Freelance and Business Art Contracts

I’ve been asked on numer­ous occa­sions if I would be able to pro­vide some­one with an exam­ple con­tract that I use prior to com­menc­ing on a project. As much as I would like to help oth­ers out, I con­sider my con­tracts part of LunarStudio’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty — these are pieces which I’ve worked on and just like all of my work, I do not sim­ply hand these items out for free. I’ve spent years work­ing on them. While most of my con­tracts are cookie-cutter/boilerplate, my con­tracts are con­tin­u­ously get­ting revised on a per-project basis. How­ever, with­out pro­vid­ing you with the exact word­ing, I’ll out­line many of the items which my con­tracts do cover. My con­tracts with some proper reword­ing can cover other avenues of free­lanc­ing and busi­ness — it is not sim­ply lim­ited to my field of art.

I feel that con­tracts are a neces­sity in con­duct­ing work. Not only do they pro­tect you, but they should also pro­tect the indi­vid­u­als or com­pa­nies that you are going to do work for. They also lend you and oth­ers a sense of legit­i­macy and pro­fes­sion­al­ism to your busi­ness — espe­cially if you are just start­ing out. They should also clearly out­line the scope of your deliv­er­ables — this way if some­one asks for unrea­son­able demands out­side of the orig­i­nal scope which was agreed upon, you can sim­ply point back to your con­tract. It also shows a poten­tial client that you are respon­si­ble for your own work as well as that of others.

“Word of mouth” agree­ments and emails are also viable between two par­ties and are admis­si­ble in a court of law (at least here in the United States.) How­ever, “word of mouth” is often harder to prove, so the bur­den lies on you or the other party to prove their case should a dis­agree­ment ever arise. It’s sim­ply much eas­ier to take 5-minutes to a half-hour to send off a con­tract instead of going back and forth over emails, phone calls, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues. Plus, hav­ing a con­tract that out­lines specifics of a job helps delin­eate which oblig­a­tions you and the other party have towards one another.

I’d also rec­om­mend that you search the Inter­net for other con­tracts and ideas and see what other areas they may cover as well. As always, make sure your con­tent is orig­i­nal and not sim­ply copied from here or other sources. When in doubt, you can always con­sult an attorney.

Here’s a brief out­line of what my con­tracts cover:

1. Project Scope:

This details the over­all scope of a pro­posed project. For exam­ple, if some­one asks for a sin­gle exte­rior ren­der­ing of a con­do­minium, I’ll men­tion it here and any addi­tional infor­ma­tion related to this requested project.

2. Deliv­ery Date:

If there is a set date set by a client, I will men­tion it here. If there isn’t one, I’ll men­tion how long I plan on spend­ing on a par­tic­u­lar project.

3. Project Stages:

This is an optional sec­tion. Since I encounter a lot of peo­ple who are unfa­mil­iar with my process (or the ren­der­ing process in gen­eral), I like to lay out step-by-step what  we will do when pro­vided with plans, at what point we will send over a piece of art­work for review, at what point a client can or should request changes, and at what point we will deliver the final art­work. I found that if you don’t out­line your process clearly, peo­ple have a ten­dency to keep com­ing back and ask­ing for more changes as a lot of peo­ple tend to think our process is a sim­ple push of the but­ton when in-fact a seem­ingly “sim­ple” change can add days to a project and push off deliv­er­ables for other clients.

4. Costs:

Here I’ll men­tion the costs of a project. Some­times I’ll break it down into stages so that a client can pick and choose which ele­ments they want to pro­ceed with. I’ll also men­tion the total estimate.

5. Terms of Pay­ment and Delivery:

This can be bro­ken down into sub-topics:

1. Pay­ment due upon deliv­ery. This is my gen­eral prac­tice oth­er­wise you’ll end up play­ing the game of wait­ing for a client’s client to pay in order for you to get paid. I’ve seen this stretch out for a whole year once. Of course, there’s excep­tions to this rule. But if some­one really wants to work with you, they will bring this issue up at the begin­ning. Some peo­ple will have a clause for 15 or 30 days. These terms almost never get paid on-time. I find that it is safer just to leave “pay­ment due upon deliv­ery” in there.
2. Water­mark­ing. Reserve the right to water­mark all of your images. It’s your work until you get paid then you can remove your water­mark. I find that this process works best.
3. Change rates. I feel that hourly is best. Of course, you could have just built this into your ini­tial esti­mate and inflated your num­bers, but that doesn’t always look good. I know peo­ple that charge $150/hour for changes. If you’re pre­sented with incor­rect infor­ma­tion in the begin­ning or some­one changes their mind, that can push off your deliv­ery date for other clients. You need to be reim­bursed for your addi­tional time and efforts. Peo­ple have a ten­dency to assume that in the field of art, a change might only take a few min­utes when in fact some items might add addi­tional hours to even weeks to a project. You need to men­tion your change rate in all of your con­tracts. If a request is truly small, you can choose to look the other way but at least you have these terms to fall back upon. The change rates also has a ten­dency to indi­rectly force your client to pro­vide you with con­sol­i­dated and cor­rect infor­ma­tion at a project onset ver­sus later down the road.
4. Other pay­ment terms. On large projects, you may want to ask for 1/3 to a 1/2 of the project’s total for retainer. If you hire out a crew of peo­ple or sub-contractors to work with you and you expect to project to last for a cou­ple of months, you’ll need to have some income as well as an assur­ance that a poten­tial client is not going to waste your time and money. The client is pay­ing to reserve your time.
5. Pay­ment deliv­ery meth­ods. You may accept Pay­pal, money orders, checks, etc. Let your client know who and how to make out their pay­ment to.

6. Required Assets:

From this sec­tion and below, I start to get more involved in my con­tracts. The first page is a quick sum­mary. The items listed above are usu­ally a quick sum­mary some­one doesn’t have to wade through five pages of text.

Here, I men­tion that a client is expected to pro­vide me with the lat­est infor­ma­tion and plans in order for me to carry out my work. I had a sit­u­a­tion this past win­ter in which a client pro­vided me with some plans that were for the wrong build­ing. I spent almost a week mod­el­ing the build­ing inte­rior only to find out that they had pro­vided the wrong plans. I shouldn’t be expected in this sit­u­a­tion to start over from scratch with­out billing out for their mis­take. It’s like bring­ing in a car to an auto­mo­tive mechanic, hav­ing him replace a trans­mis­sion, and then telling him after­wards, “oops, I gave you the wrong car.” Either way, they’re still going to charge you for that. In turn, the client should be respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing up-to-date and accu­rate infor­ma­tion even if some­thing is still in progress.

7. Deliv­er­ables:

In the deliv­er­ables sec­tion, I’ll men­tion exactly what I will pro­vide. For exam­ple, all still images will be pro­vided at 3200x2400 res­o­lu­tion. I might men­tion that all ani­ma­tions are ren­dered at 29.9 frames per sec­ond and at a res­o­lu­tion of 720x486. By men­tion­ing this ahead of time, it pre­vents some­one from com­ing back and ask­ing me to ren­der out a 30,000 res­o­lu­tion image which might take a cou­ple of addi­tional days to process and that I can­not bill out for and me even impact some­body else’s project. It also may pre­vent hav­ing to ren­der out a HD ani­ma­tion that could add addi­tional weeks to a project. As I said before, peo­ple tend to think archi­tec­tural ren­der­ing work is a push of the but­ton. If you don’t lay out your terms oth­er­wise, you can find your­self spend­ing an extra month work­ing for free.

8. Art­work Accuracy:

In my par­tic­u­lar field, you have to remind clients that your art­work is ulti­mately art­work at the end of the day and that it is not intended to be a 100% accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the final prod­uct. Most clients are well aware of this. How­ever, some peo­ple that are unfa­mil­iar with the process (in par­tic­u­lar pho­to­re­al­ism) expect 100% accu­rate results which is impos­si­ble to achieve in real­ity. If you’ve been in the field as long as I have, you may encounter a sit­u­a­tion in which a “green isn’t green enough.” What they may not under­stand is that read­just­ing a final might require a reren­der­ing, which can add an addi­tional day’s worth of work or more. You have to let them know that your art­work is just a rep­re­sen­ta­tion. This may pro­tect you from demands which get out of control.

9. Art­work Ownership:

I reserve the rights to own all of my work. My work is com­mis­sioned for use by oth­ers, but I actu­ally own what I pro­duce. If a client pays for my images, they are enti­tled to use these images for their own pur­poses. I stip­u­late that I am allowed to use the work I pro­duce for mar­ket­ing and any other pur­poses I deem per­mis­si­ble. Of course, there’s excep­tions to this rule but ide­ally you hold stead­fast to your own­er­ship. If you have ever worked with a high-end art rep, they insure the same exact clauses where they are the ones who are enti­tled to art own­er­ship and not the com­pany which is hir­ing you. This is prob­a­bly the one area of my con­tract that is often questioned.

10. Pro­pri­etary Ownership:

You should retain all rights to the actual work­ing files and shouldn’t bend from this rule. If you pur­chase a model library or stock pho­tog­ra­phy to be used in your scene, you are gen­er­ally required by law not allowed to redis­trib­ute those items to another com­pany or client with­out them hav­ing pur­chased those model libraries for them­selves. I’ve had clients ask for my actual work­ing 3D files and have had to refuse their requests. This can also pro­tect your work method­ol­ogy and intel­lec­tual prop­erty. Hav­ing some­one ask for your work­ing files is the equiv­a­lent of hir­ing a painter to paint your house, then ask­ing them for their sand­ing equip­ment, lad­ders, paint brushes, rollers, and paint buck­ets after the fact — in the real-world, that is not going to hap­pen. The same rule should apply here.

11. Addi­tional Legal Information:

Here I men­tion addi­tional legal infor­ma­tion such as court fees, attor­ney fees, arbi­tra­tion, sev­er­abil­ity, “acts of god” (in case my office gets swept up by a tor­nado, fire, or flood), lia­bil­ity, etc. I have roughly five detailed para­graphs regard­ing these items. It is my sug­ges­tion that you search the Inter­net for other con­tracts which can help you out in this area in case an issue ever arises. Hope­fully, none of this ever occurs, but it is always bet­ter to be safe than sorry.

12. Ter­mi­na­tion:

Here, I reserve the right to ter­mi­nate a project. An exam­ple of this may be that a client pro­vides you with com­pletely incor­rect infor­ma­tion lead­ing to an addi­tional month’s worth of work that bleeds into another projects sched­ule. Another exam­ple might be that some­one strings you along a whole year and keeps promis­ing that they will pro­vide you with more infor­ma­tion. If a project becomes unrea­son­able, you should be able to ter­mi­nate that project. Again, hope­fully this never occurs.

13. Can­cel­la­tion Charges:

I’ve heard of sit­u­a­tions in which a project is agreed upon by a devel­oper and that an artist reserves their time to work on their project. They hire out a crew and they start to work on it. Later on, the devel­oper finds out that their project has been denied for zon­ing rea­sons, etc. Sud­denly, they want to can­cel the project and not pay your com­pany for the time you reserved and pos­si­bly had to say no other clients. That is money you have lost. Do to this unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stance, you should have a can­cel­la­tion clause in your con­tracts. It doesn’t have to be the full amount (mine isn’t), but instead could be a per­cent­age of the total. Your time is your money — and peo­ple pay to reserve your time and exper­tise. It’s unfor­tu­nate that this should ever occur, but your busi­ness should not be put in jeop­ardy on the account of some­one else or unfore­seen circumstances.

Sum­mary

I hope that this arti­cle regard­ing my artist con­tracts helps oth­ers out. I think you can clearly see from what I’ve writ­ten how a con­tract really does help both you and your poten­tial client. A sim­ple phone call con­ver­sa­tion or email leaves out most of these details and that’s why I pre­fer out­lin­ing all of these var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions prior to even work­ing on any­thing. I’d also rec­om­mend look­ing over other con­tracts you can find through an Inter­net search to see what addi­tional items may be rel­e­vant to your field of work and expertise.