Aug/100
LinkedIn Group for Fantasy/Scifi Illustrators & AD’s
I’ve created a LinkedIn group to help connect the Fantasy/SciFi Art community.
Keeping it simple, I think it could be a great resource to connect to other illustrators and art directors on a purely business/professional level. It also has the benefit of having job boards, which could be a great place to get work.
Please join the group, and tell your friends! Oh, and if you want to make a less hideous logo for it, please feel free!
Jun/101
When To Say No
The other day, an artist friend of mine asked a question:
How do you know when not to collaborate with someone?
It’s a great question, and begs an even larger question:
How do you know when to say no to a project?
There are a few different things you should consider when making the decision to enter into a working relationship, whether with a publisher or another artist, or whatever form of business comes your way.
Risk vs. Reward
One of the most common concepts in business is weighing risk versus reward. If a project is too risky, meaning there is a high degree of standard deviation, then often it becomes not worthwhile to take a risk on it. Standard deviation is how much variation there is around an expected outcome. For example, in calculating an average, a wide range of numbers has a high standard deviation, while a small range of numbers has a low standard deviation, as depicted in the graph below.
But how does this concept apply to art? It comes down to your investment weighed against the payoff. What is the likelihood that your project will “deviate”, and you won’t get paid? If you think that it is pretty high, you may be better off turning it down unless the potential reward is very high as well.
Opportunity Cost
Your time is money! Whenever you make a choice to undertake one project versus another, you are missing out on some opportunity. In economics, the money you might have earned from the “next best” project you didn’t take is called your opportunity cost. For example, if I started a gallery and wanted to find out my accounting costs, I would factor in my fixed and variable costs for construction, electricity, rent, etc.; but if I want to find out how much I spent in terms of an economic cost, I would factor in my opportunity cost. Let’s say that if I hadn’t opened the gallery, I could have made $20,000 working at my old job. The opportunity cost in this case is $20,000.
Whenever a project comes up, think about the opportunity cost. If working on that project will afford you no time to work on anything else, you should think about how much you are earning from each project, and what opportunities they will afford you in the future.
Let’s take an example:
- Project A will take 100 hours and pay $1500. You’re earning $15/hour.
- Project B will take 50 hours and pay $1200. You’re earning $24/hour.
Clearly, Project B is the better choice. But, let’s add a twist.
- Project A will take 100 hours and pay $1500, and will promise $2500 worth of future contracts.
- Project B will take 50 hours and pay $1200, and has no promise of future contracts.
Now, there is a $2500 opportunity cost associated with Project A. In this case, Project A might be more worthwhile.
Building Relationships
Sometimes there are other opportunities associated with taking a project besides money– sometimes there are relationships which can help build your reputation and your portfolio. These kinds of projects have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, as there is no right or perfect answer for every artist. Whether taking on a project for little money is worthwhile to you is completely your call.
Intuition
Don’t knock it– your gut feeling about how it will be to work with someone is very important! I cannot count how many times Jeff and I have come across this. It usually goes like this: he will get a gut feeling about a project– some inkling that something is wrong about it. I push him to take the risk, and the project flops. His gut has always been right, 100% of the time. (I’m going to regret saying that my husband is always right on the internet, I just know it…) Once this happend a couple of times, we learned to just trust his intuition.
If you’re like Jeff and you have good instincts, follow them! If your spidey-sense starts tingling, turn the project down.
Do you have a great story about turning a project down when you shouldn’t have, or taking on a project that you wish you hadn’t? Share it in the comments!
Apr/103
Mythbusting: Art is Easy
I wanted to take a minute to talk about a popular fallacy, the idea of which basically goes:
“Art only requires talent. Artists have it easy, and are lucky. Art is not as challenging as something like math or science.”
Taken from the Playdom game "Sorority Life", where apparently art is so awesome, it makes your life (like) totally better!
Because I am a game designer, I believe in checking out all kinds of games. Yesterday, I delved into the “social games” phenomenon by starting up Sorority Life, in which your major (see above) can deliver certain benefits to you. Psychology gives you “Confidence”- Ok, that’s somewhat understandable from a game mechanic perspective. Pre-Med gives you “Energy”- less believable but still mechanically sound overall. Business gives you “Money”- which makes a lot more sense.
And finally there’s Art! Which gives you a little of EVERYTHING!
Alright, now back to the real world.
Energy
Artists have to work very, very hard. Every artist is developing, and will be constantly doing so throughout their career. They grind away, they get better, they hit a wall, they have a breakthrough– they just never stop. The second an artist stops working hard, they begin to stagnate. They don’t get to sleep much. They constantly have to be vigilant about their own time. When they’re not working, they’re feeling guilty for not working. Artists don’t have weekends. Art is not (just) talent- art is hard work.
Money
Let’s face it, unless you are at the top of the totem pole in the artist’s world, you’re not making bank. The typical fine artist’s (including illustrators) salary falls between $30,000 and $55,000. Most MBA’s start at double that.
Confidence
Art is grueling. Any artist worth his/her salt is constantly getting torn to shreds, scraping his/her dignity up off the floor, and trying again. The craziest part of this is, that is the ONLY way to get better. You have to look for critique, seek out your own failures, and ask for brutal honesty in order to become a better artist. Artists cannot have egos, they can’t afford to or no one will want to work with them. As an artist, you have to open yourself up to hearing all the things that are wrong about what you’re doing, and instead of saying “you don’t get it” you have to say “you are right”, and try to improve. It’s never easy and it’s never over. Even the greatest artists have problems in some of their work.
The Big Picture
So, why am I writing this seemingly depressing post? Because I believe that in spite of all of this, their will to succeed is what makes artists truly unique.
Artists are extremely brave, hard-working, and passionate, and I believe they make the world better for what they put into it.
Mar/104
5 Things To Bring to GDC (for Artists)
Well it’s Spring Break, so I’ve finally gotten a chance to sit down and write!
I spent the first few days of my break in San Francisco, where I attended the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC). While I’d have liked to attended the entirety of the convention, I only got to spend the final day, Saturday, wandering the halls because of finals.
First off, GDC is definitely a great place to go for business. Many game companies set up shop there specifically to recruit for job positions they are trying to fill- which ranges from programmers to business people to full-time artists, and Saturday of the convention is “Student Day”, where students can get in for just $75.
To my surprise, the vast majority of the students I saw were art students! Most of them were local to San Francisco, armed with some great-looking portfolios and hunger in their eyes. Some companies (namely Blizzard that I saw, but probably others) had art directors on site to review portfolios.
So, if you are planning on going to GDC to get your portfolio reviewed and maybe get some jobs out of it, you’ll need the following:
1) Your Student ID- Must Be Current
Unfortunately, Student Day is for students. Not to say that working professionals cannot attend- they are encouraged to, but they pay a higher price tag to get in the door ($250 for Expo-only vs. $75 for students). Whether or not that is worth it to you is really up to you. Many of the companies attending GDC will also be at PAX East two weeks later, and PAX is only $50 for a three-day pass. It depends on where you live, obviously.
2) A Portfolio with Your Best Work that Fits the Company/Companies You Are Targeting
The biggest complaint I heard from companies was that artists were showing up with portfolios full of, as one woman put it “Barbie-doll-proportioned anime characters”. I guess if you wanted to do concept art for Bayonetta, that might be alright (joke), but honestly it’s not going to fly in most of the industry. She went on to say that that might be nice, but it’s not what they do, and it’s a waste of her time to look at that portfolio. Many companies are looking for high quality, nicely colored and well rendered work, but all companies are looking for work that already fits the feel of their current products. This is great news, on the one hand, because it means that if you want to do work for a certain company, you should get super familiar with their style, which might mean playing lots of games, and who doesn’t like that?
3) An Elevator Pitch
Believe it or not your art does not only speak for itself. You should also be able to give some quick background about who you are, what your experience is, and what you want to do. Doing this in just 30 seconds is best, because it gives people a sense of who you are without wasting much time. This 30-second self-explanation is called an “Elevator Pitch” because it should be done in the time that it takes you to ride in an elevator with your pitch target. Obviously you don’t have to be in an elevator to do an elevator pitch- the showroom floor will do just fine.
A good format for the elevator pitch is:
- Who you are
- What you want/are trying to accomplish
- Your background/experience
- Your interest in specific company
You don’t have to get too flowery, but having this at the ready will be very beneficial to you. I also recommend practicing it (out loud) before you go straight up to a company you really have your heart set on so you aren’t as nervous.
4) A Love of Networking
At GDC, as with many conventions, a lot of the connections happen not just at the convention, but at the bar afterwards. Many GDC attendees were having drinks starting at around 2pm onward for most days, and you NEVER know who you’ll meet or what opportunities may come out of it. Do bring your portfolio (preferably not on an iPhone but on paper), do have a drink, do talk industry talk (talk about games!), but don’t bust out your portfolio unless it comes up naturally in the conversation. Have fun! Networking isn’t hard, it’s just socializing, and people LOVE to talk about games at GDC– and if you want to work in the industry, I’m betting you love games too.
5) Business Cards
As always, an easy way for people to contact you. At minimum, your name, phone number, email address and website. If you want to be really clever, make sure your cards are blank backed and quickly draw something on it to be memorable. Make sure your website is up-to-date, easy to navigate, and has clear examples of your style.
With those things and a positive attitude, you should be able to make some inroads.
What do you think- have you had any experience shopping your portfolio at GDC that you’d like to share?
Feb/101
How-to Website Guide for Artists
This is a really fantastic post for artists on how to get your own website, I had to share: [go here].
Jan/100
Crowdsourcing: What it Means for Artists
Recently, I read this article in Businessweek from last year about crowdsourcing. For those not familiar with the term, crowdsourcing is “the practice of using large, distributed and minimally directed groups to accomplish tasks.”
In other words, a company needs a logo, so rather than search for a designer they like and pay them to design, they just put a short brief up on one of these websites, like crowdSPRING, with a price tag attached, and designers compete for the payoff. It’s spec work optimized- for the businessperson, that is.
As the article mentions, the problem with this type of practice is that it drives down the market value of highly skilled work like graphic design and illustration, and forces artists to compete in an already highly competitive environment just to put food on the table.
Personally, I am very against crowdsourcing of creative talent. There are many very good reasons why spec work is detrimental, not just to the creative community, but ultimately to businesses utilizing this method as a way to get cheap creative input. One of the best sites on the web for more information about how spec work hurts is No!Spec. On a related note, I also love Clients From Hell.
For now, I leave you with a bit of humor- the vendor-cleint relationship in real world situations:
Nov/094
Pricing Art
This is something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while now, but with exams finally over, I now have some time to write!
Very often people will ask artists, “How do you price your work?” The short answer here is… it depends. There are a lot of interesting market factors that go into that decision, some of which I want to look at more in-depth.
The Economics of Art
The irony is they are marketing a product to people who, by their product definition, have no money...
In economic theory, a firm can set their price for a good or service at the average variable cost of their competitor to drive them out of business. But when you’re an artist, especially a sole proprietor, how do you measure that cost? And even if you priced below what your competition could afford, why would you want to?
Additionally, when a firm is pricing too low for a product or service, they destroy the market. In these cases a larger market player can simply acquire the business and fix this problem. In the illustration market, this is not possible.
My point here is that so many of the rules that apply to businesses when it comes to pricing go completely out the window when you are looking at an industry as volatile and preference-based as art. Many people can agree on what a good meal tastes like and should cost, few can agree on what is good art and what its value is. As a result, artists must make the assessment of the value of their art themselves, which can be extremely difficult as artists can tend towards overvaluing or undervaluing their work based on their confidence level. If not the artist, though, then who has that price-making power?
The simple answer here is: the market. Unfortunately, because there are relatively few customers to a relatively large number of highly differentiated suppliers, the artist has limited power to negotiate on price until their work is differentiated or renowned (we could say “branded”) enough to let them set prices.
My overall conclusion is that the market for art, when first starting out, starts out as an monopolistic competition. The artist then reaches a certain tier, if they are lucky, hardworking, talented, and marketing-savvy, among other factors, and then they move into a more monopolistic market.
There is a huge problem here, though, which is that in the long run, monopolistic competitive firms make zero economic profit. This means that you will be scraping by– breaking even– which is fine, but is probably the basis behind the “starving artist” stereotype. The key, then, is to move yourself from that pool of “working artists” into the pool of “famous artists”- moving from a monopolistic competitor to a monopolist. As with any product or service, there is no secret formula for how to do this. There are, however, some business and economic theories that can be helpful in determining ways to get your prices up to start that process.
Bargaining Power
You never want to have just one supplier or one customer- having two at least keeps them in competition, driving your costs down and your prices up. If your work is in demand by Company X, you can tell Company Y “Sorry, I have another offer, unless you can match or better on price.” You’d be amazed at how well this works. It works for other areas of life, too- phone, internet, etc. (Just don’t try it dating…) The trick here is also not to get caught on the other end of this trap! You don’t want Company X to say “Well, we have another artist we can go to for this.”
Willingness to Pay
Customers are willing to pay for a more differentiated, higher quality product. Increasing the willingness to pay is tricky, but doing top-notch work repeatedly for clients will go a long way to earning customer loyalty, increasing demand, and increasing the dollar amount per piece that you will receive.
Pricing Rules
Or should I say, the lack thereof? There are no hard and fast rules, per se.
From an economist’s standpoint, to maximize profit you should be pricing at the point where your marginal costs equal your marginal revenue. In order for you to do this, you’d have to have to know the demand equation for your work. If you are interested, let me know and I can do a blog post explaining this in much more detail, but for the sake of brevity: it gets complicated.
Simple solutions:
Price by Cost + Margin: Figure out number of pieces you can make each month, figure out what your bills and food cost you each month. Divide your $bills/#pieces = lowest price per piece you can charge. Add a margin for profit.
Example: Sam pays $2000 per month in rent, food, bills, etc. He can create 8 pieces each month. $2000/8= $250 per piece to break even. He wants to make a 20% margin so he has some money in the bank: 20% of $250 = $50. Sam should be charging $300/piece.
Price Hourly: Another pricing strategy is to price by hour. This is very difficult to do, since sometimes a brilliant piece will take you only a few hours, and other times you struggle with it for weeks.
Price = Materials Cost + # hours * $ wage per hour
Example: Sam wants to make $25/hour (art is a skilled profession after all and $25/hour is pretty low!). He works digitally and so has no overhead. On average, he spends about 12 hours on a piece. 12 * $25 = $300 per piece.
Art as a Firm
The last thing that I wanted to look at is the “Studio” phenomenon- artists collectively working together in order to increase their pricing power, share profits, and think more business-like! I love this model, and I think that if the industry trends towards this structure, art as a profession will become much more feasible for more people.
Oct/094
The Orphan Works Bill
I wanted to take a minute to address a big issue facing artists that surprisingly few people know about.
In 2006, a bill was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives called the Orphan Works Bill. It was later withdrawn, then reintroduced in 2008, and made it on to Congress at that time.
An orphan work is a copyright work where it is difficult or impossible to contact the copyright holder. When do you own a copyright? Under current law, as soon as you make your work. Your copyright lasts until the day you die, plus 70 years in the U.S., sometimes longer depending on various factors.
The Orphan Works Bill calls for the creation of a database of all Pictorial, Graphic and Sculptural Works (Section 3). It also allows people to use potentially copyrighted material so long as they do a “reasonable” search for the owner. If they cannot find the copyright owner, the work becomes public domain.
The underlying purpose here is that you will have to PAY to register your work on this mysterious database or people will be allowed to use it, claiming a reasonable search. Under current law, you do not have to register a copyright to benefit from protection, but you can, and if you can you can seek statutory damages if your copyright is infringed.
You can see why so many artists are opposed to this bill. For people who only produce a few or a dozen works per year, registering them might not be too costly, but imagine the cost for photographers, who might produce hundreds of pictures on a weekly basis.
So what can you do?
View the bill.
Read the proposed amendments.
Join a group in support of stopping or amending the bill.
Spread the word among your artist friends. The more people that know about this, the better.
Call you legislator and tell them why this would negatively impact you.
We cannot afford to be in the dark on this one, so I hope everyone will take a personal interest and get involved in this.
Oct/090
The Work is Done, So Where’s the Dough?
aka Contract Breaches and Demand Letters
This is the age-old question that has plagued countless artists in the past and will doubtless plague countless artists in the future.
You’ve been hired by Company ABC to do some illustrations for them. You’re smart and you work out a good contract, which entitles you to payment within x number of days.
You did the work on time and turned it in with no problems. But the unthinkable happens and x number of days has passed and you are without money. Now you’re hungry and have no electricity because Company ABC didn’t meet their legal obligation to you. But, hiring an attorney or arbitrator, if that is what your contract provisions, is expensive at worst and time consuming at best. You just want your rightfully due money!
Well, don’t call your lawyer quite yet. There is one more thing you can do.
It’s called a Notice of Breach of Contract or a Demand Letter. And it goes a little something like this:
By Registered Mail
Recipient’s Name
Recipient’s Address
Date
Dear Recipient’s Name:
Re: Contract between Recipient’s Name and Your Name dated Date of Contract (the “Contract”).
You are hereby notified that you are in breach of Specify Provision in Contract which Specify How Breached (ie. you are in breach of Section 3 of the contract which requires you to pay within 30 days of acceptance of the work).
The said breach results from Specify Action which resulted in breach (ie. your failure to pay within 30 days of July 20th, 2009, when the work was formally accepted).
You are hereby notified that unless the said breach is remedied within Specify Applicable Cure Period (ie 10 days) of the date of this letter, then we reserve the right to exercise any and all remedies available to us under the terms of the Contract or in law.
You are hereby notified that we require State the Nature of the Demand (ie immediate payment of the contractually agreed amount of $1000.oo), failing which we reserve the right to exercise any and all remedies available to us under the terms of the Contract or in law.
Yours truly,
Your Name
You may want to include printed evidence that you have of your claim, such as emails saying the work was accepted, etc, depending on what the terms of your contract are.
I simply copied this format from the internet, and you can simply write it in plain English, if that suits your preference better.
Make sure you send the letter via the post. Don’t send an email demand letter. Note the day and time you sent the letter, make sure the date on your letter is accurate.
The hope is that the company will see this, go “Oh yes, paying them is a good idea for us” and just pay you. If they still don’t, you may have to take it to the next step. This may seem harsh or make you nervous, but it is really nothing but fair. You deserve to be paid for your work, on time, and without a lot of runaround- it’s just that simple!
Sep/091
Marketing Your Art
I received this great question from Chantal Fournier, who asks:
I was wondering if you have any advice to offer on paying for advertising, online or offline. Have you or Jeff ever tried it, and was it worth it?
Since advertising falls into the larger scope of “marketing” in my mind, I’d like to address marketing as a whole. It can be a tricky subject, especially depending on what specific niche of the art industry you are interested in pursuing, and how you are planning on growing your business.
First off, to answer the question straight away, Jeff and I have paid for a bunch of marketing tools, but never gone directly for buying ads in a magazine or on a website. Part of this is because the market that we’re in is not very sensitive to advertising, and relies more on brand recognition and word-of-mouth advertising. The idea is that after building up a body of work for certain companies and on certain products, the art sells itself to collectors/fans. We don’t need to sink money into advertising to art directors, because the art is either good, or it’s not. A quick review of Jeff’s website will tell an AD if they want to hire him, and we can maintain and update his portfolio there for very little cost.
Some pay-services are great, and some are a huge waste of time. People interested in children’s illustration would do well to get an agent, since the industry is hard to break into without one. Some marketing/advertising expenses that are just plain necessary to the modern artist are:
- A website
- Business cards
- Submission fees to industry-specific publications
The business savvy artist can find ways to get many marketing tools for free (use those social media and networking tools!), but you are best off paying for assets like a quality website and nice, professional business cards.
Website
Having a good, easily navigable, attractive website is absolutely, unequivocally essential. It is the first thing that many art directors or potential clients will see of your work, and if it is sloppy or hard to figure out, they will leave with a bad taste in their mouth, or worse, not even bother to wade through the muck to get to the good stuff. It doesn’t matter how great your art is if they can’t find it or if they give up.
Some rules for making a good website:
- Get your own domain. Preferably yourname.com, or yournameart.com. It looks more professional and serious to have your own domain name, and it’s easier to remember one name than two. Registering a domain name can be done very cheaply (here and here). Plus, once you own it, it’s an asset! Which means it goes on your balance sheet. A domain is a must, but I really recommend getting a comprehensive hosting package. There are many good hosts on the market to choose from, I prefer hostgator, myself.
- Make your gallery page (or some of your best work) your FIRST page. The people coming to your website want to see your your art, so show them your art! Not your blog, not your bio, not even a cover page! I’m paraphrasing, but I believe that credit goes to the incomparable Irene Gallo, who said something along the lines of, “If I have to click more than twice to see your art, I’m already annoyed.” Don’t annoy art directors, it’s bad.
- Make it easy to understand and view. An awesome example of an easily navigable website is Mike Sass’s site. Using it is a no-brainer! Another site that has great click-thru capability is Joshua Middleton’s. Setting up a click-thru gallery like this can be done simply with wordpress gallery plugins, or the very user-friendly squarespace.
Get help! If you cannot program or manage your own website, you should tap your contacts to see if there is any poor webslave out there who will do it for you. It is really best if you can do your own content management, which is why a self-hosted wordpress or the regular squarespace package can be so great for artists who aren’t code-savvy.
Business Cards
Oh yes, that old essential. The business card will never die.
Lots of people I’ve met recently have gotten these neat little half sized cards, or over-sized cards. These can be great for quick contact info or for a bigger image that highlights a great piece.
Me, though? I prefer the standard-sized business card. My card-holder is made to fit the standard 3.5″ by 2″ card, and as long as it has a website, an email, and a phone number on it, I’m good to go. There are many places where you can get business cards printed and shipped to you for very little cost. I’ve used both VistaPrint and Overnight Prints, and honestly haven’t seen a huge difference in the quality of the cards. Another site friends have recommended is Moo. To be very cost effective, you can print your own cards with the right paper and a good paper cutter, but the cost of the online cards is pretty comparable to what you’d spend on supplies and time, anyway.
Submission Fees
Books
I wouldn’t pay to get your artwork into a book that isn’t judged. There are look-books out there that are carried in art stores for AD’s to find potential hire-ees, but the things are huge, there is no barrier to entry but payment (meaning there is awful work alongside your good work), they aren’t industry specific.
There are books that are very industry specific and some charge a submission fee, with no guarantee of getting published. Books I know of are Spectrum, Exposé.
Magazines
A lot of times magazine submissions are free, so just do a bit of research. Find artistic genres that fit your style, and submit to those publications. There are magazines for every niche of artist out there, ImagineFX, 3×3, Illustration, Illo… the list goes on and on. Figure where you want your art seen (scene?) and go from there. Submitting to online magazines is also a great idea. The more places you can display your art for free, the better, because you’re maximizing your exposure.
Free Exposure
Competitions
There are always competitions going on somewhere on the internet for artists. These competitions are great ways to get a foot in the door, get your art seen by a good number of people, as well as practice your craft. Many competitions have no entry fee, some have a nominal fee. Just be careful about what competition you take part in: make sure your style matches the acceptable styles for the genre that you are submitting to. You wouldn’t want to see painterly art in a graphic design competition, or children’s illustration style art in a painterly competition. Assess the audience, and play to your strengths.
Podcasts
Interestingly enough, although people listening to a podcast don’t see your art directly, they will often go look you up if they hear you on a podcast somewhere. Podcasts can be great marketing tools because of the exposure factor, and are just plain fun to do. Plus, when you put out a podcast you’re giving something to the world, which is just cool. 
As I develop my marketing tools, I’ll probably have a lot more to say on this subject, but for now, I hope this is helpful!