Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

Something to be said for your work-a-day caricaturist/cartoonist who can put out the ammount of work he does with the ammount of detail he puts into every drawing--those big crowd scenes with multiple likenesses are no small task. But once again: a cartoonist who's seriously underselling his originals.

There's this weird thinking in the cartooning business that somehow the art is no longer worth as much after it's served it's purpose--to be reproduced--that somehow the originals are just a byproduct of this process. Again and again I see cartoonists selling their originals for what would ammount to far less than minimum wage, when it comes to hours spent. This also gives the false impression that their work is worth less in general--that these prices somehow reflect how they'd expect to be compensated for an actual commisioned job.

Now for some reason this only seems to apply to cartoonists--more representational illustrators seem to be able to get a much higher price for their originals that more approaches the actual value of the work and the craft involved in producing it.

Failing to put a proper value on your work effects everyone in the field. So, you know, crank up your prices Tom! Your worth it!

He's just doing his part to keep inflation levels down. It's a war-time economy, you know. We're all this together! =)

It's easy to say that cartoonists undersell themselves as far as pricing originals, but the market dictates what you can and can't get for an original. Believe me, I'd love to charge $600 a page for my original art, but there is no way I'd ever sell anything at those prices. I sat at the San Diego Comic Con in 2005 with pages of art from my X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman movie parodies and my Lost TV parody. Very popular subject matter with that crowd. My price was $400.00 per page. I sold zero... Most of the market depression is about the sheer volume of work out there....

Fair enough. It's a shame though. I genuinely believe your originals are worth more than that, but I can see your point. I suppose it's the nature of how caricature and cartooning is regarded in general---someone in Napa or Orange County can sell a crappy watercolor for in excess of $1000, but someone like you with far superior chops has to struggle to sell their stuff. I suppose ultimately it's up to what the market will bare.

The Designer's Guild handbook doesn't cover what you're supposed to ask for, for originals without copyright ownership. It's very subjective territory. There are no real standards and practices, and it would be hard to establish them.

There are some illustrators who seem to be able to transcend the whole after publication devaluation issue---especially if you're a good painter---but I'd be curious to find out how prevalent the problem is.