How My First Hollywood Gig Humiliated Me And Revolutionized My Pricing

Photo by Luan Fonseca for Unsplash

On my first Hollywood feature film job, I was hired to design a set. A talk show set for one of the characters. Real production. Real budget. Real stakes.

They asked me for my fee.

I had been freelancing for quite a few years at that point. I had the portfolio. I had the client list. I had done the work for agencies, publishers, and entertainment companies. I was not new.

I quoted them a few hundred dollars.

There was a long pause on the phone. Then the producer (I think he was tired) said they would give me $5,000.

Five thousand dollars. For a job I had priced at a few hundred.

I did not feel happy. I felt humiliated. Not because they lowballed me, but because I had lowballed MYSELF. I had been doing it for years and didn't even know. Every quote I had ever given was a guess dressed up as confidence. And clients could feel it, which is probably why the producer sounded exhausted when he corrected me.

That moment permanently changed how I think about pricing. The problem was never confidence. The problem was math. I had never sat down and worked through the actual economics of a deal. The time, the costs, the rights, the usage, the territory, the exclusivity. None of it. I was pricing feelings, not deals.

I spent the next several years building a system to make sure I would never guess again. That system eventually became The Pricing Verdict. 

You don't have a pricing problem. You have a math problem.

Just create.™

 

Faceless Art Tutorials: Letting the Work Speak for Itself on YouTube

I have been running a YouTube tutorial channel for years and I have never shown my face on it. Not once.

People ask about this more than you'd expect. The assumption is that a faceless channel is hiding something. That you need a personality on screen to build trust. That the algorithm punishes you for it.

Here's what I've learned: when you teach someone how to draw hair, they don't need to see your face. They need to see the process. The work is the authority. The process is the content. The marks on the page (digital or otherwise) are doing the teaching, not my expressions.

There is a long tradition of this in art instruction. The camera points down at the paper. The voice explains what's happening and why. The student watches the lines appear and learns from the decisions being made in real time.

I'm not against showing my face. I'm indifferent to it. The art does the talking. That has worked for Bridgman's pencils, for Loomis' books, for every anatomy reference that changed how I draw. None of them needed a personality to convince me the information was valuable.

The work either teaches or it doesn't. Everything else is packaging.

Just create.™

 

The Freelance Mistake Costing You Thousands: Usage Rights vs. Hourly Rates

Most artists quote their fee based on time. How many hours will this take? What's my hourly rate? Multiply. Send the invoice.

That covers labor. It does not cover what you are actually giving away.

When a client hires you, they are not only buying hours of your hands moving. They are buying (or should be buying) a specific set of rights to what your hands produce. Usage rights. Licensing terms. Exclusivity windows. Geographic restrictions. Duration of use. Buyout provisions.

Each one of those has a dollar value. Each one changes the shape of the deal. A logo used on one local pop-up for 6 months is a fundamentally different product than the same logo used globally across all media in perpetuity.

The hours are identical. The deals are not even close.

Most artists price the hours. Professionals price the deal.

If you have never structured a quote around usage, licensing, territory, and sole rights, you are leaving real money on the table. Not small money. The kind of money that compounds across every project you do for the rest of your career.

This is what I built The Pricing Verdict to solve - https://abbadabba.com/verdict/ Not a calculator (calculators do math on inputs). It's a system that walks you through the full economic shape of any deal, so you stop giving away the parts of the job that actually carry the most value.

Just create.™

copyright © 2026 Howard Simpson

 

Why Creative Professionals Lose Money (And How to Fix Your Pricing)

I have worked for Fortune 500 companies and a long list of advertising agencies over the years. In all that time, across every type of client from corporate to mom & pop, I have noticed one pattern that never changes.

Artists apologize for their rates.

Not with words, necessarily. With behavior. They flinch when they say the number. They rush to explain how they calculated it. They offer discounts before anyone asks. They pad the conversation with justifications that nobody requested.

Lawyers don't do this. Accountants don't do this. The electrician who rewired my kitchen did not hand me a spreadsheet showing why he charges what he charges. He told me the number. I said yes or no. That was the entire negotiation.

But artists? We turn pricing into a confessional. And the client can feel it. They can feel the doubt. With some clients, that doubt becomes leverage they didn't even have to ask for. With other clients, they ask for discounts and low rates because they already know they can chew artists down. Chum is in the water.

The shift is simple (not easy, but simple): stop negotiating with your own feelings. Know your number before you pick up the phone. Know it cold, with the math already done, so that when the moment comes, you can state it the way a professional states it.

Done

Just create.™

copyright 2026 Howard Simpson

What a $1,000 Plumber Bill Can Teach Artists About Pricing

A factory machine broke down. Management called a specialist. The plumber walked in, listened to the sound of the machine, and tapped a single pipe with a small hammer.

The machine came back to life, then he handed over a bill for $1,000.

The manager wanted an itemized invoice. So the plumber rewrote it:

Tapping with a hammer: $1.

Knowing exactly where to hit: $999.

Artists hear this story and nod. Then they go back to charging by the hour. They go back to explaining to clients why they cost what they cost. They go back to showing their math like a student turning in homework.

Doctors don't do that. Lawyers don't do that. Plumbers definitely don't do that.

You are not selling your time. You are selling years of knowing exactly where to hit.

State the number. The number is the number.

Just create.™

art copyright 2026 Howard Simpson

Want to Ask an Art Teacher Anything? Skip the Awkward Email and Try This Free Tool

Commission in progress

 The Just Create Coach is my attempt to make my art teaching more accessible.

It’s free.

You can use it here:

https://www.abbadabba.com/freebies.html

It contains all the information in this blog and stuff in my brain. It's an easy resource to use.

That’s where much of my thinking lives. The coach I created just lets you ask questions instead of digging through posts, pages, and years of material. I used AI to make this interactive. 

For anyone who has an immediate reaction to AI, I understand the hesitancy. 

I’m using it to organize my own knowledge into a searchable tool. That’s the kind of thing I could not have afforded to build with custom programming. This is practical.

And it solves a real problem. People ask me if I’d talk to aspiring artists they know. I say yes. I give them my contact info. Almost nobody reaches out. I don’t think they’re lazy. I think they’re nervous. I was nervous too. So now they can ask the awkward question without the awkward email or phone call.

Try it.

If you stump it, tell me what you asked.

That helps me make it better.

Just create.™

art copyright 2026 Howard Simpson