First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you all enjoyed a fabulous holiday! I know it’s a little bit late for a December report, but I had been quite… busy. Ok ok I admit, it was hard for me to get myself off the ‘holiday mood’ after my Singapore vacation, and I got myself a new, shiny, supergeek new toy that could keep me busy for days! ;)

When I decided to start selling my works online and giving microstock business a shot, a good friend of mine -- who is a fellow cartoonist -- asked me this question: "Why cartoons? Why not full-blown illustrations, caricatures, portraits or even paintings? I know you are capable of those stuff!" My answer? Simple. I told him that it's because drawing cartoons is what I do best. It's my knack, my talent and my hobby. I suck in drawing geometrical objects. He didn't buy it, so I had to go for a more in-depth explanation just for him. Here are some key points that I mentioned to him the other day:

This one is also a tough nut to crack. To be an iStockPhoto illustration contributor, you have to pass a written test (mostly about technical stuff on how to properly submit your vector files), and also submit 3 of your best images for the entry exam. Passing the written test is the easy part, believe me! You see, they have this application system that if you fail your first image exam, you will have to wait 36 hours before submitting new ones for review.

If you fail the second time, there’s 72 hours waiting time for you. Next failure, a week waiting time. After that, 2 weeks, a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year... who knows? The good news is, you only need to resubmit as many images that got rejected. This means that if you got one of your 3 images accepted on the first try, you only need to submit 2 images for approval on the second try. In many cases, most people will get discouraged when they fail the image review test a few times and never bothered to try again.