Last week we added three new portfolio categories to the site:
Murals & Street Art
Logos & Graphic Design
Games & Interactive Design
Clients can find those members who specialise in these areas by using our Quick Search, Advanced Search or Site Search. And don’t forget that if you want us to do the legwork or need help to find the right artist you can use our Art Buyer form!
We recently received our copy of Zombies Can’t Swim, a comic by Kim Herbst. Let’s be honest here. We have a bit of a thing for zombies at hai and we know that Kim has produced some interesting fantasy-based artwork, so we just had to get this!
There’s plenty of blood, gore and action, as you would expect, and the story is very well drawn. The use of two-colour printing works well – better than if Kim had gone for plain old monotone, as it makes the artwork so much clearer. The print and binding quality is very good, and it’s bound rather than stapled as it runs to 40 pages.
No storyline spoilers here I’m afraid, although suffice it to say that if you like the undead, Zombies Can’t Swim will make a fitting addition to your collection. Head on over to Kim’s Esty store to buy a copy. You know you want to – it’s a no-brainer!
Title: Zombies Can’t Swim
Author: Kim Herbst
Illustrator: Kim Herbst
Pages: 40
We’ve just added a new way to search the hire an illustrator website. 
Now you can keyword search the entire site, including news items, members’ portfolios and the blog, for articles and images.
We’d love to get your feedback on this, so why not give it a try and let us know what you think!
We’ve got lots of books that we’ve been meaning to post about for ages, but this one is especially overdue (sorry Ginger)! Written and illustrated by the very lovely Ginger Nielson, Gunther the Underwater Elephant is a charming story about a baby elephant (Gunther) who gets lost while swimming in the river with his family. He ends up having an adventure where he meets a surprising new friend who helps him to find his way home again, just in time to become the hero in a dramatic rescue! Colourfully illustrated throughout, this book would appeal to any animal-loving youngster and be a lovely book to share at story-times.
Gunther the Underwater Elephant is available to buy on Amazon.
Title: Gunther the Underwater Elephant
Author: Ginger Nielson
Illustrator: Ginger Nielson
Publisher: 4RV Publishing (2011)
ISBN: 978-0983274025
Pages: 27
So, as we seem to have survived the Mayan Apocalypse, we’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We hope that you all have a lovely time over the Holidays and look forward to a fantastic 2013!
Artwork is by the wonderful Emma McCann ©
- the hire an illustrator team
As I’m sure you’ve probably noticed we’ve had a very nice autumn background up on the site for a while now. We’ve got a new one to go up in December, but the one up at the moment is by the brilliant Wylie Elise Beckert. The images was created several months ago… And I would like to share with you one of the earlier sketches as it’s always nice to see those things.
As soon as we saw the Lemurs we were sold on the piece! We think Wylie did a wonderful job, what do you think?
A short while ago one of our members, the highly talented and experienced illustrator Randy Gallegos, told us about a booklet he had produced: Learning How to Commission Illustration. It’s a really valuable resource that does exactly what it says: it shows people how to commission illustration!
Randy’s considerable understanding and knowledge of working with clients, especially independent publishers, has been compiled to provide a comprehensive explanation of the entire commissioning process. While this resource is targeted primarily at small and self-publishers, the information would be extremely useful to anyone who hasn’t worked with an illustrator before. Additionally, it would be a fantastic help to less experienced illustrators who may need advice on how to deal with artwork commissioners themselves.
The pamphlet describes the process of commissioning an illustration from start to finish, including how to approach an artist, choosing the right copyright, licensing, fees, time-scales and more. There are lots of examples of different situations in there too.
Randy’s pamphlet is available to download for free HERE, so you can keep your own copy to hand and pass it on to your clients as well.
So, what are you waiting for? Grab yourself a copy now!
Don’t forget to check out Randy’s artwork too: Website | Portfolio | Blog
As you may or may not know we regularly send out mail packs to our favourite clients as part of our ongoing marketing campaigns. Just to bring those who don’t know up to speed, the mail packs contain selections of direct marketing postcards and promotional material from the brilliant members of hai. What a lot of people aren’t aware of is that a majority of the cards included in the packs are printed by us on behalf of the illustrators. In today’s digital age it’s not always clean-cut when helping a client find the right person for their project, but the more levels we can connect on with a client or illustrator the easier it makes our job, on or offline.
Here are some examples of cards we’ve printed recently. We don’t know about you, but we love postcards as a form of promotion!
We didn’t print Chris Dickason‘s card, but the rest are all us. Artists showcased are David Procter, Marc Scheff, Graeme Neil Reid and Dinara Mirtalipova.
#illo140 portfolio reviews via Twitter… Twitter account required!
On Friday 14th September for a limited time, we’re going to be doing reviews of illustrators’ websites and/or work in 140 characters or less via Twitter. Same as before…
As soon as the clock hits 15:00pm BST (10:00am EDT) we want you to tweet your website URL @hireanillo with the hashtag #illo140
Which means your tweet will look like this (but with your website address!)…
@hireanillo http://www.illustration-site.com #illo140
As soon as you do that we’ll be on the ball checking out your site and sending you a reply. The reply might be a short comment, advice, praise or a confused look if you’re not an illustrator or artist. Please note all replies will be public, so if you don’t want the world to know what we think of your work don’t ask. We’re not planning on taking any prisoners!
Please make sure you’re following @hireanillo on Twitter before taking part. If you’re not we can’t DM you if needed. Also please note this time round due to the unprecedented respons we had last time we did this… We’re going to be reviewing as many as we can for a set period of time. Which means we’ll be sending public replies on Twitter until 17:00 (12:00am EDT) and no later. Looking forward to checking out your sites and work, the quality last time was outstanding! If you don’t get a review before 17:00 don’t worry, we’ll be doing another review in a couple weeks and you’ll have another chance then.
The illustration above call Blue Gull is by the brilliant Jim Bradshaw!
Like any start up we need to constantly be updating our service and moving with the times to stay in the game. To a certain degree I would say we are an established business (7 years), but until we have 75 years under our belt and have more executives than general staff we’re going to run hai like a cutting edge start up. We’ve recently moved our printing needs to a new printers which we’re hoping to have a long and last relationship with, so far so good. With this in mind we’ll probably stop accepting postcards sent to us from 3rd parties in the near future. But on the flip side of this as we’ll have more control of the products we’ll be sending out in our mailers, and we’ll be introducing a high quality quarterly promo magazine. Anyone will be able to subscribe to the magazine and we’ll be sending it out to the people who hire our illustrators for free. Lots of exciting stuff going on and as you know we’re always updating out website!
Hope you’re enjoying the Olympics! Go Team GB!!!!
