Illustrator — Reusable Flat Editorial Asset Bank for a YouTube Essay Channel

I am building a reusable illustration asset bank for a faceless YouTube essay channel about psychology and self-improvement. This is a systems commission, not a one-off illustration job: the bank you build gets recomposed by an editor into every video the channel publishes, so consistency and reusability matter more than any single beautiful frame. THE LOOK Flat, warm, editorial illustration. Rounded human shapes, generous negative space, morning light rather than midnight. Think the warmth of School of Life and the simplicity of the channel "easy actually" — clean, adult, quietly confident. NOT cartoon-comedy, NOT corporate-flat-vector (no Corporate Memphis), NOT dark or gothic, NOT gradient-heavy 3D. PALETTE — use these six values and nothing else: Bone #ECE3D4 (the default background field — most frames rest here) Ink #14120F (line work, type, dark punctuation frames) Lie Red #7A1821 (RESERVED — see below) Moss #2E5E4E (the protagonist's wardrobe and any "path forward" element) Gray #827F76 (secondary elements) Ochre #C99A3F (sparse emphasis only) COLOR GRAMMAR — this is the part most applicants miss, and it is the thing I am hiring for: Lie Red is not a decorative accent. It marks one thing only: the antagonist. It appears on the coat, on the crack, and nowhere else. If a frame has red in it, the red is doing narrative work. Bone is the resting state. Dark frames are punctuation, not atmosphere — under about 20% of any video. DELIVERABLES 1. THE COAT — the channel's primary recurring mark. A single coat, always Lie Red, drawn in 6 states: on a hook; over a chair back; being put on; worn; being removed; discarded on the floor. Same coat, same construction, every time. 2. THE CRACK — 4 horizontal overlay elements in Lie Red: short, long, branching, and a thin card-underline variant. These sit across a frame to mark a turn in the argument. 3. CHARACTERS — "the Capable One": one adult, 30s-40s, ambiguous enough to read as anyone, moss-green wardrobe, in approximately 10 reusable poses (seated at a desk, standing at a window, walking, hesitating at a door, mid-conversation, head in hands, back turned, reaching, still, walking away). Plus a set of 6-8 neutral silhouettes for secondary figures. 4. SCENES — approximately 25 illustrated environments and situations from a brief I will supply (a desk at night, a doorway, a kitchen table with two cups, an empty chair, a road, a stack of books, and so on). Each composed with room for the editor to pan and reframe. 5. TEMPLATES — three reusable layouts: a translation card (a quoted line on one side, what it actually means on the other), a two-doors diagram, and a concept card. 6. SOURCE FILES — layered, organised and named, delivered with every milestone. Vector preferred (AI or SVG); layered PSD acceptable. This is work-for-hire: full ownership and all rights transfer to me on payment of each milestone. HOW WE START Milestone 1 is three style frames at $150. I am running Milestone 1 with two illustrators in parallel and awarding the rest of the bank to one of them. The full commission is $1,200 across three milestones. If the bank works, this becomes an ongoing relationship — the channel adds scenes every month. TO APPLY Send links to illustration work with recurring characters — the same character drawn more than once, in more than one situation. That is the single most relevant thing you can show me; a portfolio of unrelated one-off pieces will not tell me what I need to know. Please do not send logo or mascot work. In the first line of your proposal, tell me one thing you would do differently from the brief above and why. I want an illustrator with a point of view, not a pair of hands.