Doctor Geof can be hired for both corporate and personal commissions. In this section you can find out how each works and ways to have Doctor Geof turn up to your event, or your house. Kidding, he won’t rock up to your house. Maybe. Depends on the biscuits and tea.
Corporate commissions
Doctor Geof is regularly hired by events companies and corporate organisations to provide portraiture at evening events and produce branding and bespoke art to market an event. His corporate clients are Europe-wide and my work ranges from the creation of a unique coat of arms for a well-known pub in York, to featuring on large advertising boards on the London Underground.
My corporate clients include:
- Ministry of Steampunk
- National Maritime Museum
- Cutty Sark
- Discovery Museum Newcastle & Northumbria University
- Fulford Arms
- Halifax BID
- Games Workshop
“I commissioned Doctor Geof to work with me and a team of other artists on a large-scale regional project, funded by the Arts Council. His energy is infectious, and his advocacy of the arts is palpable. His intellectual knowledge of so many things, including physics, subcultures, and drawing, all inform his professional practice. He is a genuine, witty and generous individual, with whom it was a delight to work, and I would happily do so again. So much so, I ended up using his work as a case study in an academic monograph!”
Prof. C Nally. Northumbria University
Private Commissions
Doctor Geof has been commissioned for portraits, comics, logos, badges, prints, posters, pub signs, wedding invitations, and 40m long boat diagram, with budgets from £80 to £5,000. If you have a special gift in mind for a birthday, anniversary or special occasion, or a simple dream to walk past a Doctor Geof original hanging in your home then enquire about his private commissions.
Below is an FAQ on how the process works, what to expect and what happens during the commission process. If you have a question which isn’t answered below, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the enquire button and fire your question across.
The commission process
- The initial consultation
Initial consultations are usually done in person or over video call, during which Doctor Geof will sketch your ideas to see if it looks right, and towards the end of the consultation you should know what’s possible, and he should be able to provide you with a rough timescale and cost. The more thorough the consultation stage the more rapidly he’ll be able to complete the artwork, and the more accurate the quote can be. After the consultation send you’ll be sent a couple of quotes for different ways to do the art, after which you should be able to decide whether you’d like to proceed with the work or not.
2. How Doctor Geof works
After the consultation, we agree on artwork, delivery, deadlines, the cost, and you give the go ahead to proceed, then start the work can begin on your private art commission. If we have agreed on roughs or proofs I will contact you with those and await your feedback – usually requested within two weeks of delivery of proofs – if there is not agreement for proofs you’ll be contacted when you commission is completed, unless there is an update to the planned deadline.
3. Proofs and rough sketches
It takes a small amount of time to make a legible rough but not very much (what with it being rough), however it will give you a chance to veto anything that’s going to be problematic & have a say about any other issues that you think don’t work. The advantage being that we can address any major issues before time goes into creating the final artwork.
The rough will differ from the final artwork in a number of ways: the quality of the art is deliberately lower in the rough than in the final artwork; the text, and even some layout and characters may change in the final artwork; the rough will be monochrome; the rough will indicate where the important structures, major characters and dialogue are in a comic strip and rarely includes any further detail such as consistent character costuming, scenery, backgrounds etc.
Please do ask any question you wish about the rough: some of your questions will arise simply because the rough is, necessarily, a little confusing but it’s better to address too many questions than too few.
4. Pricing
There are 3 factors that affect pricing:
Time: chiefly the amount of time involved to do it.
Rights: This does not apply to personal commissions, but relates to corporate work and the agreed rights on use of the commissioned artwork.
Urgency: If your commission request is urgent, and involves other paid work being dropped to meet your deadline, this affects the cost of the commission.
After the initial consultation the quotes a quote based loosely on the estimated hours it will take to complete the work, with added costs where relevant.
Doctor Geof’s hourly rate is £80 per hour. Chargeable time includes art activities (sketching, lining, painting, digital work, layout, production of roughs and proofs, additional consultations about roughs and proofs, etc.) as well as any directly related admin (like file formatting or significant correspondence such as email exchanges or phone calls). You won’t be charged for the initial consultation, but multiple subsequent consultations are needed or the scope changes significantly from the original brief, additional quotes will be sent across to reflect these changes.
Further charges might be incurred if you wished to be granted extensive reproduction rights (i.e. you’ll be making a range of mugs with the art) or if you wanted the copyright for the piece. Occasionally, there may also need to charge for any other project-specific costs incurred (such as printing, postage, other image licenses if necessary, basically not-run-of-the-mill art-ing costs), but you’ll be contacted in advance if this is the case.
5. Cancellation
The project can be paused or cancelled at any time, however you will be liable for the time and costs incurred to that point.
6. Additional work
Should you wish any additional work on the commission after the original brief has been fulfilled, this is possible depending on availability. Additional costs will be agreed by both parties before the extra work begins.
Booking a private commission
As a working artist Doctor Geof factors private commissions into his work schedules. He has a book which opens periodically for private commissions. Commission availability is often announced on his social channels, but if you’d like to be added to the wait list please complete the form linked in the button below.