I am looking for artists outside the USA who can create a large number
of low cost illustrations of birds for a bird identification book I am
publishing. The illustratios must be in full color and use colored
pencils and they must be scanned and sent to me over the internet in
jpg format at 200 dpi or more.

I need the artists to be able to follow a strict format regarding
position, size, and so on so that comparisons of birds that are
similar are easy to follow. I need a large number of illustrations
(2000) and I need to keep the price very low. I can work with an
artistic group in countries like India and Pakistan, but there must be
a good internet connection, and ability to speak English and meet
deadlines.

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Request for Question Clarification by grimace-ga on 04 Jun 2002 13:43 PDT

Hi, 
 
Can you give some indication of the amount you'd be prepared to pay
per picture, or for the lot? 

---

Request for Question Clarification by politicalguru-ga on 04 Jun 2002 13:44 PDT

I can direct you to sites (or other places) where you may find such an
artist, would you be interested? 

Hello!

We can't, of course, act as employment brokers to hire and make
contract arrangements between you and the chosen artist(s). What I can
do is point you toward artists who accept commissions similar to what
you've described, culling the list, and also offer links to
specialized search sites, creative solutions, and hopefully, provide
an expedited search process.

I've sought out technical and scientific illustrators currently listed
outside the U.S. from a variety of sources and listings.

Khim Pang - Singapore
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_view/portfolio.html?artist_id=177&category_id=3

Bao-Ling Lin - Taiwan
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_view/portfolio.html?artist_id=621&category_id=32&plpage=1

Szalai László - Hungary
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_view/portfolio.html?artist_id=1065&category_id=32&plpage=1

Ajith Prasad - India
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_view/portfolio.html?artist_id=928&category_id=32&plpage=2

Yury Lisyak - Ukraine
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_view/portfolio.html?artist_id=1666&category_id=32&plpage=1

Henry Tang - Singapore
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_view/portfolio.html?artist_id=1316&category_id=32&plpage=2

In order to contact talentx artists you'll need to register as a
member:
http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/new_adm/adm_register.html

Deanna Franklin - Canada
http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/d/deanna/

Grant Freckelton - Australia
http://www.furry.org.au/gryf/main.html

Rajeev N.T. Panniyora - India
http://www.kalakeralam.com/artistd/rajeevnt.htm

Utako Kikutani - Japan
http://www.utakokikutani.com/index.htm


Talent Exchange Marketplaces - in addition to Bullhorn, listed in the
comments, you'll find creative professional exchange services
available at:

http://www.talentx.com/creative/arts/newindex.html
http://dart.fine-art.com/
http://www.portfolios.com/
http://www.elance.com
http://www.allfreelance.com/jobs.html
http://www.allfreelancework.com/employers.html


Specialized Artist Directories

The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators offers a Member's Directory
which lists their members worldwide, including freelance specialties:
http://www.gnsi.org/join/publicat.html

Yahoo - Illustration Artists
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Visual_Arts/Illustration/Artists/Personal_Exhibits/

Google Directory - Illustration
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Illustration/

ArtistFolios
http://www.creativepro.com/eservices/artistfolios

Artists Portfolio's by Medium:
http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolio/media/

Another creative way of attracting artistic talent might be to offer
an Internship - Art Schools and specialized programs in scientific
illustration might be an ideal venue to locate an individual or group
of artists willing to work on your project as an Intern, receiving
educational credit, rather than full salary, for their work. I've
included links to several art schools which offer a major or
specialization in scientific illustration:

http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciIllus.html
http://www.visart.uga.edu/pos/sci_ill/info/sci_ill_info.html
http://www.engr.iupui.edu/~acheson/tghomepage/curriculum/curriculum.html
http://www.iastate.edu/~catalog/catalog/courses/premed.htm
http://www.risd.edu/ce_natsci.cfm
http://www.parsons.edu/kale/html/map.html

Search terms used:
illustration freelance
illustration scientific
artists OR illustrators "for hire"

I hope these resources help you find the ideal artist for your
project.

~larre-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by goofy166-ga on 04 Jun 2002 18:58 PDT

Thanks for your answer. I spent about 30 minutes at talentX.com. I
registered and tried to enter my requirements to see how it works.
After all the work of trimming my request to fit in its paltry 1000
character (not word) description, and filling out all the numerous
fields, I pressed Submit, and got a Page Not Found Error. When I hit
back to try again all my text had been erased. Not a great start!
 
I'll spend a little more time cruizing the web sites you so found, but
I sure hope they are better than the talentX site, because that was a
big waste of time. I also noticed that their site is severly limited
on how long you can make a project, they only allow it to take up to
August.  

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Clarification of Answer by larre-ga on 05 Jun 2002 03:55 PDT

Thanks for your answer. I spent about 30 minutes at talentX.com. I 
       registered and tried to enter my requirements to see how it
works.
       After all the work of trimming my request to fit in its paltry
1000
       character (not word) description, and filling out all the
numerous
       fields, I pressed Submit, and got a Page Not Found Error. When
I hit
       back to try again all my text had been erased. Not a great
start!
 
 
Oh no! That's almost a guaranteed cause of hair loss when it happens
to me, I didn't have any problems with the workings of talentX, but I
didn't explore as far as making a posting. I'm truly sorry you ran
into difficulties. I've personally used several of the marketplace
sites, eLance, bullhorn, and portfolio.com, start to finish without
errors, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll function
flawlessly for you.
 
We use textboxes here to post our answers to you. I find it extremely
helpful to compose anything over a few sentences in Notepad. It's
saved my bacon a few times when flipping between pages. Please let me
know if I can help in any way.
 
~larre  

The answer was nothing more than a collection of links from various
artist web sites. It did provide me with a few sites that allowed me
to find groups of artists that can work on my project, but the web
site failed to work when I tried it and the results where
unsatisfactory. I was aware already of these sties and was hoping
someone who knew of good quality talent finding sites would come
forward with an answer.

When I first saw the answer to my question contained a lot of links, I
thought it was great. I hoped some of these links would help me out.
But what I discovered was that these links required me to click on
each one and send a message to the link creator, which would be
terribly time consuming. So in the end I would give the answer an A
for quantity but a C for helpfulness.

Very generally, Bullhorn ( http://www.bullhorn.com ) might be worth a
look.  It allows artists (illustration, web design, traditional
design, video producers, animators etc) to meet with clients and vice
versa.  As a client you can search their catalogue of "talent" and may
well find someone who can do this work.  Good luck!

It would help to know your time-frame. Is this something that one
person can do within your expected publishing deadline or are you
thinking along the lines of a team of people?

Also, it would help to know what you mean by a "low" price. Your price
will certainly rule out (or in) certain options.

Your clarification would be appreciated!

Thanks - 

-K~

Here are some clarifications, I am sorry I was not more informative. 

In many cases the same drawing can be used for a bird and only small
changes need to be made to differentiate them. For example the
families of Warblers, Terns, Sparrows are very similar and only minor
changes are needed to each drawing.

I eventually need a total of 2000 illustrations. The first 20 will be
a test of the artist and the process and for those I am willing to pay
$12 for accepted each. For the larger number I will negotiate a
package price in the range of $10 per drawing.

For the larger number of drawings I need them delivered at the rate of
100 per week, which will mean about 5 months to do the entire batch.
For the smaller test samples 5 per week would be fine since the time
is needed to make sure we are on the right track.

I have more detailed specs for the artist once I get closer to finding
someone.

Hi goofy116,

Have you tried http://www.elance.com ?

Elance is a site where you can post your project in detail and
professionals will bid to do the job. I have watched the site closely
for quite some time and they have matched many large projects such as
yours with the person qualified to do the work at a fair price.  One
nice aspect of elance.com is you can browse the "elancers" profiles
and "invite" those you feel are qualified to bid on your project.

A high ticket project like yours will get lots of page views, good
exposure.

I hope this helps!

Cynthia