Illustrator.Network

A network for working illustrators

Hired on the brief, not on the crop.

Illustration is commissioned work. The thing that decides the job is whether you can read a brief, hold a constraint, and land a revision — and a gallery of finished images is silent on all three.

So this network is built on a different unit: the commission record. The brief as it was given, the constraints it had to survive, the stages, the revision rounds that were agreed against the ones that happened, the turnaround, and the licence that was actually sold. The picture is evidence attached to that record. It is not the record.

0illustrators listed. There is no directory yet, and we will not print a number we cannot stand behind.
0commissions brokered, and no way to hire through this site today.
0%of an illustrator’s fee taken — there is no payment path here at all, so there is nothing to take it through.
0images used to train a model, sold, or transferred to anyone else for training.
0prices published, because none is set. There is no figure anywhere on this page on purpose.
0verified badges shown, because the check that would make one mean something is not built.

Who this is for, precisely

Eight practices that are commissioned in eight different ways.

“Illustrator” is not one job. An editorial illustrator working a seventy-two hour turnaround and a surface designer licensing a repeat across two territories are in different businesses with different contracts, different money, and different evidence of competence. Flattening them into one grid of pictures is the field’s founding mistake, so here is each practice with how it is actually paid and what the person in it arrives wanting.

Editorial

How it is commissioned An art director calls on Tuesday with a column that runs Friday. The fee is usually set by the publication rather than negotiated, the turnaround is measured in hours to a few days, and the licence is typically one-time use in a named edition and territory. One revision round is the normal scope.

What they arrive wanting To be findable by turnaround and subject confidence — can this person read a dense argument and return a single image that carries it, by Thursday. A gallery of finished frames cannot answer either half of that, so the AD falls back to whoever they used last.

Publishing & children’s books

How it is commissioned A picture book is built in signatures — commonly a thirty-two page structure — and moves through dummy, sketch, and final stages against an advance and a royalty split rather than a flat fee. Character consistency across dozens of spreads is the entire skill being bought.

What they arrive wanting To show sequence and consistency: the same character, on page 4 and page 27, recognisably the same person in a different pose and light. A single hero image is structurally incapable of demonstrating the one thing this commission turns on.

Comics & sequential

How it is commissioned Paid by the page, on a schedule, and split across genuinely separate roles — pencils, inks, colours, letters — which may be four different people. Work-for-hire and creator-owned are different contracts with different ownership outcomes, not a preference.

What they arrive wanting Their actual role stated. Portfolio platforms flatten a letterer, a colourist, and a penciller into “artist,” which is how a colourist ends up in a conversation about penciling rates and loses an hour before anyone notices.

Concept art & visual development

How it is commissioned Games, animation, and film. Paid as a day rate or a contract term, almost always under a non-disclosure agreement, and the strongest work is frequently unshowable for years — sometimes permanently, if the project is shelved.

What they arrive wanting An embargo that is a first-class feature rather than a personal spreadsheet. No portfolio platform models “this exists, it is credited, and it becomes visible on a stated date,” so the best years of a concept artist’s book are simply missing from it.

Medical & scientific

How it is commissioned A specialised, credentialed discipline — graduate training and board certification exist for it — producing surgical, anatomical, molecular, and patient-education work where an inaccuracy is a liability rather than a style note. Fees reflect accuracy risk and the review cycle with a subject-matter expert.

What they arrive wanting Their credential treated as a structured, verifiable field rather than a line in a bio paragraph. On a general portfolio network a board-certified medical illustrator is indistinguishable from someone who likes drawing bones.

Technical & architectural

How it is commissioned Exploded views, cutaways, assembly and repair sequences, wayfinding, courtroom and editorial-explainer diagrams. The client usually supplies reference — drawings, scans, specifications — and the deliverable often has to survive being handed to another vendor as a source file.

What they arrive wanting Source-file and handoff terms stated up front, because “can you send the layered file” three weeks after delivery is a licence question wearing the costume of a favour, and answering it wrong gives away the ability to be paid for the next revision.

Surface, pattern & licensing

How it is commissioned Repeats, colourways, and collections licensed per product category, per territory, and per term — not sold once. The same artwork can run simultaneously on stationery in one market and on textiles in another under two separate agreements with different money.

What they arrive wanting A structure that treats one artwork as many licences. Every portfolio format assumes one image equals one job, which is the wrong shape for the entire business model and quietly trains buyers to expect a one-off fee.

Lettering & type-led work

How it is commissioned Custom lettering is drawn artwork for a specific use. A typeface is licensed software. The distinction is the whole job and the whole price: a client asking for “the font version” of a delivered logotype is asking for a different product entirely.

What they arrive wanting The artwork-versus-typeface boundary stated in the record, before the conversation, so it is a term the client already agreed to rather than an awkward correction after delivery.

The incumbent field, credited honestly and then beaten

What the field already does well — and the eight places it fails you.

No competitor is named on this page, deliberately: category anchors age better than brand names and the argument does not need a target. Each category below gets its real strengths stated first, because a comparison that only lists an opponent’s weaknesses is marketing rather than analysis — and because you already use several of these and know exactly what they are good at.

Portfolio networks and showcase galleries

What it genuinely offers Genuine reach, a real audience of art directors and recruiters, free hosting, and a presentation layer better than most illustrators would build alone. This is the strongest part of the field and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

Where it fails an illustrator They show the OUTCOME and nothing else. A finished frame is silent on the three things that actually carry hiring risk: whether you can read a brief, whether you take direction, and whether a revision round lands. So a buyer looking at ten beautiful books cannot tell them apart on the axes that decide the job, and defaults to whoever they hired last.

What we do instead The unit here is the COMMISSION RECORD, not the image: the brief as it was given, the constraints, the stages, the revision rounds that were in scope versus the ones that happened, and the licence that was sold. The picture is evidence attached to the record, not the record itself.

Fixed-ratio “shot” formats

What it genuinely offers A consistent, scannable grid that loads fast and lets a buyer scan a hundred people in a few minutes. There is a real reason it won.

Where it fails an illustrator The format quietly rewrites the work. A fixed-ratio thumbnail rewards a croppable fragment with a strong focal point, and punishes everything that is not shaped like that: a thirty-two page arc, a cutaway that only makes sense with its callouts, a repeat pattern that has to tile, a comics page that has to be read. Illustrators stop posting that work, then stop being found for it, then stop being hired for it.

What we do instead No forced aspect ratio and no single hero slot. A record carries whatever shape the work actually is — a sequence, a spread, a tiling repeat, a sheet of callouts — because the format should not get a vote on what the craft is.

The whole field, on money

What it genuinely offers The trade’s own associations and handbooks publish real pricing guidance, and it is good work — genuinely the most useful money resource illustrators have.

Where it fails an illustrator None of it reaches the point of contact. No portfolio platform carries a rate floor field, so every single inquiry restarts the conversation at zero, and the illustrator performs unpaid discovery — scoping, explaining usage, estimating — for enquiries that were never in their range. That labour is invisible and it is enormous.

What we do instead A stated rate floor and a stated minimum engagement are first-class fields on the record. Not a public price list and not a bid — a floor, so a mismatched enquiry disqualifies itself before it costs anybody an afternoon.

Every incumbent, on rights

What it genuinely offers Nothing. This is the field’s largest blind spot and the cheapest place to beat it.

Where it fails an illustrator What an illustrator sells is a LICENCE — a usage, a territory, a term, an exclusivity position, and whether the client may alter the work. Every mainstream platform models the transaction as “an image.” Because the fields do not exist, the terms are never stated, and “can we also put it on the packaging?” arrives six weeks later as a favour rather than as a second licence. Scope creep is not a personality failing. It is a missing field.

What we do instead Six licence axes are first-class, structured fields on every record. A commission that did not state its term states that it did not, visibly — because an unstated term is information too, and it is the information a buyer should have to look at.

Reverse-auction gig marketplaces

What it genuinely offers Volume, a payment rail, escrow, and dispute handling. For a beginner with no network it is a genuine on-ramp, and that is worth saying plainly.

Where it fails an illustrator The mechanism inverts the power. The buyer posts, illustrators bid each other down, the platform takes a percentage of the illustrator’s fee, and the lowest accepted bid becomes the public price anchor for the entire craft. The structure does not merely host a cheap market; it manufactures one, and every illustrator in the category pays for that anchoring whether or not they ever list there.

What we do instead No bidding, no reverse auction, no lowest-price sort, and no percentage of anybody’s fee — we are not in the payment path at all. A rate floor is the opposite instrument to a bid: it sets a bottom instead of discovering one.

Illustration agencies and reps

What it genuinely offers Real, substantial value that this page does not pretend to replace: negotiation on the illustrator’s behalf, chasing payment, contract literacy, and access to buyers who only commission through agents. A good rep earns their percentage.

Where it fails an illustrator The percentage is large and the client relationship usually belongs to the agency. An illustrator who leaves often cannot take the record of their own working history with them, because it was never theirs to hold. The book is not portable.

What we do instead The record belongs to the illustrator and is exportable on demand, including if they leave. This network takes no percentage and does not stand between an illustrator and a client. It is not a rival to a good agent — an illustrator can have both, and the record works either way.

Algorithmic social feeds

What it genuinely offers The best discovery engine the craft has ever had, for a while, at no cost. A generation of illustrators built entire careers on it and that was real.

Where it fails an illustrator It is a rented pipeline. Reach is set by a ranking system that changes without notice and owes nobody an explanation, and illustrators who built their whole client flow there have watched it thin out over a season with no recourse and no export. A follower count is not an asset you own.

What we do instead A record at a stable address, exportable in a machine-readable form, with no ranking by follower or like count — because a signal you cannot own and cannot export is not a professional asset, it is a tenancy.

Generative-model training

What it genuinely offers Nothing to the illustrator. Portfolios became the training corpus, largely without consent and without payment, and it is the defining professional issue of this craft right now.

Where it fails an illustrator Most platforms asking illustrators to upload have never stated a training and scraping posture in writing at all. Silence is not neutrality when the default is extraction.

What we do instead A stated term, in the section below, including the part that is uncomfortable: what we control, what we do not, and why a robots directive is a request rather than a wall. We would rather be believed on a small claim than disbelieved on a large one.

The instrument

What a commission record actually holds.

This is the whole product, described field by field before it exists. Read it as a specification you are entitled to hold us to — and if a field here is wrong for your practice, that is the most useful email we could receive.

The brief, as it was given

What the client actually asked for, in the client’s framing, published only with their permission and redacted where it has to be. This is the single most useful thing a buyer can read and the single thing no portfolio shows. It is what turns “this is beautiful” into “this person can solve my problem.”

The constraints it had to survive

Format and live area, reproduction method, colour space, minimum legible size, and the immovable date. An illustration that had to work at thumbnail size on a phone AND across a printed spread was a harder job than the same picture with no constraints, and the record should show that rather than flattening both into one pretty rectangle.

The stages, in order

Thumbnails, sketch or dummy, line, colour, delivery. Showing the sketch that was approved next to the final is the most direct evidence available that an illustrator works to a brief rather than around it — and for publishing and visual development it is closer to the real deliverable than the final frame is.

Revision rounds: in scope, and actual

Two numbers, side by side. How many rounds the agreement covered, and how many actually happened. This is deliberately unflattering in both directions and that is why it is worth having: it is the honest record of how a working relationship went, and neither party gets to describe it afterwards from memory.

Turnaround: agreed, and actual

Also two numbers. Turnaround is a primary axis for editorial work and it is the axis buyers most often guess at. An illustrator who reliably delivers on the agreed date has a real, checkable asset here, and no other surface in the field lets them prove it.

Delivery and handoff terms

File types, whether layered or source files transfer, and what happens when another vendor needs the working file later. Stated at the front, where it is a term, rather than at the back, where it becomes an awkward favour that costs the illustrator the next invoice.

The licence that was sold

All six axes below, recorded per commission. Not a paragraph of prose — structured fields, so an unstated term is visibly unstated instead of quietly absent.

Credit: how, and where

Whether the illustrator is credited, in what form, and on which surfaces. Credit is part of the compensation in editorial and publishing work, and an uncredited commission is a different, usually more expensive job. Recording it makes that negotiable in advance.

Kill fee, stated

What is owed if the piece is cancelled after work has begun. A standard instrument in editorial practice that is routinely omitted from smaller commissions, where it matters most because the illustrator has the least leverage.

Embargo, as a real feature

A commission can be recorded, credited, and counted while the artwork stays hidden until a stated date — or indefinitely, if the project never ships. Concept art and visual development live under non-disclosure for years, and the field’s answer has been to let those years look empty. That is a tooling failure, not a career gap.

What was declined, and why

Optional, and off by default. An illustrator who turned down a commission because the usage was unbounded, the timeline was not survivable, or the terms were not acceptable has demonstrated professional judgement. The field records only what was accepted, which makes judgement invisible and saying no look like having nothing to show.

Rights — the part nobody models

You are selling a licence, not an image. Six axes decide what it is worth.

Every mainstream platform in this craft treats the transaction as “an image,” and because the fields do not exist the terms are never stated. That is why “can we also use it on the packaging?” arrives six weeks after delivery framed as a favour instead of as a second licence with a second fee. Here all six are structured fields on the record, and a term that was never agreed shows up as visibly unstated rather than quietly missing.

Usage

Where the work may appear: one article, a book interior, packaging, out-of-home advertising, a product surface, a broadcast. The most common and most expensive ambiguity in the craft, because “we commissioned it” and “we may use it anywhere” feel identical to a client and are worth wildly different money.

Territory

One market, several, or worldwide. It is the axis that most often changes after delivery — a campaign works domestically and someone asks about the other markets — which is precisely why it belongs in the record at the start, as a term with a price, rather than as a conversation the illustrator has to initiate from a weak position.

Term

How long. A defined period, or perpetual. Perpetual is a legitimate thing to sell and it should be priced as one; the failure mode is not selling it, it is selling it accidentally at the price of a one-year licence because nobody wrote a term down.

Exclusivity

Whether the illustrator may licence the same work, or closely similar work, to anyone else — and if so, whether within a category or a competitor set. Exclusivity is often the single largest multiplier on a fee, and it is frequently given away for free simply because no field on any platform ever asked about it.

Alteration and derivatives

May the client recolour it, crop it, extend it, animate it, or have someone else redraw parts of it. The right that most affects an illustrator’s reputation, because the altered version carries their name and their style while no longer being their drawing.

Ownership and transfer

Whether this is a licence at all or an assignment of copyright, and whether original physical artwork transfers. Work-for-hire and licensing are genuinely different transactions with different long-term outcomes, and an illustrator should be able to see at a glance which one they are being offered.

The three objections we actually expect

Asked the way an illustrator would ask them.

Each answer includes the part that does not flatter us, because an answer with the inconvenient half removed is how you end up trusting a platform that has not earned it.

“I already maintain five portfolios and none of them get me work. Why would I keep a sixth?”

You should not keep a sixth portfolio, and this is not one. Here is the honest position rather than the flattering one: this network has no audience yet. No illustrators are listed, no commissions have been brokered, and nobody is being found here today. If the pitch were “list with us and get clients,” that would be a claim we cannot support, and you would be right to close the tab.

What is on offer is different in kind: a structured, portable record of how you work — briefs, constraints, stages, revision rounds, turnaround, licence terms — in a shape your existing portfolios structurally cannot hold, because they were built to display images and this is built to hold a working history. It is exportable in a machine-readable form from the first day, including if you leave, so the effort of keeping it is not hostage to whether this network ever succeeds.

And treat the admission itself as the evidence. A platform that opens by promising you clients it has not got has just told you exactly what its other claims are worth. We would rather you arrive with correct expectations than with flattered ones.

“Is my work going to be scraped, sold, or used to train a generative model? Answer that first.”

It is the right question to ask first, and it deserves the uncomfortable version of the answer rather than a reassuring one.

What we commit to, as a term and not a sentiment: we do not use uploaded work to train any model. We do not sell, licence, rent, or hand over uploaded work to anyone else for training. We run no generative image feature and we do not accept synthetic images presented as illustration. You keep your copyright — uploading grants us only what is needed to display the work on your own record, and nothing beyond it. If that ever changes, it changes as an opt-in you actively give, never as an updated policy you are deemed to have accepted by continuing to log in.

What we cannot honestly promise: anything published on the public web can be fetched by a party that ignores the rules. We will set the machine-readable directives that ask crawlers and training collectors to stay out — but a directive is a request, not a wall. It is obeyed by parties who choose to obey it. Any platform telling you a robots file makes your work unscrapable is either mistaken or selling you something, and an illustrator who relies on a wall that is not there has been harmed by the reassurance rather than helped by it.

The practical consequence, stated plainly: embargo and selective publication are the real controls, which is why an embargoed commission — recorded and credited while the artwork stays unpublished — is a first-class feature here rather than an afterthought. None of this is live yet; it is the specification we are building to and are willing to be held to.

“What does it cost, and are you going to take a percentage of my fee?”

No percentage. Not now, and not as the business model. This network is not in the payment path between you and a client at all — there is no escrow here, no invoicing, no processor, and therefore no mechanism by which a cut could be taken even if somebody later wanted one. That is a structural fact about how it is built, not a promise about how we intend to behave.

On price, the honest answer is that there is not one yet. No figure is set, and you will notice there is no price anywhere on this page — not a plan, not a range, not a “from” number. That is deliberate. Publishing a price we have not committed to would be the easiest sentence on this page to write and the first one to become untrue.

What follows from taking no cut is worth saying, because it is the whole reason the incentives here differ: a platform that earns a percentage of your fee makes more money when more transactions happen, which is why those platforms optimise for volume and price discovery downward. A platform that earns nothing from your fee has no reason to want your rate to fall, and every reason to build the rate floor, the licence fields, and the kill-fee line that help it hold.

Build state, stage by stage

Everything below is in development or planned. Nothing is shipped.

Two tags, and both of them are honest about being unfinished. In development means it is actively being built and is not live, not reachable, and not usable. Planned means it is designed and specified and none of it stands yet. There is deliberately no “built” tag on this page — not as a matter of restraint, but because the status type in the source has no such value to assign.

The brief-and-revision record, as the primary unit

In development

The commission record

The core instrument described in detail above: brief, constraints, stages, revision rounds agreed versus actual, turnaround agreed versus actual, delivery terms, licence, credit, and kill fee. This is the piece everything else on the network hangs from, and it is being specified and built first rather than bolted on after a gallery.

Six structured licence axes per commission

In development

Licence terms

Usage, territory, term, exclusivity, alteration, and ownership as structured fields rather than prose — so that a term which was never agreed shows up as visibly unstated instead of quietly missing. Being built alongside the record, because a record without the licence axes would simply be a prettier gallery.

Style range, medium, practice, and turnaround as the filters

Planned

Findability axes

The axes a commission actually turns on, rather than a popularity sort: the practice, the range of styles an illustrator will genuinely work in, the medium, the stated turnaround band, and the rate floor. Specified; the search surface over it is not built, and there is nothing to search yet regardless.

Recorded, credited, and hidden until a stated date

Planned

Embargo

The feature that makes a concept artist’s non-disclosure years visible as work rather than as a gap. A commission can carry its client, its brief summary, and its dates while the artwork stays unpublished, releasing on a date or never. Designed, not built.

Your record, in a machine-readable file, on demand

Planned

Export

A full export of everything you have entered, in a documented format, available from the first day a record can be created — not as a retention-team concession later. The commitment is that leaving is cheap by construction. Planned, and it ships with the record rather than after it.

A stated bottom, not a published price list

Planned

Rate floor

A private floor and minimum engagement that an enquiry is checked against, so mismatched briefs disqualify themselves before they cost an afternoon of unpaid scoping. It is deliberately not a public price list, for the anchoring reason stated in the refusals. Designed, not built.

For the credentialed practices, a real check or nothing

Planned

Credential verification

Some practices here are formally credentialed — medical and scientific illustration most clearly. A mark that a buyer relies on has to stand for a real, stated check against the issuing body, not a self-tick. That check is not built, so no badge or verified mark appears anywhere on this site. An honest blank beats a hollow mark.

How a buyer would find someone here

Planned

The commissioning side

The buyer-facing surface — briefing, shortlisting, and reaching an illustrator directly with no bidding and no intermediation of the fee. Specified and not built. Until it exists, there is no way to hire anyone through this site, and the page does not pretend otherwise.

Refusals

What this site will not do, and why each refusal is worth something to you.

A refusal is only meaningful if it costs the person making it. Each of these closes off a revenue line or a growth tactic that platforms in this category routinely use, which is precisely why they are worth writing down before there is any pressure to keep them.

We do not train models on your work, or let anyone else do it through us.

Why this is good for you Your back catalogue is the collateral for the rest of your career. A platform that keeps the option open has an asset it will eventually be tempted to sell.

No generated images presented as illustration, and no generative feature on this site.

Why this is good for you A directory that lets synthetic work sit beside commissioned work destroys the only thing a directory is for, which is telling a buyer what they are actually looking at.

No bids, no reverse auction, no lowest-price sort.

Why this is good for you A bidding mechanism does not find the market price, it manufactures a lower one and then publishes it as the going rate for everyone in the craft, including people who never listed.

No percentage of your fee, and no position in the payment path.

Why this is good for you It removes the incentive to push your rate down for volume, and it means a change of heart at this end cannot reach your invoice.

No follower counts, no likes, and no ranking by popularity.

Why this is good for you Popularity ranking rewards work that reads well as a thumbnail, which is a different skill from the one you are hired for, and it buries specialists under generalists.

No fixed aspect ratio and no mandatory hero image.

Why this is good for you The format should not decide what the craft is. Sequential work, tiling repeats, and annotated technical work all die in a square, and so does your ability to be hired for them.

No public price list, and no “starting at” figures.

Why this is good for you A visible low anchor sets the buyer’s expectation before you have heard the usage. A private floor disqualifies the wrong enquiry without teaching anyone what you are cheapest at.

No exclusivity requirement, and a full export on demand.

Why this is good for you Your working history should be portable by default. If leaving is cheap, staying has to be earned — which is the correct pressure to put on us rather than on you.

We do not sell, rent, or share the member list, and we do not publish a bulk directory dump.

Why this is good for you The list is the one asset a directory can quietly monetise against its own members. Ruling it out in advance is worth more than a privacy policy that reserves the right and promises restraint.

No minors’ portfolios, and no child’s likeness in anybody’s work here.

Why this is good for you This is an adult professional network. Illustrators here do take school commissions — a yearbook cover, a mascot, a programme cover — and what belongs on a record is the illustrator’s own cleared artwork, never a student’s face or name. Student visual work belongs to a separate, consent-gated part of the estate and does not cross into a commercial hiring surface.

No invented numbers — of illustrators, commissions, clients, or anything else.

Why this is good for you A fabricated count is the first lie a directory tells, and every number it prints afterwards inherits the doubt. The ledger further down this page is all zeros for that reason.

What this is not

Three boundaries, drawn before anyone has to discover them.

Not a student gallery

This is an adult professional network. A separate part of the estate publishes and credits student visual work under consent gates, and it is deliberately not a talent-for-hire surface. The two do not cross: no minor’s portfolio is hosted here, and no student’s likeness appears in work shown here.

Not a print-on-demand store

Nothing is sold here. Selling prints and products from existing artwork is a real business and a completely different one from being commissioned to make new work to a brief. This network is only about the second, and it has no storefront, no cart, and no fulfilment.

Not an agency, and not a replacement for one

A good rep negotiates, chases payment, reads contracts, and reaches buyers who commission only through agents. That is real value this does not replicate. The difference is that your record here belongs to you and exports on demand, so you can have both without the working history living somewhere you cannot take it from.

A companion address, named rather than hidden

The estate also owns theillustrator.directory. It is not built — no illustrators, no briefs, no page — and it is named here rather than quietly held, because a company that owns several addresses in your craft should say so instead of letting you discover it.

FAQ

Straight answers, including the unflattering ones.

Can I hire an illustrator here today?

No. There is no directory, no listings, and no hire flow. Nobody is listed, so there is nobody to reach. If you need someone for a live brief right now, this site cannot help you today and it is better to say so than to collect your details against a service that does not exist.

So what is this page, exactly?

The specification, published before the product. It states what the instrument is, which fields it will carry, what it refuses to do, and where the incumbent field falls short. You can read the whole design and decide whether it is worth your time before anyone asks you for a single upload.

How is this different from a portfolio site?

A portfolio is a gallery of outcomes. This is a record of commissions: what was asked, under what constraints, through which stages, with how many revision rounds, delivered when, under which licence. The images are evidence attached to that record. If you only want to display pictures, a portfolio site is the better tool and you should keep using one.

Will you train AI on my work?

No, and the full answer — including what we cannot promise — is in the objections section above. The short version: no training, no sale or transfer for training, no generative feature, you keep your copyright. And a robots directive is a request rather than a wall, which is why embargo and selective publication are the controls that actually hold.

Do you take a percentage of my fee?

No, and there is no payment path here to take one through. No escrow, no invoicing, no processor. What a client pays you is not a number this site touches.

What will it cost me?

No price is set, so none is published. There is no figure anywhere on this page on purpose. When there is a price it will be stated plainly rather than discovered at a checkout.

Is there a verified badge?

No badge appears anywhere on this site, because verification is not built. Some practices here are genuinely credentialed and a mark that a buyer relies on must mean a real check against the issuing body. Until that check exists, showing a mark would be worse than showing nothing.

Can I show work that is under NDA?

That is what the embargo feature is for — a commission recorded and credited while the artwork stays hidden until a date you set, or indefinitely. It is designed and not yet built. Until it is, do not upload anything you are not free to publish today.

What happens to my record if I leave, or if this shuts down?

A full machine-readable export is part of the first release rather than a later concession, and it is available whether you are leaving or not. The intent is that the cost of leaving is near zero, so staying has to be earned.

Is this for students?

No. This is an adult professional network and it hosts no minor’s portfolio. Student visual work belongs to a separate, consent-gated part of the estate. Illustrators here do take school commissions, and what belongs on a record is the illustrator’s own cleared artwork — never a student’s face, name, or grade.

How does this relate to the other illustration address you own?

The estate also owns theillustrator.directory, which is not built — no illustrators, no briefs, no page. This address takes the practitioner-network framing: the illustrator’s own portable record. Naming the companion address rather than quietly holding it seemed more honest than pretending this is the only one.

Who is behind it?

Stanley Studios. The email below reaches a person rather than a queue, and we would rather hear which of these fields is wrong for your practice before it is built than after.

What is true on this page

The whole honest picture, in one place.

  • There is no shipped directory. No illustrators are listed, no commissions have been brokered, and nobody can be hired through this site today.
  • Every capability described above is in development or planned. Nothing on this surface is shipped, and the source has no way to claim otherwise.
  • No count of illustrators, commissions, clients, or bookings is claimed. There is nothing to count and we will not invent a number.
  • No price is committed and this surface takes no payment: no checkout, no card, no processor. We take no percentage of an illustrator’s fee and hold no position in the payment path.
  • No AI capability is claimed. We do not train on uploaded work and do not transfer it for training — and we state plainly that a crawler directive is a request, not a wall, rather than implying protection we cannot deliver.
  • No verified badge appears, because verification is not built. An honest blank beats a hollow mark.
  • No competitor is named, no testimonial is quoted, no customer is named, and no certification is claimed.
  • This is an adult professional network. No minor’s portfolio is hosted and no student’s face, name, or grade appears anywhere on this page.

If you work in this craft, the most valuable thing you can do right now is tell us which field above is wrong for your practice — before it is built rather than after. The address below reaches a person.

Reserve early access Tell us what is wrong with this spec