#ipart

Reunion.

Look, my first piece of advice would be to start on a much less confrontational footing. Even here. “Have you ever read the contracts you ask illustrators to sign” is a little insulting. Of course we read them! Many of us were in the room working with legal the entire time they were being drawn up. 

I don’t think it’s helpful to look at contracts in terms of “abusive” and “predatory”. No one sits in a legal department like a cartoon villain rubbing their hands together yelling BWAH HA HA ARTISTS WILL OWN NONE OF THEIR OWN WORK! And thinking that is the case honestly makes it much harder to deal with very legitimate contractual concerns with a level head. 

Legal departments exist to protect the companies that hired them. And the best protection, from the company’s POV, is to own all the rights. That’s what a lawyer will counsel every time. What a good Art Director will do is explain to the company they work for that more rights = more pay and that asking for only the rights you actually need saves the company money. In some companies that works. In others it doesn’t. No one is forcing you to work for a company with a overreaching contract, but it is worth taking a moment and asking the AD if there’s something they can do to adjust the contract. Sometimes a legal dept. will not let an AD change the contract, but they will have a notes section where the AD can add things in to elaborate on the details (mine does). Sometimes the legal dept. will draw up a new contract. Sometimes there’s nothing they can do, but they can put in an email things to address your concerns, and the physical record of an email is as admissible in court as a contract modifier. 

Also remember, some companies have a perfectly legit reason to ask for things considered “predatory” like Work For Hire. If you are working on someone else’s IP or copyright (like most movies, comic books, games, toys, licensed books, etc) then you will not own the copyright to your own work regardless of what any contract says because your work is derivative of the original copyright. So every one of those contracts is going to be Work For Hire. (That’s also the issue with fan art, by the way, and most artists don’t understand that either)

The point is, you don’t know until you ask – and remember, almost no one asks. I’ve been an AD for almost 20 years and I can count on my fingers how many artists came back with questions about my companies’ contracts. And that’s not because they weren’t overreaching – it’s because most artists don’t read the contract. I know a legit question about terms will be met with praise by most ADs, because it proves they have a savvy professional on their hands. That means you’re probably going to be a professional about getting the job done too.

A good rule of thumb is not to assume the worst before even asking. ADs are not the enemy, they’re your collaborators. You can tell a lot by how they answer your questions. If they are dicks then run away. But there may be very good answers to your questions.

—Agent MoneyPenny

P.S. Pricing is a whole different issue and this post is already long. Only work for the companies that pay too little if you need the experience. Who needs the experience? Folks who may not have made the connections higher up the food chain yet, and doing the lower-paid work will get them there. Or maybe they don’t have the skill for the higher-paying work yet. But these low-paying gigs should only be a step up the ladder & you should move on as soon as possible. And another option is to skip this step entirely, and work on your skill and/or connections on your own time while you work a non-freelance-art job to pay the bills until you’re ready.

Flat Fuck Friday

Bonus: