In this clip from episode 97 of ComicLab, veteran cartoonist Dave Kellett shares how he manages commissions.

Sam Logan and Jake Parker convinced me a couple of years back at an Emerald City Comic Con, like, hey, why don’t you start taking commissions?

It’s worth a few thousand bucks a year, and they’re fun to do. And I was always like, “Nah, I don’t want to do commissions. I just want to do the things that I want to do.” I was very fussy.

It was a little bit closed-minded in the sense that, like, on some level, I needed to trust my readership that they might have fun ideas in the wheelhouse of things that I like to draw, you know.

So I opened up commissions.

Great fun.

I started to get more of a systematic way of handling it. What I do is I have a form that I use.

If someone’s at a convention, and they say, “Hey, do you do commissions?” I can hand them a sheet, it literally is an ordering sheet. It lists the options — single character black and white, single character color, two to three characters black and white, two to three characters color, etc.

And then I have them write their email, their text messaging, so I can say your commission’s ready.

Setting limits

You have to set your limits. I tend not to draw licensed characters unless it’s really fun and creative.

Sometimes people will say like, “Hey, I would like you to draw my dog Bowser — but draw him though he has a dog Iron Man outfit.”

And to me, that’s enough of a creative step away from the intellectual property where I can make it fun, you know, where I’m not just drawing Iron Man, that kind of thing.

I have done once or twice, but I frankly, I’m like, you’re you’re commissioning me as a cartoonist, so have me draw my stuff. That’s more fun!