When do you consider a comic/art to be of professional quality?

[Damatris]

Asking totally for a friend planning on freelancing.

Is there some concrete point that makes you think of professionalism? Is it all about being able to talk the talk and getting published and payed by someone? Putting out consistent (quality&schedule)content and being pleasant to work with? All of them? None of them?

[hushicho]

Professionalism is more how you carry yourself and how you carry out business. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being pleasant to work with per se, but it does have a lot to do with comporting yourself with a professional attitude. A lot of it deals with respecting yourself and being confident in what you know, what you're fully trained to do, and things you know better than other people.

There's really no distinct, objective line between professional and hobbyist or amateur art. I've seen far too great a variety published formally, and far too diverse a number of styles that artists have been paid to produce.

When you're paid for what you do and you can deal with people as someone with a consistent output who knows what they're talking about...that's definitely professional, but there are people that don't even do that but can be professional.

[Kayke]

This is a tough question, since art is pretty subjective. I think for me, I usually think someone's work is professional looking if they are able to produce quality work consistently and frequently. If someone shows me their portfolio and there is one really good finished piece but the rest aren't finished or look half-assed that's a clear sign they're not ready to work professionally.

So I guess "consistent portfolio" is my short answer. Everything else is just icing.

[agentfink]

If we are just talking comics, for me (if you're doing everything on a comic) it's the lettering.

As everyone else said so far, art is subjective. I've seen/read all sorts of comics with different levels in art. The one thing that is consistent between all of them, is well placed lettering. We've all seen comics where it is impossible to read because of the lettering, and for me that makes or breaks even the best drawn comics.

Great lettering tells me you have a good grasp of the medium, pacing, framing, and have a creative eye. That is what I look for when taking note of professional quality vs amateur.

[punkarsenic]

Is it all about being able to talk the talk and getting published and payed by someone?

i mean, technically once youre paid to do something, youre a professional. by definition. but that includes self publishing and someone buying it, then. also, being able to speak the lingo is important (how else do you know what the fuck is happening?) but i dunno if it defines a professional.

in my mind, a professional would have a good understanding of whats expected of them and where their boundaries are, and yeah, work would be consistent - primarily in schedule; quality will always vary in art because youre always improving, and its so subjective. its mainly about understanding the industry, and your role in it - when someones 'very unprofessional' its usually because theyre doing their job wrong.

[kyupol]

When there's little to no errors or indicators of awkwardness. Things like proportion or shading errors... Or background laziness or some characters haphazardly drawn are telltale signs you're not a pro.

Any pro artist or anyone who was around pro artists can spot those things.

[Overlord_Thundersnow]

I strive to get that professional look. If something is off, I can't in good conscience 'ship it out' without losing my mind.

One thing that I noticed from students from the FZE school on youtube (over in Korea?) is how tight their pencils are. I mean everything is super crisp. Clearly they are teaching their students to 'mimic' the line before drawing. That's some dedication

I personally haven't approached any comic companies because I still have things to perfect, but every now and then I'll pick up a comic off the rack and sometimes it's just straight garbage, or the artist clearly traced over a photograph to get that 'photo realistic' look, which is, in my opinion, cheating.

[Mocha]

This is what I would like to believe, but unfortunately I've seen multiple comics by professionals that had really inconsistent art with some half assed backgrounds/character placement/script etc.

[blinkingkills]

if the artist/writer believes it to be professional, then it is.

[NanettesClouds]

Hiya, I've just started dipping my toes into professional freelance illustration, and I have aspirations of starting my own studio someday.

(also sorry this post is going to be really long)

Theres this thing that Neil Gaiman said once, and it's that there are three qualities needed in order to make it as a professional.

• You can make outstanding work. Are you able to reach a level of quality that your peers cant meet?
• You can make deadlines. And can you make them reliably?
• You're great to work with. Are you nice or do you make the whole process of working with other human beings easier?

The other thing he said is that you only need two of those qualities.

• If you make good work and you're nice, nobody cares if you're no time.
• If you're on time and nice you're so great to work with that it's okay if your work isnt great.
• If you make good work and you're on time, nobody can complain that you're not nice.

Ideally someday you hit all three qualities, but nobody is perfect.

Personally I make good work and I'm nice to work with, I'm not great with making deadlines (I try my best though!). This works for me because since i'm fairly new to freelancing I dont have any sort of reuptation, so I have to rely on first impressions, and being nice and having good work makes a very good first impression.

If your friend meets two of those qualities they'll be fine I think? I would argue that they also need to be able to produce a consistent quality of work like @Kaykedrawsthings said.

---

If I were to hire an artist for something I would look for three things
1) Does the work they produce fit what i'm trying to do (that's super subjective so yeah, and it depends on what the standards are for the thing I'm trying to do.)

2) Are they able to take feedback and fix things if its pointed out to them.

3) Can they take my vision for something and develop it into something better.

Lets say i'm working on a cutsey mobile game, if your friend comes to me with a portfolio with paintings on par with the work of Normon Rockwell, I probably wont hire them, even if I really like their work, because they havent shown me what I'm looking for. If they come to me with a sort of sub-par cartoon style, I'm more likely to hire them, even if it's not anywhere near the same level of quality as the Normon-Rockwell-Esque portfolio.

From there I might point out something about a piece in their portfolio and see how they take it "I liked this piece but I thought the colors were a little bit weird." - if they respond to that really defensively and try and justify their decisions, I probably wont hire them because they showed me that they're not flexible and that they cant take feedback. If they say "Oh yeah I think you're right, perhaps it would have been better if I used an analogous color pallete or a more saturated green" then I'm more likely to hire them, because they showed me that they can take crituiqe and come up with multiple solutions to a problem.

After that I would tell them what I have in mind for them to do, if they nod their head and tell them that its the best thing they've ever heard and that it's perfect the way it is, then I wont hire them, because I dont need them to make it better since they already think its perfect. If they take my idea and come up with ways they could work with it and they further develop it, then yeah I'll probably hire them because they just showed me that they can take my project into new and better directions.

TLDR it's not nescessarily about the quality of your work, but more about how easy you are to work with.

EDIT: I thought of one other thing I wanted to add. - "Profesional quality" is relative to whatever type of work you're looking for. For example, If I wanted to do illustration for card games my work needs to be on par with the quality that you would see in a card game. If I wanted to do illustration for baby books, my work needs to be on par with other baby books. Theres not really a magic "profesional quality" that encompases all lines of work, nor should there be.

[Michelle]

Having the technical skills is certainly a part of it, as you generally need to be at a certain level to start finding paid work. But I think the most important factors to being professional are excellent communication and time-management skills. If you can nail those down, you'll already be miles ahead of a lot of your peers. Honest, one of the most common complaints I hear about artists is they're flaky and hard to depend on.

Being able to receive and apply feedback is huge, too. A professional artist working for a client understands that they're creating for someone else, and leaves ego out of the equation. You can be am amazingly skilled artist, but if people can't work with your attitude, they won't bother.