We have many ways artists can get involved at Latter-day Village. It is our commitment to encourage and compensate artists for their talent and skill in our wholesome LDS environment. Some of the ways we can use original artwork at LDV are:

• Sell your originals and reproductions at retail prices in our online store, processing orders/payments to our worldwide lds audience. You ship directly to our customers, and bill us at wholesale prices plus shipping. We need a 400x400 pixel image of your piece, a description and retail price.
• Sell digital versions of your work in our online store for instant download to our customers. We need a high resolution image/audio/video file of your work. LDV splits the retail price 50/50 with the artist for downloads. These can be single pieces or collections, with a minimum retail price of 4.95.
• Use your artwork on our exclusive LDV products such as T-shirts, stickers, felt stories and so forth. Depending on the product, this may be a flat rate in advance, or a percentage of sales.
• Commission new artwork, or license existing artwork for projects we are working on such as
  • teacher resources in our paid subscription knowledgebases
  • illustrations for ebooks we are publishing
  • images for slide/video presentations we are producing
  • Cover art for software programs we are selling
  • Designs for scrapbook collections we are selling
  • Clipart collections for our Village Download Depot Club
• Designs for new do-it-yourself craft projects for Relief Society, Young Women, Primary, Scouts and families.
• Course Curriculum for teaching art techniques. If you teach art, you can create a digital text/photo course, or video course.

LICENSING

It is important to LDV to protect your intellectual property. Each artistic project or product Latter-day Village collaborates on is on a contractual basis with appropriate licensing and copyright clearly outlined. Our legal counsel will draw up a contract, or review any contract you propose. Each product sold will be accompanied by a use agreement. We can do both limited and exclusive licensing, or purchase copyright outright. SEE OUR CONTRACT FORM, used to create a custom contract between LDV and artists.

COMPENSATION

Most payment to artists is based on a percentage of each sale, and is paid on a monthly basis, once a minimum monthly payout of at least $25 is reached. This does not work with certain products that are priced so low, it becomes more tedious than it is worth to track sales. This is the case with sticker designs, for example. In this case we would pay a flat rate for use of a design on a product, payable in the month following finalization of a contract and delivery to us of your design. Typically we generate a paper check payment that will be mailed to you.

VILLAGE DOWNLOAD DEPOT CLUB

The VDDC is a paid membership club with a recurring monthly payment for club members. Each month, members will have access to downloadable clipart collections and various project designs based on a monthly theme. Collections will include both LDS and seasonal coordinated designs that members can mix and match in their church and personal use/non-commercial projects. Members can cancel their membership at anytime, but they keep any collections/projects they have downloaded to that point.

Each year, 12 to 24 artists will be assigned a month and theme to design a collection of at least 24 images, either seasonal or LDS themed designs. In addition, they will design a full alphabet/numbers/punctuation set to coordinate with their themed collection, that will be turned into an original truetype or bitmap font. LDV staff will also use the 24 images submitted by each artist to design finished projects that accompany the clipart collection, such as calendars, stationary, greeting cards, recipe cards, frames, tags, planners, newsletter templates and so forth.

DOWNLOAD FONT DESIGN TEMPLATE. Use this template to hand draw your original font in black ink. If you sketch in pencil, retrace in black ink and erase pencil markings. Stay within the boxes for each symbol. Scan your pages and email them back to LDV. If you are creating symbols with a software program, keep them within a 300x300 pixel box. We will save each symbol separately and import them into our font creation software, creating a font that can be downloaded and installed for using in any program. We will include the font with the coordinating monthly collection.

I created a font by opening a 300x300 pixel canvas in Adobe Photoshop and created a new layer for each symbol - making only one layer visible at a time, and saving each symbol as a .jpg. You could create one file with each symbol on it's own layer and send that back to LDV, or each symbol as a separate .jpg file. They do not need to have transparent backgrounds - nor do they need to be centered perfectly - the font software only recognizes the black letter and aligns it automatically.

The medium used for themed collections can be anything you desire, with our pre-approval. It can be hand painted/sketched or computer generated. It can be photography, sculpture, needlework or any other medium just as long as it can be scanned or photographed clearly. In fact, photography is a possible medium as well.

When possible, line drawing and full color versions are desired, as some club member projects will be printed or copied in black and white/greyscale only.

Two collections will be done each month, and each artist will receive 25 percent of dues collected during the month that their collection is featured.

After a collection is removed from the club download depot, it is added to our store as a separate downloadable product, and artists will then earn 50% commissions on all sales.

The price of individual collections is higher than the monthly club dues, one of the benefits of club membership. Club membership will appeal to some, while others will prefer to purchase collections separately.

A monthly newsletter will be sent to club members by email, notifying them that the new monthly collections are now available for download. An article featuring the artists of the month will be included in the newsletter.

Collection images are due to Latter-day Village two months prior to the month they will be featured with the club. Latter-day Village reserves the right to use select images in it's paid subscription knowledgebases, with links to the club or collection product in the store to encourage additional sales.

Member forums will allow users to report how they are using the collections, also encouraging sales and subscriptions.

Links to personal artist websites will be included in product descriptions and club newsletters, promoting your other artwork.

Club collections are licensed exclusively to Latter-day Village. Artists may retain ownership of their art, but LDV will have exclusive license for sale as digital products and in any product line we are involved in, such as stickers, t-shirts etc. Other collections, not included in the club, may be non-exclusive.

UPLOADING YOUR ART TO LDV

Graphic files can be too large to send as attachments to email messages. You can upload your images to LDV using ftp. To do so:

1. Open the folder on your computer where your image is being stored.
2. Click on this link to open the incoming folder in your browser - Internet Explorer seems to work, but Netscape doesn't. Both windows must be visible at the same time on your desktop.
3. Click and drag the image file from your computer into the incoming browser window.  Once your pointer is in the browser window, release your mouse button and the files will copy to the website. A small pop-up window will temporarily appear showing the file is transferring.
4. Email Debra to let her know you have uploaded a file.