I wrote them a very nice email about my stuff and they kindly reviewed all my Vectors up to date - unfortunately they overlooked my editorial work. I suppose I shall have to write them another nice email.....Will I f*ck!

Quote from: suwanneeredhead on February 29, 2016, 18:12
They rarely approve any of my stuff, for bizarro reasons, best-selling vectors which could make them bank, but they refuse. I don't have any use for idiocy like this.

Indeed. My port is between 40-50% smaller than at most other agencies mostly due to their similars policy. My sales are declining. The two correlate.

Click on Live Chat and you get  bounced back to the top of the home page.  Change name to Dead Chat

Cicero was saying the same thing around 70 BC and he was undoubtedly plagiarising his predecessors.

I used to chuck in every keyword I could think of (pertinent of course) but now less so. I spent more time getting the description right because the agencies told me it drove traffic. I found keywords/phrases that nobody was using but which I thought were essential.

But - I have no idea AT ALL if any of these make a difference or not since sales dropped across the board in mid 2015.....so now I worry about the things I can change and leave everything else to the runes.

Yeah well la-di-da - uploading is broken AGAIN at both SS and BS.

In the vanguard of the industry allegedly....but in the rearguard when it comes to service and reliability. Fuming.

If someone offered me 1 million I'd take about 100k of that and pay several other fools to do all the work whilst I drank scotch all day on a yacht crewed by lovely ladies - oh wait that's what Oringer et al did.

Getting vector error message "did not upload a corresponding JPG" - but the file eventually appears a half hour later.

......Instead of flashing the cash on more room for their beanbags and ambient muzak breakout area, SS should be fixing the buggiest, most unreliable site of all the agencies I work with.

January was a BME which is pretty good going in my 6th year with FT (2,300 pics) Took a couple of ELs to make it though - rarer than Melo Melo pearls

A bit slow and when I click on "Contributor" I get an "oops - something went wrong" and a picture of meerkats to make me feel better.

Probably making room for a tofu cafe or bowling alley.

Expanding occupancy without signs of exponential growth gives me the shivers - sometimes means you've got too much stuff or you've hired more people than you need.

Millionaires....the way things are going I'll be standing on a street corner shaking a tin cup.

Find myself getting all teary-eyed about the old LCV* days


*Limited Commercial Value

Vectors:

Megaphone Icon - 27,000
Envelope Icon - 94,000
House Icon - 255,000

Madness!

Quote from: Elenathewise on January 22, 2016, 22:02
This probably means that they will be offering discounts on ELs to high-volume customers, and will pay a percentage of what they receive, not fixed $28. Which means we'll most likely see a lot of ELs for less than that. Hopefully, the volume will make up for the difference...

Agree. The message is f**cked though - better to release the pay scale for contributors AND the details of the package for buyers within the communication so we can make informed decisions.

Anyway, If ELs pick up I'll be placated - otherwise this is bean counters moving numbers from one column to another - One for you, two for me. Two for you, three for me.

Thanks Monica. I'll keep an eye on the anchor points.

VB inc and Chichikov.......All good stuff to try out and see what works best for me. Thanks for the input.

Quote from: Shelma1 on January 05, 2016, 14:58
You can scan (or photograph) a texture and do a live trace, or use the Illustrator brushes that look like paint or ink at a large width and expand those. If you scan or photograph be careful that there's no copyright. iStock will insist you tell them where you get any grunge textures or they will reject your images.

I'm sure other illustrators have more ideas.

Thanks for the help. I've got photos in my own port I can use. I'll have a look at the brushes also.

Dear Readers - I'd like to give my vectors a more vintage/retro feel by adding some textures eg. make a book cover design look grubby and well read.

There are tutorials out there but most talk about importing a texture file from PS - which is fine but none of them cover whether this creates bitmaps and if so how to overcome it to avoid bitmap rejections. Is it a question of just expanding appearance? Are there alternatives inside Illustrator I can use? Anyone found a decent tut that might help?

(The attached is similar to the effect I am trying to reproduce)

Pointers/Suggestions much appreciated.......Ed

I like to draw - which is why I finally started to contribute as an illustrator. Somewhat puzzled though at the number of illustrators who produce icons and nothing but icons, for page after page, with very little in the way of originality or style.

I have no idea how buyers manage to wade through all that digital slurry.

I'm not even going to say anything.

I've had a couple this month "too simple" for DT but not everywhere else apparently. I'm still learning but will be more selective in submissions to DT - fussy blighters.

Makes me wonder if Saul Bass or Paul Rand would make it these days - although "simple" works fine if you have a decent concept....take a look at the latest Amex advertising graphics and plenty of others besides.

I just draw stuff and bang it out in the format the agencies ask for and then get on with the next one.

So nine shots of grass and one perfect shot of a business handshake and you're in.

Obviously some bright spark pointed out they are already allowing a ton of crap through the gate so it no longer makes sense to have a robust entry criteria - economically or aesthetically.

A sprinkling of .30s but also a couple of 1.50 and a 3.60 - these are more wallet friendly but I can't recall seeing these amounts before either. Something is afoot or a leg - hard to tell with SS these days.

Anyway, I don't expect to know what SS serves up with tofu in their canteen or what the latest plans are to make the offices more Feng Shui - but I would like to know what I'm getting paid for so I can make informed decisions.