout or the courage, preferably both. But then, following on the heels of the world wide web, came business, serious business, in the form of huge stock houses and then publishing conglomerates who smelled money in the repeated sale of pictures. Never mind that they didn't have the right to sell those pictures; they'd get them through persuasion, threats, and if that didn't work, through theft. (The McDermott vs. Advanstar suit serves as an example.) As those pictures got sold, often to clients who had previously commissioned new work, fees diminished geometrically, because if one is selling in bulk out of a huge inventory that never shrinks, each sale doesn't mean much. But it sure as hell means something to the individual illustrator, who now finds herself bidding against a Goliath who owns nearly all the rocks.

A true parable: An illustrator, call her Kate, has done a number of jobs for various magazines, including several owned by a huge publishing conglomerate, call it Colin Nash. She is asked by the art director of one of the magazines owned by CN, call it Gluttony, to do a full page illustration for an upcoming issue. After talking over the subject and the deadline, Kate asks about the fee. "$250" she is told. "But," says Kate, "the last time it was $2,000." The a.d. explains that fees have shrunk, blah, blah, blah, and that $250 is all she'd have to pay for a piece from stock. "Stock!" Kate exclaims, "But you've always assigned work before. What happened?" The art director replies, sheepishly one hopes, that because CN now owns the all rights to nearly all the illustration and photography ever published in all of their magazines, it is encouraged that those publications re-cycle that work whenever possible, paying the fees back into their very own piggy bank. "How the hell did that happen?" Kate asks in horror. The a.d. says, "Remember the contract you signed over at The Manhattanite the last time you did a job for them. It stated that from then on, all the rights to all the work you do for any magazine owned by Colin Nash, or ever did do, or ever will do, is owned by the company. In fact, if you don't do this job, the illustration I'm thinking of using in its place is one you did for another of our magazines several years ago. Of course I'll change some of the colors, perhaps flop it, and then you'll get nothing." Okay, so this story isn't to my knowledge entirely factual, but it is nonetheless true.

We cannot expect any fox, however well intentioned as foxes go, to watch our hen house, while we each sit on our own nests clucking at each other. It might be time, past time perhaps, that we illustrators give up some of our prideful independence to the peer group, and fight our battles together. Whether each of us intends to participate in the stock world or not, or to what extent and with what restrictions, it is with us and is seriously affecting our business whether we like it or not. Further, our rights to our own intellectual property are being eroded daily in the global marketplace and in the courts, in part due to our own unwillingness, perhaps inability, to adequately protect and defend our copyrights, each of us acting alone.

I've never been a joiner and probably don't play well with others and my activism has, in the past, been around political and social issues. But this is self-defense, pure if not so simple. None of us got into illustration for the money; more accurately, those who did were fools, or got out of the business early. And we're not particularly good business people, so the stereotype has it, although a career's worth of running a successful small business is no minimal achievement. All I have is my work; it is my estate and my legacy. If protecting that for my family and my reputation means that I must join with my friends and colleagues in a partnership, in a licensing endeavor, and in organizing a conference, so be it. I need all the help I can get.

Dugald Stermer is an illustrator, as well as a member of the boards of The Illustrators' Partnership of America (www.illustratorspartnership.com) and The National Illustrators Conference (www.illustconf.org). He lives in San Francisco.