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Many advertising assignments sometimes require the illustrator to jump through a couple preliminary hoops before actually attaining the final portion of the project... A large budget project usually entails the client needing to see several different kinds of visual approaches before they can decide on which one is best for their company or product. So, if the agency handling the account decides upon an illustration approach for the project, they may engage a few different illustrators with very different styles to create preliminary sketch or test stage images to present to their client. These preliminary test stage images may also even be evaluated by focus groups, in order for the client to get real consumer feedback as part of the total data in making the final decision.
It is best to initially get ballpark approval on a fee for the total project, in case you are indeed chosen to be the illustrator to create the final images used by the company or product... then just backtrack and determine the smaller fee for the test stage preliminary images only. There is no point in only negotiating the test stage images without also knowing what your total fee will be, should you get the full project. In this instance I had gotten tentative approval for $X amount for the full project, and approximately 11% of $X just to do the preliminary test stage images.
I recently did just this... created many preliminary "test" stage images for a preliminary client presentation, and in this case it was images of cats. I am definitely a "dog" person, but drawing cats are fun, too. (see the cat character I created for the children's picture book, "Mathematickles.")
Posted here are a handful of my whimsical cat graphics from about thirty "test" images I had created specifically for the perimeters set forth by this particular advertising assignment. Unfortunately though, I was not chosen to proceed to do the full final project. It would have been fun... but as every illustrator knows, you don't get every big project that comes your way. I was hired specifically to create my whimsical, light, images... but apparently the client ultimately determined this was not the right approach they needed. I cannot say who the client is though, because that project is still ongoing for them, and I signed a confidentiality agreement...
These images were all created in Adobe Illustrator, then brought into Photoshop for a bit of additional color embellishments.
