It feels two jobs in one for me. I think you should consider splitting the brief in two. If you look around on DesignCrowd, logo designs are ~$150 on their own, also illustrations jobs averages around ~$150 as well.

Thanks for the invitation to your project

Please, provide feedback to my design, so I can work on something that better suits your request. Thanks

Hi, hoping that you can hold on the project, I'm about to submit my ideas tonight.

Are you open to color suggestions? Or should I stick with the brand guidelines (which has a typo by the way, the CMYK codes of the two greys documented identical).