Luis Peres Illustration.net
Childrens book art, imaginary worlds & all things fantasy since 1992.
*What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?
Do a good search on the web before you decide on an illustrator or a children book artist and my best advice on the pick is for you to make sure you´re really comunicating with someone that takes the job seriously and really has time to fulfill the work.
There are thousands of people drawing on the web all over the world and posting their creations on virtual galleries. Some are incredibly good but sometimes they are not professionals in the sense a client, an author, or a company needs them to be. Many people out there can call themselves professional illustrators and then the costumer learns that the artist doesn´t have time to actually do the work in the deadline needed.
Also, if you´re hiring an artist or a children book artist through an illustration company or agency, try to find out how much the actual artist is going to make out of the work he´s doing for you. I´m saying this because there´s some companies out there that exist mainly to take advantage of their artists. Usually those are the ones have a total secrecy policy regarding the comunication between client and artist. Be very suspicious of this behaviour. Each time you hire a company wich provides an artist to do your work, the company is not clear about all details you want to know and above all is not very happy either, that you communicate with the person which is actually doing the art for you (even for creative reasons), i can guarantee you that the real artist which will do most of the work for that company is probably being robbed out of his payment and in the value of his work.
Most of the times that might be legal but it´s not fair or even ethic and so make sure you´re not supporting a company that´s out there only to steal the work from the artists they have.
I´m not saying confidentiality is not needed but be suspicious when you get to feel isolated from the people you´re dealing with when you hire someone to do artwork for your project.
When i started Luis Peres Illustration.net years ago, I had a real bad experience with a company back then. We agreed on a price per pic which suposedly would cover the regular agencies fee (which vary a lot and can go somewehere between 20% to 35%). Then when i started creating the book for the client, i noticed that the company was censoring comunications between us regarding the value of the work which happen on a casual chat. Later we found out that they had charged the client for each spread page i did, about 400% more than what they told me they were going to do and end up wanting to pay me cents in comparison for the work which i had accept based on a false premise from their side. And i even did the whole book. Not only i did the illustrations, but i also created the graphic design and book layout for them too. On that project the company only had to collect the money from the client (overcharging him about 400%) more than what i was being paid + their reasonable and ethic commission as agents.
As a result i ended up creating a cool book for the client which loved the work, but he got totally robbed and overcharged for each pic i did for his project.
If he had come directly to me for the job i would have charged him about 60% less than what that company charged for my (complete) work.
Or even if he had hired an honest and professional illustration agency which fortunely are still out there.
So, what i´m trying to say here, is that even if you like what you already saw on my Luis Peres Illustration.net website here and you´re looking to hire me as a children book artist or fantasy illustrator, please shop around to get a good grasp of the market out there.
Make sure you´re not only dealing with honest artists, but also, with honest illustration companies if you end up going for one of those.
The only way to make sure this illustration market stays clean is not only that the children book artists keep their prices fair but above all that the market does not get saturated by some so called illustration companies that are there not just to overcharge costumers but mainly steal the work hours out of artists like me which look for good opportunities out there to work on what we love all the time and usualy we are the ones that are left at the bottom of the pyramid.
*What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?
Well, if was one, i would try to make sure that the illustrator i was seeking didn´t bought any third party clipart already available on the web and then resell that as an original work.
I´ve used third party clipart on my illustrations for some images before but that is only when the job i´m doing is a mix between traditional illustration and graphic design.
That is different and legitimate, particulary when it´s agreed with the client that is going to be the preffered method to create illustrations.
This is why it´s important for an author to seek for an illustrator which can present a distinct line art style, and that is why it took years for me to develop my own.
Unless i get my pics stolen somewhere, when a client hires me to create original material i can guarantee that he won´t find "his" images somewhere on a clipart store on the web later on.
Shop around compare prices but remember that you can always get for $15 a pic i´m doing maybe for $75, but you won´t be having your money´s worth by trying to have cheap and quality at the same time, as you need to remember that an honest artist charges a particular rate for a reason.
In my case, all my art is though out based on the amount of hours and fulltime dedication i apply to the work and particulary about the personality i can bring to a picture which is something that i´m sure you will not find out there from someone that creates some drawings for you fast and cheap or less expensive.
*What questions should
a consumer ask to hire the right service professional?
How reliable is the professional in keeping to deadlines, particulary over the internet and when working from long distances. How acessible to respond to questions and all that could give trust to a buyer.
Personaly i think one of my main strenghts as an illustrator is not just i´m able to create worlds for my clients but because i´m always available to answer all the questions. Also it´s very important to me to understand who is hiring me to, because to do a good, if you like the person who hires you and you have an instant empathy in discussing the idea, the concept, the visuals, the story and all that, all work is half done even before an artist is hired to do the job.
At least it works for me as in this last decade not only i got some really cool clients but i ended up gaining new friends. Some i even met personaly when they came here to Portugal as i make sure we get togheter to have a cofee by the beach as i have plenty of seascapes to show them. In fact maybe i should be a travel agency for hikers instead...oh well...
*Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?
First of all i think i have a different style among the usual childrens book type art. It might feel generic at first look, but when a client looks deeper into my portfolio, people tell me there´s something genuine about my work that they didn´t find on many other similar pics out there. Although subjective, this is probably because im not in this bussiness just to make money but mainly because i love to create pics like the ones i do and i even refuse good work when i feel i cannot have fun with a job. Yes, i´m that stupid.
You see, if i don´t have fun with my illustration work, then i feel that i cannot do my best and so i preffer to refuse a client than delivering him crappy pages. Also, although i do my share of children´s books nowadays, from what you can see in my portfolio i like to cover different types of illustration work.
I do a lot of schoolbook illustration and generic children book art, but my real pleasure is create science-fiction or fantasy, which is something i rarely do here in Portugal because there´s no real market for those types of pics.
Probably the biggest difference between my work and the vast majority of children book artists out there is because instead of focusing on character creation, what i do best is create backgrounds.
Not many illustrators like to do backgrounds and scenery but that is what i love the most. If you happen to have a fantasy project, children book or not, which needs a lot of imaginary landscapes that is the type of work i´m most interested in.
If you open a typical children book, or even a juvenile novel, mostly what you see in illustration are characters. Rarely you see the worlds where they live depicted. When i was a kid i used to hate that. What i always wanted in a book was to see the worlds, the imaginary lands; not the characters over and over again on each page and so, scenery was what i learned to draw.
Right now landscapes or enviroments are my favorite thing to do and if you open one of my books you´ll notice that every one of them has very detailed backgrounds which are much more detailed than the actual characters most of the time.
So fantasy realms, wizard of OZ style landscapes and imaginary creatures as the main focus of my paintings set my work appart when attached to my very own style of drawing which i tried to develop all these years since i´ve started.
*If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?
I would like to understand more about the creative process the illustrator used as that would allow me to better understand the real value of the job here at Luis Peres Illustration.net, how much time it takes to do each pic and see how fair would the rates be and all that regarding my children book artist work.
*What are your favorite themes and is there any type of book or project you wouldn´t do ?
Well, i consider myself a fantasy illustrator mainly and also a children book artist. The fact that i already did a lot of children books that only about mundane day-to-day events is something that comes along with the job.
There are more people writing children stories about kids in school, kids in church, kids going to the park, etc...than people writing about what i really love to illustrate, kids going to fantasy lands, kids flying on dragon´s backs, kids meeting wizards and knights or kids flying to the moon.
Or at least i don´t get those much here at Luis Peres Illustration.net, which is a shame, because these are the themes i really love to do.
As a children book artist I love to illustrate stories set on the ocean for example, or in the air, or in museums; stories abiout lost worlds, scientific themes, funny characters, and all things that can take me out of the ordinary day-to-day life.
I don´t like to illustrate sports or stuff that has much to do with real life. Hate to draw cars for example.
But love to illustrate boats and sea themes are my favorite things to paint as a children book artist.
The fact that i started my career creating a lot of educative material, illustrating for schoolbooks and also keep doing a lot of software design with educational purposes (with math lessons, geography lessons, etc), that might have branded me as the guy to go to draw everyday life stuff and right now i´m trying to get away from that as much as i can, because as i said before my strong points in illustration come out when i have to create stuff that i love. And what i love is to do imaginary worlds or design imaginary creatures because those themes can release my imagination to the full without the constraints of having to follow a story heavily based on things that are real and exist in our world, like cars, cellphones, microwaves or whatever.
I recently did a book set in a cloud world; without any human characters in it, just a lightning and a thunder as characters and i loved to work on that project. Simply because i had total freedom to put my own fantasy world into the original words of the writer.
So if you come to me at Luis Peres Illustration.net with a childrens book that needs kids and dragons and wizards and lost imaginary lands, i´m your guy ! Please do hire me !
My favorite thing in the world as a children book artist is not actually to create characters but create worlds. My speciality, you can say, are imaginary landscapes, worlds that don´t exist, enviroments in general or enchanted realms. Either in cartoon, fantasy or sci-fi; in children book style or in a more realistic approach if you have a project that needs fantasy and make believe stuff i´m interested already !
Of course i still do the regular themed type of work, as i like to vary as much as i possibly can so that Luis Peres Illustration.net does not get boring to work at and if i find a good story to illustrate no matter what the theme is, i´ll still have fun doing it; but when i have to choose between a fantasy project and another that involves too much reality based references even if i loose money i always go for the fantasy/sci-fi/imaginary-land-childrens-book project if possible.
If you have one of those don´t hesitate to contact me, particulary if you need a children book artist that can do lots of images with backgrounds, enviroments and scenery instead of characters. Imaginary geographies, castle interiors, dungeons, spaceships, wizard of OZ type stuff. It´s me you´re looking for.
And if you are, or want to become a POD print on demand author, don´t worry. I do not descriminate good work when it comes along. Does not matter if you want to go print and demand or not. Got good imaginary worlds for me ? As a children book artist at Luis Peres Illustration.net, i want to illustrate them.
*What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?
Most people besides asking for my rates of course, when they see the finished work, usually ask me where do i get my inspiration to create all these images.
Well, it´s a bit difficult to explain, but i do a lot of hiking and i´m always taking photos, landscape photos and so nature and big open landscapes are my main inspiration, along with cinema (particulary oriental cinema actually which i love). The ocean is another of my inspiration sources. I´m lucky to live in a fantastic coastal area with tons of little secret beach spots and so i make the most out of those hidden world whenever i can and i´m always gettin tons of ideas from the isolation feel i can get when i´m in one of those places with a sketch pad which i always carry with me around all the time. One thing that most of my costumers don´t know about my work process is that i do at least 60% of my art when im not at home. I do a lot of drawings when i´m taking a break lost somewhere in my hiking trips, or by the river, or at the beach on a sketchpad.
Other than that, clients ask me when can i be available to do another book most of the time, which is a good thing to ear as it means i must have done something good on the first project we did togheter.
At this point, at least 65% of the work i do is for clients that keed coming back. Sometimes even for small work, which i even do for free if i have time when the client already became a friend.
*What do you like most about your job?
The fun i have with most projects but mainly i love when a client tells me that a book that i created for him really made a diference on his life and this happens more frequently than you may think.
I already did a lot of stuff for companies over the years, but in truth what i love the most is illustrate for anonymous people like you and me out there.
I loose a lot of money on that process actually as the regular person out there usually is always very tigh on budget but, really i don´t mind giving people special rates for my work (if i can afford to do that at the time) when i find out that a project has some real human sentimental value behind. Either, a person is looking to create a book in memory of someone, design a set of personal greeting cards to comemorate a relationship or simply to surprise the family with his own book.
So it´s nice to be well paid for a job when working for a company, but it´s a lot more satisfying to know that a direct client of mine loved the way my art made a diference on his life, even if i have to loose a bit of money in the process. That´s why i don´t have a generic rating for my services. To me each project is a project and if there´s a real person behind that´s great.
*How did you decide to get in your line of work?
I´ve always been drawing since i was a kid long before i knew what a children book artist was. When i was 4 years of age, one night in 1974 i remember my father picking me up on his lap at the kitchen table and show me how i could draw wells, (you know water wells, rural farm wells, wishing wells), using color pencils.
And he tought me to draw them not just in 2D but also with volume.
That and little houses.
Most kids draw little houses as shapes or 2D lines. Because of what my father tried to taught me back then i always tried to create them with volume in 3D and i was always very aware of space and volume from earlier age, which helped me to develop my drawing skills over the years that went by. Maybe because of what i learned from my father, perspective was so easy and obvious to me. That´s why my landscapes are the stong point in my artwork too.
In 1976 the series SPACE 1999 came on tv here in Portugal, and from that moment on i was totally captivated to what could be created using drawings. I spent years designing "Eagle" spaceships and moonbases.
Then came Star Wars and all that. But what made me really want to work in illustration, was the movie "The Neverending Story" directed by Wolfgang Petersen back in 1983.
The first time the fantasy landscape showing the "Ivory Tower" appeared on the screen i knew i had to learn how to create fantasy landscapes like that and since that moment i never stopped trying to learn all about creating scenery, particulary which today is still my favorite thing to draw.
Many years later, after i left the army at 22, i took my portfolio into a software company that at the time back in late 1992 wanted to create the first Portuguese PC Videogame, called "Gambys" and after a short time, i was hired as a conceptual designer for the whole game which i did work on for about three years or so, creating the Gamby world, characters, animations, sprites , graphic design you name it.
After that i never stopped creating illustrations for clients wherever i could get them. I worked a lot in hospitality software design for more than 10 years or so but i always did illustration in between and now i´ve been doing it fulltime for about 10 years through my old luisperes.net, now renamed Luis Peres Illustration.net.
*Describe the most common types of jobs you do for your clients.
Initially after three years creating the concept work for the videogame "Gambys", where i did all the characters, world backgrounds, animations etc, i got some commissions to do a few magazine illustrations for all sorts of publications, (sci-fi short stories, pulp stuff, e-zines, etc), did my share of greeting card and poster work design, among generic graphic and webdesign for marketing companies.
But now since i went completly fulltime into illustration through Luis Peres Illustration, i´ve been doing my share of children book illustrations, history books illustration, cover illustration and board game design too.
I do work for publishers and for POD print on demand authors too which is something that as a children book artist i always will do as i love to work for the regular people out there.
Because what got me started in the freelance thing with Luis Peres Illustration.net was creating artwork for anonymous POD print on demand authors, that is something that i still love to do in between other work for companies.
I love to help people that want to publish their own books independently through print on demand, sometimes a first childrens book, a novel and don´t know how or where they can find an affordable artist for their limited budgets.
Here at Luis Peres Illustration.net, I always try to fit my work around the tight budgets the common person has. If there´s some meaning behind a project i usually take it if it comes a long at a time i can afford no to charge that much to do it. The best times are when i get a good work for a company where the pay then allows me to have a month or two to work on smaller jobs for common folks that have the need for children book artist but think they cannot afford one.
When i´m working for companies, i have illustrated several type of projects; stuff that ranges from history books to poetry and i also do some regular cover work. It does not matter. If i like a project, i´ll do it.
Fantasy, sci-fi or childrens book. As an artist it does not matter to me here at Luis Peres Illustration.net as long as it is fun to work on and i have a good empathy with the client.
*If you were advising someone who wanted to get into your profession, what would you suggest?
RUN ! Just kidding. More or less...
Essentially i think it´s a matter of persistence and don´t be discouraged by the competition.
Do not compete against the others but against yourself, against your own skills and always try to improve on what´s missing.
Do not worry about the thousand people out there that are better at illustrating than you are. The world is big, there´s plenty of stuff for everyone out there and most of the times it´s not even about who´s the better illustrator but...who´s the illustrator that can really capture what the client dreamed inside is vision.
Do the best you can do to learn to do what you love, and then start showing your work around the web.
Remember, there´s thousands of artists that are much, much better than you out there so don´t let that scare you, as there´s also thousands of artists worse than you out there. It´s not a question of who´s the best, but a question which art fits best what a client wants for a project. Sometimes there might be a hundred artists better skilled than you out there, but a client picks you because he sees that you have a specific thing he likes for his project. It´s not about technic, it´s about providing for what the client needs and sometimes its a feel not a display of technical skills that gets you the job.
But if you become a master in illustration, even better.
Reach for the Obi-Wan in you and above all never stop drawing.
It´s about persistence.
If you can get in into an art school, perfect. If not, do not worry, the world is filled with skilled and good illustrators that never set foot on a school.
Nowadays there´s a ton of brilliant tutorials out there where you can learn anything you want about illustration, particulary in digital illustration. I recommend you go to youtube and search for the FZDSchool videos in digital illustration. They are amazing.
*Do you do any sort of continuing education to stay up on the latest developments in your field?
I try to keep learning new technics and stay up to date with new materials or ways of creating pics. Although i´ve worked for 18 years mainly in traditional mediums like watercolors and hand drawn art done in paper, i´ve moved to digital illustration recently and so i try to improve at every new pic i have on my schedulle.
Last year i did a bunch of illustration projects, actually, in Ipad of all things (painting with my finger).
That plattform has some great free and some almost free illustration software and i took a lot of advantage in that and did some work there, which essentialy payed for the device.
Although i´m not thinking of abandoning my real watercolors as i still think traditional medium is a great way of adding character and personality to an illustration, nowadays rarely i get a client that asks for traditionaly painted illustrations. The digital has the advantage of allowing us to chage a picture at any level and that commodity will never go away as it´s great for creative people like me to be able to do a pic and change it at the client´s will at any time.
As for art education, when i´m not working for others i do tons of exercices and create a lot of pics just for myself as the best way for you to learn illustration is for you to draw stuff that you love. So i do a lot of pics just for me and i try to watch at least three or four video tutorials on the web each week just to learn new skills or check out what´s new out there.
*What are you currently working on improving?
I want to improve on my display of the human figure a lot.
Not that i want to start creating realistic illustrations as illustrating characters never interested me that much, but i need knowledge that i lack on how to acomplish realistic art particulary when dealing with the human body to be able to extrapolate those technics and create really good cartoon versions or children´s book depictions of human characters in a professional way.
People tend to not give many value to cartoon or children´s book art when compared to realistic drawing, but what most people don´t get is that to be able to create cartoon versions of characters or world landscapes, you need to use the same technical knowledge about propotions and perspective as if you would be doing a realistic painting. You pretty much need to be aware of the drawing foundations to create any type of illustration art, being either comic art or realistic stuff.
My handicap is the human figure, for the simple reason i´ve always wanted to illustrate scenery and enviroments and so the human body never appealed to me as an artist and i have no fun creating books that have a ton of human characters but no scenery, enviroments or backgrounds for me to do what my imagination does best. Illustrate imaginary or fairy tale worlds.
Also there´s a million people out there creating incredible human body renditions but not nearly as many mastering perspective, landscape, enviroments and scenery painting. As i focused more on that, the human figure is something that i now need to start to pay real atention soon as it´s a skill where i´m not hundred percent confident yet and i don´t like to have incomplete skills around. Also i need figures to give scale to my scenery and landscapes.
*What is your greatest strength?
As a professional, i think one of my best things is sticking to deadlines but i always make sure the client gets informed in advance if there´s something happening that prevents me to complete a project on time.
In all these years i don´t even rememenber a project that i didn´t treated that way...and i have about 10 years of experience of completely independent freelancing online.
Artisticaly, I think it´s my ability to create fantasy worlds with a lot of details in it that stands out as my main stong point. Sometimes you might not even notice them at first look, but when you give it a second look you´ll find out that i´m always trying to tell a story within a story with my pics.
For example, with my fantasy landscapes, i always want for a reader to feel like if he´s inside a real geographic location within the world i´m trying to create looking around into all the details as if he was standing on top of a mountain, a hill or something.
I think my scenery has a personality of it´s own and contributes a lot for the good end result i´m always reaching for.
Many people do children books out there, but most people concentrate on the characters rather than the world they´re living in. In my case i try to create the world first and then place the characters there as i feel good characters without a world to live in are half the job done and so that´s why i love to create scenery so much.
I also love to create cute characters. And humor. A big characteristic of my illustrations is humor for sure.
*What do you wish customers knew about you or your profession?
About me:
I can say three things.
I never overcharge a client, at Luis Peres Illustration.net I stick to deadlines and if i think i cannot get the best end result delivered as a children book artist or illustrator i preffer to refuse a job no matter what a client offers me.
I preffer to keep a good reputation out there than delivering a crappy work just for the money.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
The following questions and answers are picked from a couple interviews and all sorts of similar things i did and i´ve included all them here because
i think that if you´re looking to hire me and you have the patience to go through all these, this is a very good way to know about me, my experience and my work.