Welcome to Armadillo

What would it look like to build a licensing website FOR the illustration community?

This is the question that gave rise to Armadillo in early 2023. Conceived by illustrator Michele Rosenthal, and developed with the generous help of volunteers from the art community and beyond, Armadillo will be a place for professional artists to showcase their licensable works, and a place for art buyers to discover the very best in stock illustration.

Unlike other stock websites, our goal is to facilitate one-on-one negotiation between artists and buyers. We don’t allow AI, and we don’t take a cut.

How will It work?

A potential buyer searches through illustrations uploaded and managed by our member artists.

When a buyer finds an illustration they wish to license, they fill out a contact form that gets delivered to the artist’s inbox.

The buyer and artist negotiate the terms of a license agreement. New to licensing? We’ll provide resources to help you out!

Artwork and payment are exchanged. The buyer receives a quality illustration, and the artist keeps 100% of the profit.

How will it be funded?

Instead of taking a cut, we believe Armadillo can be funded through donations from the community and small subscription fees for premium services. Though Armadillo will be free to use and free from ads, paid memberships will include perks such as increased uploads for artists and collections of saved images for clients.

We’ll be launching a Kickstarter in the coming months, so stay tuned!

What about AI?

We at Armadillo believe human art is more valuable than ever. Our goal is to create an online space for illustration licensing without the pollution of AI-generated slop.

We stand with the illustration community in condemning unregulated AI models unethically trained on countless stolen artworks. Illustrations made in whole or in part with generative AI will not be permitted on our platform.

Keep in touch

Subscribe to this newsletter for updates and announcements about Armadillo. We’ll only email when it’s important (and not every month).

You can also follow us on Discord, Instagram, and Twitter.

Or say hello at armadillostock@gmail.com.