



(Image and article by Thomas James)

[UPDATE: In an effort to test how deep Illozoo’s desire to block link’s to their artists’ own sites and profiles goes, I used my Illustration Friday Instagram account to tag a few of their artist’s Instagram profiles in some of Illozoo’s Instagram posts (they already blocked our Illustration Age account after we released the story below.) And sure enough all it took was a handful of tags and Illozoo blocked the Illustration Friday account. It seems like Illozoo REALLY doesn’t want their artists to be found anywhere but on their official agency website.]

Let’s be clear from the start.

There are a lot of respectable artist representatives out there who see their relationship with their illustrators as a balanced collaboration of sorts, where both parties work together on promotion, negotiation, and many other aspects of business, and that’s exactly how it should be.

If you have an art rep, they don’t own you (unless you signed a really horrible contract). You still operate as an individual illustrator with your own name, your own website, and control over your own work.

Every once in a while, unfortunately, an art rep might cross the line by seemingly keeping the credit for themselves, and that’s just wrong.

Last night I was going through my Instagram feed and came across the profile of the Illozoo Illustration Agency, and noticed that they weren’t crediting the illustrators they were posting about by name, but instead was referring to them as an “Illozoo artist”, nothing more. Sure, they used to credit their artists by name, but it seems that about 31 weeks ago they made the conscious decision to stop naming their illustrators altogether.

No. They may have an arrangement with you, but they are NOT ILLOZOO ARTISTS.

They are illustrators who not only deserve respect (and credit) for their work but they also arguably provide more value to the agency than the other way around.

An illustrator without an art rep is still an illustrator. An art rep without illustrators is nothing.

My suspicion was that Illozoo would much rather send potential clients to the agency’s website, rather than the artists, because that would mean they get to take a commission on any project an illustrator received (in my previous conversations with Illozoo’s founder they stated that they only take a commission on work that comes through their official site). I didn’t want to believe that this was the case, however, because I happen to like Illozoo but this feels like an art rep blocking an artist’s own business.

In an attempt to give Illozoo the benefit of the doubt, I asked outright in the comments of one of their Instagram posts why they weren’t crediting the artists by name, and the response I got was troubling.

“They are all Illozoo artists. Anyone can see their work on our website.”

So the agency chose to not take this opportunity to give the artist credit, but to once again refer to him (David de Ramón, by the way) as an “Illozoo artist”, and suggested we visit their official agency website instead.

Wrong answer, and sorry but the sweet little happy emoji doesn’t make it any better. All it would have taken is simply typing the artist’s name to prove me wrong.

To be fair, Illozoo credits their artists by name on their Facebook page and Twitter account (most of the time), but in those formats they can still include clickable links back to their official website. After the exchange above with them, however, I can only suspect that they chose to stop mentioning their artists by name 31 weeks ago because they can’t include links back to their official site (or anywhere) on Instagram, so the danger is that if a client sees an artist they like on the Illozoo Instagram feed they might choose to look them up on their own, and that’s bad for the agency’s business. (In my past conversations with Illozoo’s founder he pointed out that if an artist gets work through Illozoo, they get a cut. If an artist gets work on their own, they keep the entire fee.)

But it’s a shady business move that doesn’t respect their artists.

Since our Instagram conversation last night, Illozoo has indeed added artist credits to their past posts, although they’ve blocked Illustration Age from following their feed and deleted our conversation with them entirely (another seemingly shady move as opposed to coming clean, but not surprising). We are however glad that they have decided to change their policy on this, so that’s a good thing.

As I mentioned above, most art reps understand the ethical and fair way to promote their illustrators while still promoting their agency, but this is clearly an example of what not to do. If you’re an artist with an art rep (or are looking for one) ALWAYS be sure that the relationship is fair on both sides and that the agency respects you enough to say your name instead of only theirs.