Services
Illustration and motion, as their own work
An illustrated website is one whose pictures are drawn for it rather than photographed or bought from a library, and whose movement is written in the browser rather than played as video. At this studio both are made by one pair of hands, in vector, and they are priced inside the build rungs rather than sold as a separate line, from USD 900 upwards.
- What it is
- Hand-drawn artwork and browser-native motion, made for one site
- Who it is for
- Museums, foundations, hotels, authors, architects, and brands in photographed-out categories
- Where it starts
- No rung of its own: from USD 900 inside a guide, USD 2,000 inside a build
- Turnaround
- A written reply usually inside a day, one sample object before a suite
What it is
Illustration and motion is the part of a website that is drawn rather than photographed or licensed: the marks, scenes, spot pictures, icons and diagrams a site owns outright, together with the movement that carries a reader through them. Both are made here by one person, in vector, for one site.
Motion means something narrow on this page. Not video, not a file exported from an animation tool, and not a scroll effect that takes the page away from you. It is the drawing itself moving, written as transforms and opacity on elements the browser can composite. A reader whose system asks for reduced motion gets the finished frame, with no animation created at all. The two are sold together because they are one decision: art drawn without knowing how it will move has to be cut apart afterwards, which is why so much of it looks like paper sliding over paper.
Who it is for
The buyers are the ones whose category has been photographed to death. Museums and galleries with collections they cannot photograph freely. Foundations whose subject has no honest stock image. Hotels and estates whose competitors all bought the same terrace at golden hour. Authors and musicians, where the work is the person.
There is a second, quieter buyer: an organisation that likes its brand and has no drawn layer to go with it. The identity works on a letterhead and falls apart on a website, because nobody ever made the pictures. That is a matching job, and it is the most common brief this page gets.
What it costs
There is no illustration rung and no motion rung on the published ladder, and that is deliberate. Drawing is not sold by the picture or by the second of animation, because the time goes on deciding what a thing looks like at the size a reader will see it. It is priced inside the build rungs instead, and the table shows how much each one contains.
| Rung | Price | How much of it is drawn |
|---|---|---|
| Long-form guide | from USD 900 (about AED 3,300) | One illustrated essay of three thousand words or more. The smallest thing here bought partly for its drawing. |
| Platform site | from USD 2,000 (about AED 7,350) | A template carrying drawn assets: a header, spot pictures, icons that are yours and not the theme. |
| The page | from USD 2,500 (about AED 9,200) | One landing page drawn end to end, with the movement that carries a reader down it. |
| Full identity | from USD 4,500, typically to 9,000 (about AED 16,550) | A system rather than a picture: patterns, motifs, spot illustrations, and the rules that hold them together. |
| Five rooms | from USD 4,800, typically to 8,000 (about AED 17,650) | Drawn header art on five pages, plus the smaller marks that stop them looking like a template. |
| Shop | from USD 6,500, or 7,500 on Shopify (about AED 23,850) | Category and conversion pages drawn, so photography is not carrying the whole shop alone. |
| Heritage and luxury | from USD 9,000 (about AED 33,050) | Custom lettering and a full illustration suite, with bilingual Arabic and Latin lockups where needed. |
| Illustrated world | from USD 12,000, typically to 30,000 (about AED 44,050) | Original illustration throughout, with the motion built into the structure. This site is the sample. |
USD is the anchor on every quote and invoice. The figure in parentheses is the same price in dirhams at the pegged rate of 3.6725 to the dollar, given as one local equivalent rather than a currency list, and correct as of 5 September 2026. Prices exclude any VAT, sales tax or withholding your own country applies to imported services. The full ladder is at Services and prices.
Matching an existing brand
Most of this work arrives with a brand already in place, and the question underneath the brief is always the same one: will the drawing look like it belongs to us, or to the person who drew it.
The drawn layer is built from your own material. Line weight comes off your mark. The palette is yours, extended only where a picture needs a value the brand never had to specify, such as a mid tone for shadow. Where the identity has a printed history, the drawing takes its cues from the print rather than the screen, because the print is the part people remember.
One object is drawn first, at the size it will be seen. It is included in the rung, and it exists so a mismatch costs one drawing instead of twenty. If your guidelines forbid a drawn layer, or the brand rests on photography the drawing would fight, I will say so then and hand the brief back.
What it does to page weight
Page weight is the wrong measurement here, and the studio stopped using it. Drawings ship as vector paths inside the document, so they are not files and not requests. There is nothing to lazy load and nothing to pop in late.
What costs is painting. A curve is more expensive to raster than a straight edge, and the price is paid on every frame that has to be redrawn, multiplied by how much of the screen the thing covers. That budget, rather than bytes, decides whether scrolling feels smooth, so a scene is drawn to a curve budget agreed before it is started.
Motion is judged on the slowest frames rather than the average, because an average hides the one long frame in a hundred that turns a smooth scroll into a stutter. Anything that moves is an ordinary element the browser can composite: art nested inside a vector root cannot be handed off that way, so the moving parts are lifted out. What cannot hold its frames is simplified or cut, and you are told which.
No frame timing from this site is quoted here as a number: the measurements were taken on one machine, and one machine is not a benchmark.
How it runs
- You write the brief in a sentence. The card below takes it: pick the illustration and motion chip, and say what the pictures are for.
- I reply in writing, usually inside a day, naming which rung the work sits inside and what would move it.
- One sample object, drawn at viewing size. Not a mood board and not a style frame: the actual thing, at the size a reader will see it.
- The suite, drawn in the open. You watch it arrive rather than waiting for a reveal, and changes are cheap while the ink is wet.
- Motion last, against the budget. The pieces are separated, the movement is written, and what cannot hold its frames is simplified before it ships.
- Handover. Editable vector source, the exported formats, the rules that keep the system consistent, and the rights assigned to you.
What it has proved
Not yet, in the only sense that counts. No client has bought illustration or motion from this studio as standalone work, so there is no export on this page and no case study behind it. That would be the easiest sentence on the site to write and the first one a buyer should distrust.
What stands in its place is this site: everything below was drawn here.
- Nine card emblems. One mark for each of the site's cards, made as a set so they read as one hand.
- Fourteen ticker icons. Drawn for the homepage readout at the size they are seen, not shrunk from something larger.
- The loader. The animation every navigation here passes through, written in the browser and exported from nowhere.
- The brief card's swash. A drawn flourish on the one component the whole site points at.
- The sharing images. Every social preview is built from the site's own drawn parts rather than a template.
- A shepherd's crook at 1024 pixels. The studio's mark, drawn at the size that shows whether the curves are any good.
There are no testimonials on this site and no star rating in its markup, because it has neither. The client exports sit on the services hub, with the work that earned them.
Who it is not for
If you need a hundred spot icons by Friday, a library of stock in a house style, or artwork priced per asset against a tracker, this is the wrong studio. One person draws everything here, and volume work by the unit cannot be honoured without lying about the date or thinning the drawing until it is not worth buying.
It is also the wrong page if the picture is decoration you have already decided on. Drawing is bought here to say what photography could not, and where there is no such thing to say, the money is better spent on a photographer and a plainer build.
Questions people ask before they write
Is it drawn, or is it generated?
Drawn. Every mark on this site was made here, by hand, in a vector editor or in code, and the same holds for anything drawn for you. No image model makes artwork that ships: a generated picture cannot be edited at the seam, or redrawn at a new size without drifting.
Can you match our existing brand?
Usually, and the check happens before you commit to a suite. The work starts from what you already have: the mark, the typeface, the palette, the print. One sample object is drawn first, and if it does not sit beside your existing work I will say so rather than draw twenty more in the same wrong voice.
What does all this drawing do to page weight?
Less than photography, because the drawings are markup rather than image files. A scene ships inside the document as vector paths, so there is no second request and nothing arriving late. What costs is painting curves on each frame, and that is what gets measured.
Who owns the drawings at the end?
You do, on final payment, including the editable source and not only the exported files. The studio keeps the right to show the work in its portfolio and write about how it was made, which is how a practice with no testimonial wall proves anything.
Can you animate illustration we already own?
Yes, if it exists as vector source. Flat exports can be traced, but tracing is redrawing and it is priced as drawing rather than as motion. What does not work is animating a photograph: the result is a shape sliding over a background, and it reads as exactly that.
We only want one picture. Is that a project?
Not really, and this is the honest limit of the page. No per-picture rate is published here, because illustration is priced inside the rungs above and one drawing has no scope around it to price against. If that is all you need, write anyway with the size and the use.
Sources
- Inventory of the drawn work on this site, ShepherdUX research note 07 section 1.2: the nine card emblems, the fourteen ticker icons, the loader, the brief card's swash, the sharing images and the 1024 pixel crook. No client export exists for this service.
- Pricing ladder and every rung quoted above, ShepherdUX research note 18 section 6, September 2026. That ladder carries no illustration rung and no motion rung, which is why this page publishes none of its own.
- United Arab Emirates dirham pegged at 3.6725 to the United States dollar, Central Bank of the UAE, rate as of 5 September 2026.