Cartoon Logos 101: What Is A Revision?

So you’re interested in having a custom cartoon logo created, and you are looking over my cartoon logo process page and you are confused by “revisions” and “concepts”. Instead of explaining this for each client, I thought it better to put this page together explaining things in detail.

A revision is simple: I gather details from your about the project, I email an initial concept sketch to you, then you email back your feedback with a list of changes you’d like to see made to the character. This batch of changes — as a whole — is one round of revisions. It may be the case that the initial sketch is not even close to what you had in mind. This rarely happens, but if it did, the new sketch would be considered a new “concept sketch”.

A concept or a revision is a sketch that is created based on the client feedback of a previous sketch. Except of course in the case of the initial sketch, which is based only on information.

My standard pricing quotes include a fixed number of rounds of “concepts and revisions”. Believe it or not, this fixed number is actually in your benefit, not mine. Too many choices are just more clutter. Part of what you are paying your artist for is to make decisions for you. I may not send over everything I work on, but that’s because some ideas are just no good. I have to sketch them to find out, but unless the client really bugs me to see them, I don’t send them out.

So, while you may have 10 rounds of revisions included in the project, I am working on far more than that. I am only sending over the best of the best. It may take me 5 sketches to get just the right look of the revisions you asked for. Of course, sometimes it only takes one sketch too!

Perhaps the following images will help explain the progression of a character from initial sketch, to a revised sketch, to the final sketch:

Cartoon logos 101: concept sketches and revisions overview