immonen illustrations

It’s a wild world– I’ve just signed on with getty images to provide illustrations for purchase that were hitherto available for viewing on my flickr photostream. It certainly makes sense that Getty would be trolling photosites, looking for material they can license, material they wouldn’t have even known existed ten years ago.

Earlier this year, when we were at TCAF, I sat on a panel with, among other notables, Brendan Buford, Comics Editor for King Features Syndicate. At one point I asked on behalf of the assembled crowd whether KFS was looking at webcomics to bring into their stable of offerings, and I got an unequivocal “Absolutely” in response and the audience was on board; some people took notes. Later on, when the subject came back to me, and I suggested that Marvel wanted to see young, untried talent prove their mettle by self-publishing, digitally or in print, and I heard an audible groan well up from the crowd. Weird.

But not entirely unexpected. Some time ago, Kevin Church posted a link to an article about a young designer’s work having been purloined by a more established agency; which read to me like simply an example of the so-called machine deciding to embrace the freeconomy. However, I don’t think ( no, really) that Marvel, or getty or KFS want to steal your comic or your drawing or your deviantart poem or whatever you happen to be offering for free online anyway… what they want is to be able to work with people who have initiative and drive and a spirit of entrepreneurship so everyone involved can have lengthy, profitable careers.

Allie Fox and Victor Papanek would roll in their graves.

Happy August Civic Holiday, fellow northerers. Thanks to BM for the image inspiration.

Posted by Stuart on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 and is filed under announce, art, comics, events, illustration, industry, media, meta, work, www. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.