3 Point Perspective: The Illustration Podcast

Latest Episodes:

How to Convey a Message or Story With Your Art May 08, 2019

Show notes

What if you could make money off of artwork you did years ago? That’s what Gina Lee does. She has a class on SVS where you can learn about how you can take artwork that you have already done or how to create new artwork that can be used for licensing (i.e. paper plates, decorations, etc.) You can check out that class here.This next week we will be releasing a Part 2, which will cover: Trend forecasting, developing your personal style so it’s more desirable to licensers, and how to create vision boards to help direct your work for what you want to do for licensing. Jake is reading, Keep Going” by Austin Kleon. One section is all about “Create For the Sake of Creating” and Austin talks about how you can sometimes just create something and then toss it, shred it or burn it. Create just for the sake of creating. It makes the creation all focused on the joy that comes from creating, not the end product. Sometimes we get so focused on the end product, whether or not we can scan it, share it, etc, that we lose sight of the joy of creation. Oftentimes kids only care about the experience of creating, they aren’t so focused on making something perfect. Sometimes it’s nice to not be so focused on the end product. Our topic today is: How to Convey a Message or Story With Your ArtThe Kick in the Creatives podcast covered this topic and they are tagging other podcasts to cover the same topic; we were tagged by them to go over this topic and they are wanting us to tag another podcast to then talk about this. Out tag is:(“One Fantastic Week”)(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/one-fantastic-week/id949599706). Storytelling As illustrators here, we are going to focus on how to convey a story with your art.Jake overheard this experience, when Will was teaching a class with Brian Ahjar about creating great backgrounds. Brian is really good at telling good stories with his art. Will and Brian were critiquing students work in their interactive class and the problem many of the students were having was that they were telling story fragments. Brian’s critique on a lot of the pieces was: “I don’t know what the story is.” Oft times the illustration can confuse the viewer more than it communicates something clearly. Just because you’re drawing a picture doesn’t mean that you are saying anything. That’s a problem you see a lot of times with amateur illustration work they just draw a character or an environment with no story in mind and oftentimes people don’t know what’s going on or have any deeper questions that they want to know more about after seeing the illustration. That’s what we want to go over: how to tell a story and why that’s so important as illustrators. Longevity, if something is going to be interesting for a long period of time, then it needs a story. On the other hand, sometimes people run into the problem where they tell too much story and it doesn’t give the viewer any work to do or allow the viewer to participate at all; there is a good middle ground where people can come back to it again and again, and depending on where they are in life, they can maybe read the image in a different way.Sometimes people paint a barn that has really no story to it, and unless it’s just amazing if it’s not telling a story then it’s not going to be as interesting. If you aren’t telling a specific story, often what you draw asks questions rather than answers questions. Sometimes you are asking more questions and making things more confusing than you are answering. I.e. Will saw this student’s illustration where there was this happy woman in the foreground looking over her shoulder and a happy dog trailing behind her, and then in the background there is a girl that is upset, but there are not cues as to why the child is upset. You might imply that this woman is the child’s mom and that she was happy from just disciplining her daughter. It seems that she almost has glee that her kid is upset, which probably wasn’t the illustrator’s intent. That’s an example of asking more questions than you are answering. You are asking more questions than you are answering, that is starting to move away from illustration and more towards fine art. Which can oftentimes be a lot more abstract and wanting the viewer to ask questions and think more. David Dibble does these amazing barn paintings, with terrific color, light and shadow, but when doing that these are more of a gallery piece, a decoration for someone with a lot of money to hang on their wall. They are a decoration. The piece’s purpose isn’t so much to communicate a specific story. Your job as an illustrator is to tell a story. Every image spurs a question in your viewer. Every image should elicit some sort of emotional response from the viewer It should make them laugh, or make them interested in the story or in the character, make them want to turn the page to see what is going to happen next, make them angry, inspire them, give them awe, etc. Really cool concept art: creates a feeling of really wanting to see the movie and make the viewer want to see those characters in the movie. Sometimes it is an action that is not resolved until the next page and it makes you want to flip the page to see what happens next. For illustrators, generally the response you want to evoke should be the same for a broad audience. I.e. a scary illustration for a scary book, you want everyone to feel the same way, there is some intent behind it. While for fine art they desired response may be more open and it may be a lot more open to interpretation. Always include a character or some sort of evidence of a character. Don’t make your images merely decorative. Will was giving a portfolio review and the very first image was really nice but it wasn’t telling a story. Sometimes as an artist you will make these “pinnacle pieces” that are better than anything else you’ve done. If you are trying to build a portfolio to do children’s book work, you don’t want to lead with a piece that isn’t telling a story. What are you saying to a potential client? Why the need for a character? Even if it’s a landscape it could be a castle in the distance, or a rusty car in the corner. It is almost like we are programmed to look for people and stories. If there is no character or evidence of a character it is hard to connect with the image, it just seems like a travel photograph. When there is a “character” like a rusty car it gets us to be involved in the story and it helps the viewer start to become involved with the story. An image of a snowscape is one type of scene vs. a snowscape with footprints in the snow. Use small details to add more depth to your images. Use small details to add more storytelling depth to your images. If Jake is drawing a character he will try and give a character a quirky addition to their outfit, or they are riding something interesting, or if they are riding a horse they are carrying something behind them, etc. Why do little details help to tell a story? They add character depth. Those little details tell a lot about the character and become very character building. All details are an extension of the character.If you look at a brand new neighborhood most of the houses look about the same and have very little character. They look like Monopoly pieces. However, if you look at that same neighborhood 50 years later you will have a very different experience. Fast forward 50 years, the houses will have all sorts of details that tell a story about the people who live there, the houses and all of their details have become extensions of the characters that live there. All of the details point to the character and tell a lot about them. Beginners often are resistant to using reference. It is an acquired skill to spend more time preparing for an illustration. Doing research before diving in and cranking out an illustration. Will used to have that disease and would just sit down and bust out an illustration in a couple of hours. I.e. Will saw a student’s illustration where there was this street corner, with a more contemporary car by a bus stop but it had a bench that was totally made up out of the student’s head. It didn’t look like any bench Will had seen before. It totally took Will out of the image and became a distraction.If you are draw a bench in a park, you could look at different periods of time or places and draw a bench that would feel accurate with the story that you want to tell.Lack of details can distract from the story. You don’t have to be a slave to your reference and copy it exactly. But let it inform your work. If you are trying to develop your own style, then make sure that all of the parts of your image match and feel like they are in the same world. You don’t want everything to feel informed and then have this wonky bench that doesn’t seem to fit in. You can’t make up an entire universe that has no reference point for the viewer. Lee illustrated this book called, Arctic White and the whole book is in a more rural setting with animal pelts, dogs, and bobsleds etc. and it’s about this girl who gets sick of the greys of her world and wants to see more color. Lee feels like when he introduced the new colors in the story he used the wrong color pallette and it felt like it was from WalMart and the colors were too bright and saturated, he wishes he had used colors that felt a little more natural, like ground up pigments, and that would fit in that world better. Look at the details in your piece and see if any of the details are detracting from the image or enhancing the image. Avoid the climax.You never want to show the actual climax. Your illustration should be something happening right before the climax or something that is happening right afterwards.I.e. a kid running down the sidewalk and he falls and trips on a stick. Do you show the kid tripping and his knee scraping on the ground? Or the kid running about to hit the stick and you can imply what will happen? Or show a broken stick and the kid on the ground crying? Which has the most storytelling power? Our April Art Contest is focused on that: “The moment before” The sequel to a book Will illustrated, Bonaparte Falls Apart, is Bonaparte Plays Ball, and in this story there is a part where he hits a homerun. Do you want to show the ball hitting the bat or the ball having already been hit?It’s actually boring to see the ball hitting the bat.You want to show the before or after, “Is he going to hit a homerun?” Or “Oh! He hit a homerun!” In terms of playing with the moment, Lee likes to think of the different sounds or level of activity that come with it. Whether something is quiet or loud. When you are thinking of pacing or if you are leading up to an action you can think of the different levels of “sound” that your images have. You can think about if you want your image to be loud or more quiet. Right before an action there is a heightened sense of potential energy, but it is still more quiet. i.e. someone lighting a fuse of dynamite.The actual explosion of the dynamite, is a loud moment.The aftermath, it’s more quiet again.You can think of the story and it’s pacing and what each moment need.You want to have moments of quiet balanced with the louder moments. You want to have the reader fill in the gaps.What to leave out is just as important as what you leave in. i.e. The Road Runner cartoons: a lot of action is just implied and not shown. So much of animation is anticipation.So much of what the Coyote does is just planning and scheming and building up the anticipation.You can build up anticipation and make the viewer start to wonder what is going to happening? You want to leave some things to imagination. Use composition and point of view.Think about worm’s eye view or bird’s eye view, they both have different emphasis, one makes things look large, the other makes things look small. The worst point of view to use is the mushy middle. Not at eye level, not at birds eye view, etc. When we are floating 12 feet above the ground looking down on something and it doesn’t feel intentional. You are the director, you get to decide where the camera is facing. David Hohn and Lee give a teacup and teapot assignment where students have to create 50 different images all playing with the camera and point of view. After the first 20 the students have to start becoming creative and that’s when the best stuff comes out. POV: Point of View. Compositionally, you can create an image where there is a visual hierarchy. Maybe there is an image with an initial focal point but then after seeing that there is a second or third layer of the composition that you then can notice.I.e. Illustration of a deserted island with volcano erupting (first read), and then after further looking at the image you see villagers escaping to boats, and all of these other details, building a wall to help slow down lava, etc. Give your viewer something to explore. Add details that your viewer will find the more they look at and explore the illustration. Add details or sometimes hidden things, where as they look at the image they want to explore it more. In Bonaparte Falls Apart, the main character is a skeleton, and there are lots of other scary characters like Blacky Widow.When they introduce Blacky Widow (she’s a black widow) Will tried to add spiderweb motifs to the furniture. And it gives the viewer something to look like other than the action. Where’s Waldo: it’s completely designed for exploration. Don’t be afraid to add those types of details to your illustration. Lee read this book, based off of A Christmas Carol but it’s all mice and everything is made out of things that mice would use, he read this to his son a few times, and it wasn’t until he had read it a few times that he noticed that the human version of the story was taking place in the background at the same time. Sometimes the detail is just fun stuff, sometimes it’s essential stuff. One time details weren’t clear in the text so Lee had to try and add details in the illustration to help make the story more clear. Little Critters books: there’s like a spider or some sort of bug in every illustration. Richard Scarry does it too, it’s the gold bug. Use Lighting to tell the story.How can you use lighting to tell the story? Just by changing the time of day that totally changes the illustration. If someone is running through the forest during the middle of the day, it’s one thing but if you change it to them running through the forest during the middle of the night, it’s completely different. Lee does a lot with time of day and seasonal cues but not so much with lighting or distinct light and shadow now.Will did this illustration of an attic. But then he lit it as if there was a little beam of light coming through the window and just by adding a beam of light it hit 5 different objects and it told a different story because of the objects it was emphasizing. The place with the highest contrast usually becomes the focal point, unless you have a spot of super saturated color that might stand out more. The highest contrast point becomes the focal point. Show something impossible that couldn’t happen becoming a reality.MC Escher’s crazy drawings. Lee likes to do illogical solutions for logical problems. Guy Billout: does something unexpected in each piece. Always ask self, Why am I drawing this piece? How can I make this interesting? If it’s not interesting draw more thumbnails until it is. There needs to be interest to it or some sort of storytelling. Lee tries to do something that is unexpected in each piece. There has to be some sort of hook to it, whether it is in the environment, etc. In SummaryHow to tell a story with your art:Every image spurs a question in your viewer.Every image should elicit an emotional response in the viewer.Always include a character or some evidence of a character.Use small details to add more depth to your images.Don’t show the climax, focus on the before or the after.Use composition and point…

Full show notes at the publisher

Work / Life Balance Apr 24, 2019

Show notes

3PP 27, Work/Life Balance SVSLearn.com Just a reminder this podcast is sponsored entirely by SVSLearn.com.This is the place to be if you want to become a children’s book illustrator. We have 80+ courses apart of our subscription, we also have a few 5-10 week long interactive courses that will be starting up in May. We are running a 7 day free trial right now and you can try it out and see if you like it. We are starting to record our podcast as a video and will be uploading it to Youtube. Work/Life Balance Our topic today is Work/ Life Balance. We have gotten a lot of people asking us about this and we’ve talked about this before on our old webinar, which was the precursor to this podcast, hopefully we will be able to address it from a few different angles today.This is something that everyone is concerned with and it affects all of us each day. The Basics of Establishing a Work/Life BalanceWe were thinking about going over what to do with your time once you have established a work/life balance, but we wanted to start with the basics of establishing a work/life balance and share some experiences from different phases of our lives. We thought that starting with the basics would be beneficial. Is it possible to always have work/life balance?No. There are some phases that aren’t going to have as great of a work/life balance. When Lee was at Art Center, it was like boot camp, he was doing art from the second he woke up to the second he went to sleep, and he didn’t have good working methods back then which may have helped alleviate some of that.There were other phases where the balance was skewed, i.e. having a baby. Balance is not the norm but there are ups and downs and ebbs and flows and rhythms to our work/life balance.There are times for more work/life balance.Life is everything besides work: Spending time with family, with your spouse or significant other, exercise, recreation, playing games, etc. Learn to Do Hard ThingsWill has noticed that for a lot of young people, including one of his children, that they struggle to do really hard things. When Will was young he participated in Boy Scouts, and for that he was in an axe competition that took all day chopping down trees till his hands were bleeding. Probably one of the hardest experiences he had was when he hiked a mountain in the winter time starting at 5am and they didn’t set up camp till 5pm. Experiences like that, where you push yourself and your body to the limit, it makes other things pale in comparison and seem less difficult.Some people don’t have hard experiences like that to build on. Things that might seem easy to some seem impossible to them.However, compared to others throughout the history of the world, Will has never done a full days work in his life. There are kids today, who have really never worked a day in their lives. Lee was teaching a painting class and students were commenting on how they had spent 6 or 8 hours on their master copy painting, but when he was in school that was just the start most of his would take around approximately 12 hours long. That was the norm. Nowadays we lean towards that instant gratification mindset and 5 hours can seem like forever. If we change our mindset on how long we think something should take it can change our whole attitude towards the project. Work/life Balance is not a balance so much as it is more like an ebb and flow. There are times where you need to put everything into work, there are times of life and times of the year, or the project, during those times your life becomes the work. There are other times in life where you need to focus more on family and on friendships and it’s okay to hold back on work some to focus on those most important things, maybe you just had a baby, or got married, or had a death in the family, etc. There is a way to have that ebb and flow day to day as well.The main rule is: be present wherever you are at and in whatever you are doing. When you are at work, be 100 percent at work. When you are with your family, don’t be on your phone, be 100 percent present. Jake’s mom just passed away and that is one of those personal experiences that we will all experience in our lives. Jake went and visited her before she passed and had a really special time taking care of her, talking with her, and holding her hand. He came back to Utah and her condition was worsening. He had some rough days, and had been planning on going to Emerald City Comic Con and he was debating if he should go or stay in case he needed to go back to Arizona for his mom. Jake’s mom wasn’t the type of person who wanted to cause too many waves and wouldn’t want to get in the way of family or work. She was really cool about stepping back. Jake’s sister told Jake to go and that if there was an emergency they would fly him out. He went to the event and did his best despite the undercurrent of sadness and thoughts about his mom. He tries to be present and do his best wherever he is. Work With Intensity and Focus in All Categories of Your LifeIt’s a conscious choice, I’m here and I’m working. It’s a very important thing to think about and to apply to every part of your life.Learning art can be overwhelming. There is this undercurrent to art, that you should be working all the time. 21:42While in his early 20’s Lee’s Dad got Cancer at a young age: 54 years old. Lee was living in California and his dad was in Nashville. Lee had a lot of friends in Nashville and he was trying to schedule a time to go out there to visit his father but also be able to see his friends and get the most bang for his buck from the trip. Sadly, his dad passed away when Lee was en route to see him, and that is Lee’s one regret. Time is so precious. Lee and his wife, Lisa, took his 8 year old son out of school for a few days just to go on a trip with him, and he really just wants to treasure his time with him. Nikola Tesla, and Steve Jobs they would wear the same outfit everyday so they didn’t have to waste any time thinking of what they were going to wear.Will has always wanted to get to the point where he realizes that time is short and that time is really so precious. We have that luxury some with being an artist where we are passionate about what we are doing. Some other jobs where you just clock in and out feel like you are just selling 8 hours of your life to that company. When you are creating your own art and you are getting better, and you are inventing yourself as an artist etc. That should become your “video game.” So many people get so addicted to games that they schedule it to where nothing else in the world will interrupt their game time. There are times as an artist where it needs to interrupt your pleasure time. The better you get the more fun it becomes, then you are able to start realizing the dreams you have. The work you put down on paper starts to mimic the vision you had. It becomes more fun when you are able to visualize something and then create it. It becomes a lot more fun when you are able to get past worrying so much about your technique. That’s an important part of work life balance, when you don’t struggle with the technique anymore and it becomes just the vision of what you are trying to say. Struggling with technique doubles your time on any individual piece. Once that goes away, then you are off to the races really quick! Jake’s Phases of Work/Life Balance.Teens: All about have experiences and drawing.Twenties: Got married and had kids, worked to master his craft. It was all: Family, work, family, work. Not much time for friends, health, or hobbies. That’s where he got really good at his style, finding tools he liked, exploring a lot of different things, etc. He experimented a lot: messed around with modeling, animation, comics, storyboarding.Thirties: Refining. He had mastered a lot of these things now it was time to pick one path, and zero in on getting better with his health and family. Also to put into practice those things so you can go on your own path. Children's books, and comics, and freelance. Getting into a position to where you can do your own thing. Started SVS.Forties: simplifying even more. Had a little more time for health and family. Now it’s Planning his trajectory to where he can do things like Will: stop working in the afternoon, and do something for his health/ a hobby for a couple of hours, and then spend the evenings with family. There are different phases that you go through. There will be some ebb and flow. Try and plan for it. Do things that will help give you that life balance. Don’t think you can maintain a constant. Be present and lean into your free time and lean into your work when you need to. Different things that help give us work/life balance. Lower Your Monthly Expenses Lowering your expenses is so much easier than making more money.If you have a full time job and you do that for 8-10 hours a day, and then you want to work on illustration at night and want to also spend quality time with your family. It can be difficult. There are only so many hours in the day.For example, if you can cut your expenses to where you don’t have to work full time but can work part time, then you can spend those hours you gained back working on your craft.Getting your financial life in order is a worthy pursuit. Start investigating it.A couple of things to check out: Dave Ramsey has a great podcast. This really got Lee started on wanting to be debt free.In the US you can have so much credit. Too much, credit, be wise and get out of debt.Lee and his wife were really interested in the the idea of being debt free.Lee’s wife came across a website called, Mr. Money Mustache which is all about penny pinchers to the extreme. For most of us, ultimately, we don’t like to work. Over at Mr. Money Mustache, those guys focus on early retirement, how to get off the treadmill.This got Lee and his wife thinking, is it possible to do this?So they started looking at where they spent their money. Some of it was ridiculous and easy to cut out immediately. Fast forward 8 or 9 years later from that point, they’re debt free. Which has made a massive difference. Now Lee can do what he wants to now. He still needs some money but it’s just so much different with how he feels about work. It’s just not as intense. They now fully owns their house, 100%. They have a renter and now they are making a profit. The difference between now and before is about $3000. Before he was having to spend $2200 now he doesn’t spend anything and he gets a rent income of $1400 a month.Lee’s our inspiration. When you are in a financial bind it’s really difficult.Will and his wife went through a time when they were not the best with their money and had a financial meltdown. He got to the point where he was waiting on some checks and he had to break into a coin jar he had collected to get money for gas and groceries, Will also had a big jar of pennies and they had to break into that jar to get some groceries: a bag of potatoes, bread, and a gallon of milk, etc. You shop differently when you’re in a situation like that; all while waiting for that check. Lee’s in a really good financial situation. Lee doesn’t come from money. He had no help, loans, gifts, no big inheritance.Their first home was 1 bedroom, 1 bath. He had a stated income loan. He is a success story from the time of the Great Recession. They were responsible with money. They didn’t buy a home that they couldn’t afford but just barely got in under the wire. Jake was working at Blue Sky, working full time in the animation industry, making a healthy 6 figure a year income. He liked it but what he really wanted to do was to be independent, to work out of his home office, doing the projects he wanted to do. But he knew that if he did that he would take a drastic pay cut for years until he could build it up and get enough work and things going to match that. His wife said, we can’t live here in Connecticut where you have to have 6-figure income to afford the houses here.So they decided to move to Provo, UT, which, at the time, all of the housing prices there were just dropping. They found this foreclosed home, the yard was trashed, the inside was trashed and they got it for a great price.Their house has never been a financial burden to them. It has made a huge difference in the amount of work that they had to take on, and it’s been a big blessing to them in the work life balance that Jake’s been able to find, for the past 8 years that they’ve been living in that house. Be sure to buy a house that you can comfortably afford. Don’t spread yourself and your finances too thin. Back to Lee: He and his wife started thinking about becoming debt free during a time when the idea seemed extremely outrageous. They had bought that first home (1 bedroom, 1 bath) with no down payment and now they had just taken on a $225,000 loan. Lee had barely any income. They bought this home in an area that was transitioning from being a dangerous place to becoming more gentrified.Lee didn’t know how to do any home repair, so he went to Home Depot and got that orange book that teaches you how to do all home repairs. He redid all of the electrical, flooring, tiling, plumbing, they even tore out a plaster ceiling, etc. He was illustrating books by day and renovating his home by night. Lee noticed his neighbors were moving and he offered to buy their house, with no money. So they sold their 1 bedroom house and made a profit. Then they bought that other house and had a higher mortgage but still wanted to become debt free. He was a broken record back then about wanting to be debt free and all of his friends told him it was impossible.Lisa’s grandparents had passed away and left an old beat up home. Lee and Lisa went and lived there for free in exchange for fixing it up. They rented their new home out to pay the mortgage on that home. They lived in their grandparents old home for free while his renters paid for their mortgage.This gave them a taste for renting your house out. They started to make these huge sacrifices and huge strides to living debt free. They started renting their house out on Airbnb whenever they went on vacation. The other thing is you need to get debt free is to live somewhere affordable. You will have a hard time if you live in Portland or somewhere extremely expensive as an artist and expect to get debt free. They moved out of Portland to Nashville which isn’t super cheap but much more affordable than Portland. They spent 5 years getting ready to do that. They ended up buying a third home and spent 5 years fixing that home up getting ready to sell it. Lee spent 12 years, in total, fixing up houses. It took them those last 5 years to prepare to make the move to Nashville. Lowering your expenses takes effort. You may have to move, you may have to shift things around, you may have to lower your standard of living, you may have to get roommates. But if you lower how much you have to make, your time will expand. How do you feel today about having to take a job vs. the beginning of your career? At the beginning of Will’s career he took everything that came in, he took all jobs. There were a lot of jobs he took in that he hated and didn’t want to do.Now Lee takes jobs now that move him emotionally and creatively. He doesn’t take jobs for the money now. It’s vastly different.You go through different stages in your career.In the beginning Lee also would take everything, not just for the money, but for the exposure, “I need to be published.” You’ve got to have some credibility of working as a pro and meeting with art directors etc. You have to go through that grind.As you get better technically, the jobs become more rewarding. As you go further along in your career and don’t have to take those jobs that don’t match up with what you want to do, as well. So this is a career that just becomes more and more rewarding as you go through it. If you are in a position to provide for your family or…

Full show notes at the publisher

How to Become a Better Children's Book Artist Apr 11, 2019

Show notes

How to Become A Better Children’s Book Artist We want to go over some questions that Will has been emailed about that all revolve around the general topic of: How to become a better children’s book artist. As a children’s book artist, do you have to speak and if so to what capacity? Will got this email from a student who got a literary agent last summer and who was wondering if publishers require illustrators to do school visits and publishing conferences. Essentially they are afraid of speaking and were wondering: As an illustrator, do you have to speak? Will used to be petrified of speaking, it probably doesn’t seem like that now because he has a Youtube channel, and speaks at conferences, and now it’s no big deal to him. However, before his heart would pound like crazy just thinking of an upcoming speaking engagement, if he had to speak or teach at church or in school. Maybe some of you also feel that way. Do you really have to speak and if so to what capacity?Jake has done 15 or so books through publishers and he has done school visits for 1 book in particular and it was completely optional. They asked if he would be willing to do it. He went to 6 different schools and didn’t know how much it actually helped his book sales? Ultimately, he doesn’t know how effective it is. You shouldn’t worry about it or let it hinder you from pursuing a career in children’s books. Maybe if it’s apart of your business plan and you are visiting 50 schools a year and you have a line of books to offer for sale, then it might be much more effective. There are some people who do this and they make a lot of money from it. If you go out of state and visit 5 or 6 schools and line them all up and coordinate it so it works out then you can stack a bunch of schools next to each other. Some people will finish a book and then spend the whole next year doing school visits. Once they were trying to get an illustrator to come and do a video with SVS, and he said no and the reason he said no was really really smart, and Lee thinks about this all of the time now. The reason he said no was “because he would come film a 2 to 3 hour video, but it would take a month or two to get ready for it, with rehearsing it, practicing it, writing the course, it takes so much time to prep it and he has learned that he doesn’t have the capacity to do that sort of stuff. Now Lee tends to fall along that line now when he is asked to speak at a SCBWI Conference etc. it’s exhausting and it zaps all of his creative energy out of him. So for Lee, it’s a mixed bag for him. If you take 2 months to prepare a presentation and you can give that same presentation 50 or 100 times then it really pays off and is worth it. But if it’s for a one time or two time presentation it may not be worth it. David Biedrzycki and Jerry Palada do school visits all of the time.So maybe we’re not directly answering the question but these are all different ways to consider speaking and the benefits of it.Average payment for a day is about $1500 and so if you do a few days in a row it can really add up pretty quickly.For David, his wife does all of his booking, hotels, and airfare. And he is now going back to some schools that he went to a few years ago. Publishers like it and want to work with someone like that. It takes away almost all of the risk because if they are doing so many trips, the publisher should be able to at least sell the amount to break even. These guys make a lot of money. How about speaking at bookstores? You have to decide who you are. Some people love to travel and know how to work while they are out and they can keep their routine. It seems like a really lopsided investment and you don’t get much out of it. Lee, works on a book and then it comes out six months later and he is already on to the next thing and he doesn’t want to stop all of that. The thing is book stores typically don’t pay, but schools do. So you’re paying to go and sign books and it’s not very profitable.It’s really hard to make them worth the time. You might sell 10 books in 2 hours and with your royalty of 50 or 75 cents a book, you might make $7. Book signings work for the famous but not so much for the up and coming person. Why You Should Learn To Speak Publically If you do this job and you start to get work, at some point you will be asked to speak publically. So should you? Yes you should, at least learn to be comfortable speaking. Take classes or do a workshop to learn to speak publically. You will be asked to speak publically, or you’ll be asked to teach, or you’ll be asked to present, we get those offers all the time. How to get good at it? Start saying yes to every opportunity where you can. Will used to be that guy that hated it. Will could barely speak when he was chosen as illustrator of the year for the California Teachers Association, and he had to go around giving speeches and he gave a speech in front of 1000 people in a ballroom and that was 10 years ago and he was so nervous beforehand but now today he has spoken so much since then that it doesn’t even phase him anymore. One nice thing about this profession is you can use visuals and you don’t have to worry so much about people staring at you while you are talking.The best advice is the advice that makes you a better person in the end, it’s what makes you more experienced and more capable.So if public speaking is not your strong point, then do whatever you need to do to learn how to feel comfortable with it.Believe in your work and take jobs that there is a passion there for. You see these people who are terrified of speaking but they are passionate about the work they do and so they push themselves to share that with others.Maybe you aren’t passionate about puppy dogs and you did a book about puppy dogs, but maybe you are passionate about creativity and how a kid could grow up to become a creative artist. A lot of kids have roadblocks of parents or teachers saying that art isn’t a real job, and you speaking to them can become a driving force to help you overcome those fears.Being a creative person, being someone who can draw for a living is such a rare privilege and is unlike any other job. You Create and You Share Part of that is to promote yourself and promote your work, your style, and your stories.Somebody needs to hear your message.Nobody is gonna hear it if you don’t start sharing yourself.There is a person in you who is good at public speaking. You need to have faith in yourself. Really good book:Perennial Seller: The Art of Making Work That Lasts1st half of the book: How to make a book that stands the test of time, that isn’t dated in 10 years, how to create something that is interesting now and in 30 years.2nd half is about how to market the book and get it into the hands of the people who want to read it. Jake read the book last year and marked it all up, and flipping through it right now there are a lot of great things.The book applies to anyone who creates work, it’s not focused on children’s books but there is so much that still applies. If you get invited to speak, have some sort of takeaway that you want the audience to leave with.Lee had a graduate school program and they had tons of artists come and speak but it doesn’t mean it was all effective.Some would just show art and have pretty meaningless commentary to go with it.Have a specific topic or point you want to make and then have a series of images to show that topic and teach about it.Tell stories about yourself, as humans we are interested in learning more about each other and we love hearing personal stories.Will’s best talk he ever gave was speaking to almost 300 librarians, and he was told 9 months in advance about the presentation, and he kept a Google doc and he didn’t panic or anything but instead anytime an idea came to his head he would jump on his phone and jot it down on the Google doc. This helped him get all of his ideas down leading up to the speaking engagement. His speech was all about “I was that kid”, he showed how he wasn’t the best student and how we shouldn’t write off these kids that are problems, because some of them are really creative and some of them are being forced into the school system. He spoke for an hour. Will sold a ton of books. Don’t be afraid of speaking, if you do it a lot, you’ll get good at it. Anything you do a lot you can get good at it. How to Draw Women Respectfully Another email Will got was in response to a “3rd Thursday” a while back which was the precursor to this podcast. In it, Shannon shared how she was thinking about the issue that you they brought up that men struggle to draw females because they don’t want to sexualize them and they don’t want to over emphasize typical female features. There is a big problem with the way that women are depicted. There are so many people doing “sexy” versions of classic characters. And the thing is those people get famous from it.There was this artist who draws really sexualized characters and got chewed out online for it.There is this endless appetite for it from consumers and artists and we can’t stand it. Jake’s approach: he has a mom, sisters, a wife, and daughters, He doesn’t want to ever disrespect them. His test is, if I would be okay with any of these people wearing the outfit that I’m drawing then I’m okay to draw it.Don’t shy away from the female figure, there isn’t just one female figure there are 100 different female figures. He will approach it from, “Who is this character?” What does she need to accomplish? What about her image will backup and support her personality and her role in the story? He will start with the personality and then will work from the inside out. How do you draw a female character and make her look feminine without making her look sexualized?For drawing children it’s super easy, he just beefs up the eyelashes a little more and then he draws her wearing clothes that look female, when he drops off his children at school he looks at what kids are wearing and thinks of what outfits look feminine and more masculine and then he will dress his characters accordingly.If it’s an older women she will have hips, and a chest, not as broad of shoulders, any genetic thing that shows that this is a female and not a male he will try and put that into his designs. Lee had a great figure drawing class where they would have both a male and a female model take the same pose and instead of focusing on the obvious differences in anatomy, they focused on the more nuanced differences in their gestures. The more subtle things.I.e. A man in a neutral pose, arms will typically round to the outside. A women standing in that same position, typically her elbows will go in and her lower arms will go out. It is a distinctly different silhouette just based on what their arms were doing. In every pose there was always a subtle difference or separation in how males or females carry weight and balance and all of that stuff. So if you can lean on those other things then it helps it become a lot more believable. Before puberty we all have pretty similar body types. There are some tricks that you can use to add to either the femininity or masculinity of your children characters. Will adds thicker lashes when drawing his female characters. He also sometimes uses a little bit more round or soft shapes for his female characters and uses some more boxy or square shapes for his male characters. This is a political topic. As illustrators we are faced with drawing all sorts of characters. Male characters, female characters, young and old characters, animals etc. When you are going down the street you notice what makes someone look more feminine or masculine.If it’s a female character then you need to make her look like a female character. If you’re drawing a male character you need to make him look like a male character.There is a lot of crossover, there are some female characters that have some features that would traditionally be considered more masculine, and vise versa.You really need to be really respectful of that particular character and portraying that character the very best you can. Jake did this ABC book about apples and there was a lot of grey area in the story. He wanted to avoid the whole issue of making sure that there was enough girls and boys, and that there was the right level of diversity among characters and he just made all of the characters animals. It took away a lot of stress and helped him develop the story and push his designs more and he was able to get some great portfolio pieces from it.One of the through lines was that the pig got to eat whatever he wanted and the bear was on a diet. It was a lot more fun, interesting, playful, and kid friendly.It is a proven technique, drawing animals can help you not have to worry so much about some of those other sensitive topics. How to Create Emotional Images The third question we’d like to address came from another message Will got which was about, “What makes an image emotional?” Sometimes we over focus on rendering and miss the emotion. Will just finished a class with Brian Aijar, and one of the things that struck him was that the students did great work but one of the things that they were weak on was coming up with a strong story for their piece. Instead sometimes it was a story fragment. They might say,” The idea for this one is that the person is looking off to the side… that’s the story.” But, why?Another issue was that sometimes they would have things in the illustration that were confusing or distracted from the story. We would be giving critiques but didn’t know what the illustrator was trying to say. Have a Complete Story Idea The way to start to convey emotion in your piece is to have a complete story idea. Sometimes you can still overdo that and try to tell too much story with your image. It needs to be a clear illustration. Here’s an example of a good story: Someone’s walking down the stairs and they are holding a huge birthday cake and you see at the bottom of the stairs child’s blocks, roller skates, or a ball, something they are about to step on. That is a complete story idea. You could show that story at beginning or middle or end. You could show them about to step on the ball, you could show them slipping and the cake going up in the air, or you could show the aftermath with the skate next to them and looking at it you could completely figure out what the illustration is is all about. So in order to convey a human emotion or make your piece feel emotional and have someone to relate to it, you have to tell a story that everyone has experienced. But we have a hard time relating to a story fragment, like someone looking over their shoulder. With a story fragment you are asking more questions than you are answering. Intent David Hohn and Lee are teaching an illustration class right now. One of the big things they push is that students include keywords with their sketches. They want to know the intent of the piece. Too often, if students haven’t trained this way or just draw without thinking then there is no intent. We frame it all on if they are hitting those keywords/their intent, or not.I.e. You say you want this to be scary, but it doesn’t look scary and now let’s go over why, and we will go over the design of the piece, the gestures, the characters, etc. But without knowing that intent then there is no driving force. Learn How to Tell a Joke Learn how to tell a joke. Not just creating jokes out of thin air, but go find jokes and learn how to tell them. Learn the setup, learn the meat of the joke, learn the payoff. So much is going on there, jokes are just mini stories. The more you do that the more it translates over into your work and you aren’t satisfied drawing a character just looking to the left, but you want to know what drives that character.The main thing is, a joke teaches you to establish a character, establish a problem, establish a situation, establish an environment t…

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How to Make an Impact With Your Art Mar 28, 2019

Show notes

How to Make and Impact in the World With Your Art. What work have you done, that has had the most impact in the world? Meaningful Lessons Will doesn’t write the children’s books that he has illustrated but he feels like he really is able to bring a lot to the table with his art and is able to make the stories more clear. One of those books is Bonaparte Falls Apart, and he is working on the sequel right now and it has an anti bullying theme that is not overt, in that the story holds up on its own. He loves and enjoys working on them and because the Bonaparte books have sold really well, even though the second hasn’t come out yet, the publisher has hinted that there may be a third book. Pretty much every kid experiences bullying and even the kids who are bullies probably get bullied at home. It’s really an important message to help kids become empowered and overcome and deal with those emotions in a positive way and overcome. The Frances books have a kid who is a bully in them. Will had an epiphany reading those books because he used to tease his sisters and sometimes he was a bully; in one of the Frances books he remembers that the sister goes off and is crying because of her brother’s bullying and it really tugged at his heartstrings and must have been pretty impactful because he can still remember that experience now over 50 years later. He realized that he was the bad guy in the story and it really changed him. It was a children’s book that taught him that lesson. I don’t think that you can quantify the impact of your art. Sometimes it’s hard for us to remember where we have shared things and if we have shared stories before, so we apologize if we keep sharing some of the same things. Gentle Reminders Lee feels that where he has made the most difference, it was probably not with his books, instead he feels like it is the connection that he has been able to make with his one off images. Sometimes it’s a momentary thing and he strikes some inspiration and creates a fun print, and then he goes to art fairs to sell them.One time, Lee was getting ready to close at an art fair when there was this woman who came to his booth and one of Lee’s prints caught her eye and she was holding it up looking at it. Lee was waiting for her to leave so that he could tear down his booth but he noticed that she had tears running down her face, she was crying, he wondered what he had done or what he should do. She was looking at this picture of this girl swinging really high on a swing hanging down from a tree. She shared that her sister had died when she was young and that she liked to swing just like that. Lee gave her a hug and she was just bawling and he gave her a print. It was just such a personal connection and one of the most powerful moments of his career. That’s just one experience.On a more consistent basis, when doing art fairs, older people will come to his booth and they will stop and look around, and have this starry look in their eyes. One time this lady said, “I remember this”, not speaking of one piece in particular, they were talking about the feeling of being young. It wasn’t just one image or just one book, but the overall impression of Lee’s work.Lee gets these ideas and likes to make images and are fun, whimsical, and capture a moment. He has seen that happen a lot, with older people coming to his booth and it gives them this shot of something they may have forgot and they leave smiling. Unanticipated Impact One of the things that Jake did that inadvertently had an impact on the world was start an art challenge called Inktober.He didn’t set out trying to make an impact on the world but he gave himself this challenge to try and get better at his craft. He easily could have said, “I’m just going to do this challenge in ink and you guys can follow along.” However, instead he decided to make it a challenge and he invited other people to participate if they wanted to and he made some parameters or rules for the challenge: you draw an ink drawing every day for the month of October and share it online. What started out as a single person doing a self improvement art challenge turned into thousands and thousands of people.He gets so many emails every year from people sharing how it has helped their creativity; it gets people drawing for themselves again, a lot of professionals share that they draw so much for work and Inktober helped them draw for themselves and remember the fun in drawing; people show how they improved so much from doing this and got better as an artist; others share how they got all of these new followers because they showed up and posted consistently on Instagram.Jake had no idea what he was starting. He is trying to actively promote it more and participate more and try to make it more accessible for others.He’s done childrens books, graphic novels, worked on animated films, but everyone views him as the Inktober guy. At first, he thought, “No, i’m so much more.” But now he accepts it and if that is his legacy or how he is known, then that’s great. What work have you done that has had the most impact on one other person, not the world, but one other person?13:00Success leads to Success Will: We have all been very fortunate. You have one success, and it leads to more success. Pareto Distribution A small amount of people setting out to do the thing that they set out to do and they experience success. It’s not from talent, its from getting little successes along the way and building off of those. Will got started with editorial but now that market has dried up a lot. He would tell his students, “You can’t follow the path I was on, the water washed away the path.”We’ve probably had a lot of situations where we have helped someone and had someone come up and share a testimonial of how we have helped him.The one that has been especially meaningful to him is that a handful of times he has been at a comic convention and had someone come up and say, “I have a booth over there.” They would continue to share how the reason they have a booth is because they watched Will’s youtube series on doing comic conventions. Will’s Youtube Channel Will shared his experience with his first comic convention along with all of the failures, finances, disappointments, and successes he experienced when breaking into the con scene. He really documented his experience, both his failures and successes.It is so rewarding to hear, “You changed my life, I’m here because of you.” It’s so rewarding, and the internet magnifies our ability to have a positive impact in the lives of others. Doing what we do as teachers, we get a lot of emails sharing successes. Fairly frequently we get emails saying, “I got an agent”, “I got my first book deal”, it is so nice to hear of these successes and please keep sending us those emails and keeping us updated. We also get an email once a week or every other week talking about this podcast. Success begets success. It makes it easier to be successful when you have successes along the way. What separates us from other artists just beginning their career is just the time that we’ve been doing this. I really do feel like anyone that sets their mind to anything, almost anything, can accomplish that thing. I mean you can’t grow and become an NBA player if you’re short. (however, that didn’t stop Spud Webb) But there are so many things that you do have control over. I think that the thing people are battling today more than anything, if you are listening and wondering if you really can make an impact in the world with your art, the answer is that you can and you will, but you have to be willing to make sacrifices. Especially early those sacrifices are painful but later on they aren’t as bad and you are able to have more of a work life balance. Keep Working At It For Lee and his books, he likes the books that he has done, but he hasn’t had the impact that he wants to on his audience yet. He feels he hasn’t done the book he was born to do yet, that is what drives him to write, and he is turning down a lot of offers, and he feels guilty doing so but he hasn’t done the book that he really wants to offer to the world yet.That’s his “First world problem” Why you don’t want to do the thing that you have set up your life to do.Over time your career becomes more and more specific. Early on in your career: someone could ask you to paint a window, work on editorial, or on books, but now, for Lee, it has become so much more specific. You might not set out to be that specific but it’s where your career takes you. What work have you done that has had the most impact on you, personally? For Will working on fanart has been a game changer. It changed the style that he does even in his children’s books, the book series he is doing right now is based off of the style he developed from working on fan art. Will before fan art: Over illustrated. This has been an evolution/maturing process, before his priorities were misplaced. Lee could add a lot more detail and rendering but he chooses not to. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Will would have editors tell him his color stuff was cool but did he have anything else, they were basically telling him that he was putting too many colors in, and was emphasizing things that didn’t need to be emphasized. It made him really reevaluate. He went to comic con and realized that that’s what every artist does they try to really hit you over the head with a lot of color, and he didn’t want to fit in. He wanted to stand out, and so he thought of a style that would stand out, and it gave him a style he could use for children’s books. Lee was really frustrated in school and right out of school. He had some successes, but he hadn’t found his medium: he tried acrylics, pastel, oil color, and then one day he tried watercolor. Then it was off to the races, and it really started to happen and he didn’t feel like he had to force it. It didn’t happen in one piece but it was a process. It was about discovering the right medium that fit his sensibilities. It was night and day from that point on. Adding Good to the WorldJake’s answer to the most impact on one person question:Jake came up with Missile Mouse, the graphic novel, and he put it out into the world. He was hoping it would be a great success, maybe become a New York Times Best Seller, Pixar love it and it would be made into movies and... It sold fine, but it didn’t have the impact he had wanted it to.One day about a year later he got an email from a woman whose son was really sick and was hospitalized with some illness that you never want a kid to have to go through, she said that the one thing that gave her son pleasure and made him happy was reading the Missile Mouse comic and just wanted to thank Jake for making it and putting it out into the world.That really stopped Jake in his tracks and he realized he was so dumb. It doesn’t matter how worldly successful Missile Mouse or any project you put out there is, so long as it makes someone happy or improves someone’s life to some degree, just one person, that right there can make it successful and worth it. That is one of his stories.Another thing is his Youtube channel. He’ll get emails sharing how they have really helped people. One of the things that Jake created that had the most impact on him?The first real perspective drawing that he did in 7th grade. That was him learning a new technique or principle of art and then sitting down and trying to make this thing the best that he could make it. When he finished the piece he really felt like it was quite stellar, he was amazed that he could create something like that and his art teacher really appreciated it and gave him good marks. He saw that piece going through an old box a few years ago and thought, “Oh my gosh, I was proud of this?” There was nothing special to it.But what it taught him was, he could learn to do art. Art wasn’t just a hobby, this is something you can learn to do and get good at and devote your life to. That piece had a huge impact on Jake. Create Something The reason we have gone over these three questions: 1.What work have you done, that has had the most impact in the world?2.What work have you done that has had the most impact on one other person, not the world, but one other person?3. What work have you done that has had the most impact on you, personally? And the reason we shared them in that order is because there is a common thread between them. The main thing is, and the way that you will ever make an impact is you have to actually make something. You have to create something. It doesn’t have to be awesome, it doesn’t have to be good. Jake’s perspective drawing wasn’t awesome or good, it was okay.It wouldn’t have gotten any likes on Instagram, (maybe a support like from his sister.) The impact can only happen if you create something, if you make something and put it out into the world. Nowadays we have so many resources and ways to share things with the world. The key is:Learn your craft, and share it.Create something, do something, or make something, and share it.Teach people how to do the thing that you’ve learned.Always be engaging with people, asking questions, answering questions, and be apart of the community that you want to be apart of. What you create doesn’t have to be a full graphic novel, It can be a flat piece of artwork like the prints that Will and Lee would sell at art fairs and comic conventions.You can create something that shares a message that you believe in. It can be a story that you want to pass on to people, it can be any sort of medium that you love and want to be apart of. Lee’s Pet Peeve The discount share: “here’s something I made, it’s not that good...”The self deprecating share, where you are putting it down before others have the chance to put it down. It’s not putting your work on the line.It’s the social media disease. So many Youtube videos start with: “This is how I would do it, but you don’t have to do it this way, you might think the way I do it is dumb, it’s just the way that I do it..” It’s all about acting like it doesn’t matter or you just flipped it out and so it doesn’t matter. Instead, say, “here’s the sketch, here’s why I am putting it out there.” The sketch or the painting doesn’t have to be great. You just want to be authentic. We want it to feel authentic, and that you care about what you are sharing, how you feel about what you are sharing and your intent behind sharing it is a lot more important than if it’s awesome. How do you avoid the terrible feeling that comes when someone comments and says it’s bad or not good. The one in a thousand voice. There is a sea of encouragement and that one negative voice can really hurt and stand out from the crowd. Set a goal to be rejected. Lee set a goal to be rejected 50 times by publishers when he was getting started, and it made it not a big deal. “Alright, that’s number 7, on to the next one:)” Maybe set a goal to get 100 negative comments. When starting SVS, we were introduced to Chatbooks which wasn’t an overnight success. Their original concept was you take the best pictures from your phone and you would get scrapbooks made of your best photos sent to you monthly or semi monthly. Basically people take pictures but they only see them online, and the owner was was trying to solve that problem. This guy developed the first generation of chatbooks and people said that it was a great idea and then no one showed up and it flopped, generation 2 came and he got the feedback that it there was too much work involved then generation 3 was him trying to make it as easy as possible. So they automatically print your pictures from your instagram. You have already curated the best photos and periodically they can send you a photo album of your best and favorite photos. It failed twice before they were able to get it right.We have all done things that have failed and it’s the person who keeps going, they are the…

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Roadblocks to Success Mar 13, 2019

Show notes

Have you ever felt stagnant in your life or your career? We all encounter roadblocks and in this episode we go over some very common roadblocks that are encountered by everyone from the most beginning student to the most seasoned pro. We talk about how to get those roadblocks out of your way and how to be great and reach your full potential. Roadblocks to Success We give a lot of critiques to students and also to pros. It’s interesting how many times the same things come up in a critique. That is what we want to talk about today, “Roadblocks to Success.” Lee has seen a lot of the same things happening, not necessarily in an art piece, b in different artist’s growth.What gets in the way? Why don’t people logically improve consistently over time? If you look at an artist’s growth and career it looks like a stock chart with ups and downs. You see some of the same things happen from the most beginning student to the most seasoned pro. We want to talk about those things and how to get those roadblocks out of your way, how to be great and how to reach your potential. Roadblock #1, No clearly defined goals or understanding of where they are going; they are trying to do everything all at once. There are a lot of students who are working really hard but might not be as focused as they could be. They are going to life drawing, doing Inktober, and taking 3 classes in school, they are trying to do everything, or there is the early professional with everything in their portfolio. Art schools are often patterned after the 4 year university curriculum, and they have all of these different skills and classes they require students to take and sometimes it just isn’t set up in the best way possible. You need a target to be shooting for. Sometimes in school we have to do a character design, then a book cover, then a concept piece. You can’t do all things.Lee would have students bring their business cards in and work on branding at the beginning of one of his classes, and students would bring cards up and they would say, “John Smith: Illustration, Concept Design, Storyboarding, Graphic Design, 3D Modeling.” you may have done each of those things but that doesn’t mean that you are able to produce at a professional level in each of those fields.Sometimes that thinking continues after people graduate and they can flounder with their portfolio. They haven’t picked their market yet. Art is very business related. Lee was judging January's SVS Monthly Art Contest just recently and got a great question. There was an honorable mention, for the topic “Big”, and in the illustration the artist (Aleksey Nisenboym) drew these leprechauns or gnomes around this giant glass of beer and they were all knocked out from drinking so much; the illustration was done in a children’s book style and the great question came: “Is this okay for a children’s book portfolio?”This was such a good question because this artist knew the market and target that they wanted to hit. Look at how you can fit in a field. There are two things here: There is focus and there is goals.We sympathize with the young 20 something year old artist who is kind of good at everything, when you are kind of good at everything you could go in any direction that you want.So you tend to try it all out. You try everything, you try some modeling, you do some illustration, some comics, etc.Jake’s advice is: Have fun, try as much as you can, but see where there’s opportunity, and follow that opportunity if it aligns with your goals. If you don’t have a clear goal for where you want to see yourself at age 30 or where you want to see yourself at age 40, then you aren’t going to focus in on the right things.Go out and experience those things and see what you are good at and see what you like, you may not be as good at that thing but if you enjoy it then that could mean a better level of success for you, in the long run. Then lean in on the thing that you like the most, the thing that you’re good at, the thing that you like and the thing that has those opportunities there for you. Jake’s Venn Diagram: What You’re Good At, What You Like to Do, Where the Opportunities Are. How do you figure out what you’re good at?First, do it. Then see how people respond to it. Show it to a mentor, post it online, see how people respond to it. Being good at something you don’t really care for. Lee did a bunch of architectural design to make money, even though he didn’t love it, but then was totally focused on children’s books and was always doing that on the side.Short term goal: pay your rent this month. Long term goal: where do I want to be as an artist in 10 years? Focus Some businesses in Japan have like 100 year business plans (that’s just a ballpark number, it’s some big number like that). We need to do more of that. A lot of artists are kind of just doing their next piece and go from piece to piece not thinking about the underlying reason and how it fits with their portfolio. Sometimes we just go with the flow and draw whatever is most convenient and what we feel like rather than really being deliberate and focused on what we need to do for our portfolio. 11:40Jake has this assistant (Tanner Garlick) and he was going to school and had classwork and part of that is making a portfolio to get a job and part of that is to get a degree. There were these different goals laid out in front of him: graduate and create a portfolio. Tanner worked with me and saw the projects I was doing and he came in one day after we had talked about the Draw 100 Somethings Project... The Draw 100 Somethings project is great at helping younger artists discover their style, and it is a great project for really tapping into your creativity and really flexing your creative muscles. Pick an object where there is room to find variations in it. You don’t want to be too broad though, you want to be specific. You wouldn’t say draw 100 space ships, but maybe it’s 100 single seat fighter jets.It’s not a TIE fighter one day and a star destroyer the next day, but maybe you do 100 different TIE fighters. How many variations of TIE fighters could you design if you did 100 of them?Jake did this project with these little robots, who all had the same face, but they had different bodies and were all meant to do different jobs or tasks.They pushed him creatively and he learned so much from this project. You do the first 20 and you really feel like you are all out of ideas, so you put it on the backburner for a month and then you’ll have another idea that will spark another 10 drawings, and by the time you reach 100 you will have really grown a lot and learned so much about creativity. (Sidenote: Jake ended up doing 200 of those guys.) So Tanner saw this and said that he wanted to do 100 Pirate animals, Jake thought the idea was cool and gave him his stamp of approval. And then as he started working on it and was planning out his year and seeing how he could fit this in, Jake said, “hold on, let’s take a step back for a minute, you have some important goals in front of you. You need to graduate, and you need to get a portfolio that is good enough to get a job. Is this project applicable to those things? Will it help you accomplish those goals?” And his assistant realized that Jake was right, and that working on this project would actually put off him getting his portfolio ready to get a job and would put off him being able to finish assignments in order to graduate. So he took a step back and realized that this wasn’t the time for him to do this and that he could do it later when he had more time to focus on it. So now he has zeroed in on his portfolio and schoolwork, and actually had an interview and accepted a job offer to work at a cool startup studio here in Utah.So it comes down to what is your focus?Just because it is something that you are good at, or interested in, or is fun, doesn’t mean that is the thing you should focus on to achieve your goals. We gravitate towards easy. Some of the things we ask you in this project are not easy. Like what is your focus or what do you need to do for your portfolio, those things are harder and take a lot more thought. While on the other hand doing a Mermay drawing is easy, it is a concrete thing, the subject matter is already spelled out for you, it’s not abstract, you don’t have to worry about it. I’m going to go and do the easy thing, it’s not necessary easy but it is a more concrete and more spelled out and you can veer off of what the path should have been. Sometimes you have to choose the harder right, instead of the easier wrong. Lifestyle and FocusYou can get sidetracked with a different project. There are many sidetrack distractions. I.e. Video games. Downtime is good in moderation.Will has had students who were focused and students who were not focused, and he likes to make analogies to non art people, because they are relatable but maybe not hitting too close to home.Recently Will watched the documentary Free Solo, and in it, Alex Hammel, this incredible rock climber, has spent his whole life climbing and is living in a van (probably down by a river) and that is so he can travel and be closer to the rock faces that he climbs. His dedication to his craft, that pure dedication and what you have to sacrifice is one of the most inspiring things.The documentary is all about his climb of El Capitan, that he climbed without ropes in Yosemite. People in that community are calling it, “the moon landing of rock climbing.”When he started rock climbing, there was no contract saying that if he did this he would get paid. Sometimes as artists we say that we won’t do anything unless we have contracts. Although it is good to set up contracts to protect ourselves.If you are an artist you do need to unwind sometimes. But for most successful artists, they have a period of their lives where their lives were maybe not quite balanced. There are usually a couple of years where you really have to lean into it, it’s not just a 9-5 in the beginning. You have to really sacrifice and “bleed” for your art.This guy, Alex Hammel literally bleeds for his work. Endorsements, and the money all came secondary to the sacrifice. He had the goal and was already doing it before all of that.Prior to doing the Solo climb, he completely removed himself from social media and decided he could not do anything that could become a distraction.Maybe you need to zero in and finish your project and maybe for the next 6 months, it’s only once a week I am going to go out with friends, or once a week watch a movie, or play a video game. And the rest of the time it’s eat, sleep, and draw. If you go to a skate park you see these kids doing amazing things on a skateboard. They were not born that way but they love it and they skate all the time and make plenty of mistakes in the process, and that’s where the real learning happens.When you go into a college art class that should be our skatepark. Sometimes it seems like people are avoiding it, when that is their time to experiment, have fun, and really learn.Those kids in these skateparks, more often than not they fall, they fail. These guys pay for it, for us as artists we just throw a bad drawing away. Lee had a critique with the artist, Anna Daviscourt, one of the Adobe resident he mentors. They were talking about getting some quicker work because the children’s book industry can be so slow moving. They decided to focus on adding some book covers to her portfolio. They wanted to choose something that art directors would recognize, and she said she wanted to do Harry Potter covers. Probably the hardest thing possible, it’s been done twice recently and both times has been done really well, so it will take a lot to stand out. She did a bunch of thumbnails and showed them to Lee and he told her that they looked like Harry Potter covers, they weren’t great yet, she was imitating the look that was already there. He told her, “Here’s the story, but who are you in relationship to Harry Potter, what are you going to do to really stand out?” They had to really fight for it, she did some pretty good ones, but they weren’t as aligned with the nuance of the story. They kept working at it and eventually she ended up with something fantastic. It was great because they knew where they were going and they knew where this thing was going to live.It was so interesting as they talked and got into what works and what doesn’t, the work was good but it needed to be better. In school they want to keep you in the generalist category, they don’t want you to follow a specific style or artist too much.Will had this student he taught in a workshop, who had worked at Disney and left California because he didn’t have enough to support his family. He was totally supporting his family but they really wanted to be able to get a house with a yard and stuff. He wanted to “undisneyfy” himself. Everything he did looked like Disney. He had been there for 15 years, and he really struggled with that.The school are afraid of creating clones of another artist or of a teacher.That’s why in school we say to not do anime and want to help you see objects and shapes in a new way and see how to interpret them.It’s okay, early on to have some floundering. There is a certain amount of time for finding. If you are in that mode, then enjoy it and soak it up. The problem is when you are considering quitting your job but don’t know what you are going to do yet.Experiment, try things out, find that thing that you are good at but also where there is opportunity. Roadblock #2, Too much downloading, not enough uploading. Over conferencing, too many tutorials, looking too much, and not doing enough actual work. Everyone deals with this. You spend an hour on Art Station, Instagram, Pinterest. You find and save things that you like. You are triggering some of the same neurons that you do when you actually create art but at the end of the day you haven't created anything. You are spinning your wheels.Where you actually learn and improve is from doing the work; creating work and sharing it, putting it out there for people to see, that’s where the actual learning and growth happens. Lee’s Red Light SystemThis is a system that Lee has developed to help him make sure he is maximizing productivity while minimizing distractions.Green light, you are good to go, you have pen to paper.Red light, you are reading the news, looking at Facebook, being distracted, or playing games. You shouldn't go there. If you catch yourself wasting time or being distracted, then head back to the green.Yellow light, that is tricky. Often, you do need to find reference and gather images. The yellow light is flashing, and you don’t want to spend too much time in this zone; you need to speed up or stop and go back to what you were doing. Avoid Over ConferencingHow do you avoid overdoing it with that stuff? Critique groups and conferences, etc. “Terry’s Law”: The more you talk about doing work the less work you have actually done. Will sees some groups of people who go to SCBWI who go more for the social aspect than for the work aspect. They go year after year but don’t really progress much.Likewise, Will plays his bass for fun, but is honest with himself about it, he isn’t planning or hoping on going super pro because of it. Lee’s wisdom for conferences:Nothing worse than seeing the same person at conferences for 2-3 years in a row and they have the same manuscript or the same work. If you aren’t a professional tied up with lots of work, but if you are a student, you should have a new portfolio every 6 months. If you have a new portfolio every 6 months go to the conference and show that work off, you’re showing off an updated version of yourself. If you are bringing the same tired work year after year, then you need to work on creating new work, then when you are going to the conference you are really able to show off new work.What about the person who is taking c…

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How to Be the Best Art Student Feb 28, 2019

Show notes

How to Be The Best Art Student Will got a letter from a listener who shared that her favorite episode was the first episode, “My Art is Great, Why Won’t Anyone Hire Me?” She requested an episode where we focus again on that and expand more on that topic. She also said that “and by the way that is the best episode you guys have ever done thanks to Will Terry.” Will may have embellished the letter some!She continued by saying something along the lines of, "The idea of self audits is great and I am taking to heart the idea of really honing my craft over the next year. I would like to know as an artist taking your classes the best method to take and absorb those classes since I only have a few hours in a day after work to learn and get better." So that’s what we want to talk about today. We will split this episode into 2 parts:Part 1: How to Be the Best Art StudentPart 2: How to Get the Most Out of Our Classes at SVSLearn.com and Online Learning We did these things called 3rd Thursday’s and they were Webinars that we did live and then we would put the recording of it on Youtube. We put all of those webinars on SVSLearn.com. So we are taking some content from one of our Third Thursdays from a while back and presenting it in a more creative way. Part 1: How to Be the Best Art Student, 5:35Addressing Poor Mindsets:“I’m going to art school to get a degree.” First off, in all the years that Jake worked for studios and being apart of the process of looking at portfolios for people that they wanted to hire, never once did they ask if the applicant went to school. The portfolio always was first. They always would look at their portfolio to see if they could do the work and then they would ask what school they went to but wouldn’t check if they graduated or anything.The degree, as far as the real world is concerned in concept art, in children’s books, etc. does not matter, what matters is that you can do the work.It’s a meritocracy. It’s all based on ability. How well can you perform the task? Would you say that people who have gotten far enough in a degree program should quit?If it is your last semester and there isn't a job offer yet, then finish it out.If there is a job opportunity that is available and it is what you are going for, it might not make sense to turn that job offer down just to finish out that last semester, and then if you are ever in a position to you can go back and finish that last semester. But we're pretty sure that once you are working in that field that you are wanting to work in and you are good, and already getting job offers as a student then you will keep progressing and odds are you’ll keep getting better and never look back. Unless you want to teach for a University at some point, if there still are Universities in 10 or 20 years.Some job postings do require a degree. But really it all comes down to if you can do the work. If you have a great portfolio, and show you can do the work and especially if you already have some experience under your belt. There will be some companies that want you to get a degree. It's all about your portfolio and skill set. You could have two people who graduate from school and they both graduate and get a degree, however one of them may have worked 2, even 4, even 10 times harder. That person will be so much more prepared for the job field.If the prize was the degree then they will get killed in the job market. Maybe mom and dad will be happy about the degree, but it’s all about the learning. The mindset you should be trying to develop as a student is don’t have your eye set on the degree. The degree should be the byproduct of you trying to get the experience to get a job.Looking at the college kids that Jake works with as assistants, everything they are doing to get that degree is totally going to help them get a job. But it is not about the degree, it is about the experiences they are getting as they work towards that degree. Your senior project or your final art show, that should be the thing that gets the employer’s eyes on your work and interested in you not the degree. Will would give himself assignments or choose to do different assignments that he felt would get him closer to his goals in terms of portfolio. His classmates would sometimes get freaked out and ask him what he was doing and he would say that he was wanting to do freelance after graduating and that he was focused on preparing his portfolio.There is a middle ground with ignoring what your teachers are asking you to do. Lee would ask for permission to adapt assignments and would shoehorn what the teacher said to what he wanted to do. He would do what worked best for him and his portfolio.Jake had an assignment to draw himself as an animal and instead of doing a portrait, he did a landscape with animals in the background, because he wanted to do a piece that could become a part of his portfolio, and he ended up using the piece in his portfolio to get a concept art job. What Animal?We got into a random side note. What animal would we all be? Jake would be a horse, because that’s what he drew himself as in that animal self portrait assignment, plodding along in the distance. Lee would be a squirrel, like Scrat from Ice Age, he’s just scrappy like that and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Will would be a walrus, chill with cool facial hair.Bonus, if you want to draw animal versions of us then share it with us, we’d love to see them. “This homework should not take me more than 12 hours based on university guidelines for out of class, in class ratios.”Some students are not willing to go beyond what the thing calls for. Some students are used to immediate rewards. Lee would have students come in saying, “I spent all night working on this!” And it turns out they had spent 3 or 4 hours, which is nothing. Lee’s average amount of time spent on a piece was 12 hours. Sometimes 9, sometimes 10 or 15 but the average was 12 hours from start to finish.How long do you need? The answer is, as long as it takes.Let’s say you spent 9 hours on a dud, and you budgeted 12, you have 3 hours to keep polishing that dud or you can start a new piece and sacrifice something else to have the time to finish it. Another thing to be wary of is the ‘speed class taker’. They are trying to take as many classes as they can to try and graduate a bit earlier.You should take fewer classes and allow yourself time to do the work, be able to mess it up and make mistakes and learn from them and do it again. Jake did this drawing of animals flying and his friend, Scotty Young told him that it was good but nothing special. So Jake redid it and pushed it a lot further. He spent 2 or 3 times as long on the second iteration. Jake’s first graphic novel was about 170 pages long and he timed it out the amount of time spent on each page was around 10-14 hour and that was around a year, while working a full time job. If you really want something you have to learn to get that thing done. Perhaps college is the best place to learn that, where you go from amateur to professional by one by one doing these assignments and after each one evaluate what you did well on it and what you can do better. How could you have spent more time on it, and better yet focused time. Until eventually you don’t even bat an eye if you have to redo something. In a year: what is your percentage of illustrations that you feel are your best work and better than the rest, that you really love a lot more than your other stuff you did.As a pro mostly everything you do should be at least okay, usually pretty acceptable. Then there are those ones that people really respond to and have that special quality to them, for Lee, he is stoked if he can get a couple really awesome pieces in a year.Every year Jake does 1, 2, or 3 pieces where he feels he really leveled up and they act as a benchmark for the following years.Even as professionals, the work created is still professional, but only a few pieces a year are seen as extraordinary compared to previous work. So if you are a student even if you are working very hard, not everything is going to be absolutely amazing.So it becomes a game of numbers, if you want to get a some stellar pieces done you need to do a bunch of pieces and work. Lee would review senior portfolios and he noticed that everything would look nice and cohesive but would usually come across one that was really over rendered. He learned that they came from the students rendering classes and they couldn’t give them up because they had spent so much time on them. “This is how I make my art, it’s unique, the teachers need to help me with my vision.”You can say that after you’ve learned the fundamentals; after you’ve learned composition, light and shadow, some color theory, some anatomy, perspective, proportion, and line quality.Once you have figured those things out, then you have the freedom to say, “Now I want to do my style this way and this is how I draw.” Up until then that’s a crutch and you can use it as something to lean on.Jake likes to compare art to music. You can’t just step up to a piano and pluck the keys with awful timing and make up your own stuff and expect it to be good.You have to master the fundamentals. Once you can play the basics then you can start to mess around more.“Don’t let your style be the byproduct of weakness.”That is an out, it makes you feel good, but really it is a lie.Mary Grandpre, you look at those and they are really well done, but perspective is not really all there. Some objects have dimension and there are objects that are more designy. She can draw that way if she wants to, but could draw them all “more correctly.” She does this deliberately and she can because she has earned it. Student’s want the teacher to support their vision. How many students would enter a college level writing class, and argue that the teacher shouldn’t critique their work but support their vision. The teacher will surely point out bad sentence structure, bad grammar, too many main ideas in a paragraph, etc.All art is the same, they all have a lot of similar principles.You can’t get around it, you never will get mad because you have good draftsmanship and you learned to draw something well. Even Jake is still learning. He has been working on relearning anatomy, he has leveled up a lot just since he started studying it more since a few months ago. He has already seen his drawings level up since he’s been studying this stuff. If you think you’re done learning, you’re not. This is a lifelong pursuit, and you need to be committed to lifelong learning. You need to have an open mind and be open to receiving feedback. Will identified all of these problems that his students had.Every year it’s the same: there are 3 or 5 that really get it and are doing really good, and then on the other hand there are a few who don’t get it at all and are not present, the rest are in between.In 9 years teaching over there, he has only seen like 3 or 4 students who went from the lower or middle section to the high section. He had one student who after school Will was really impressed with how her work had leveled up a lot, he asked her why she had gotten so good and she shared that, she looked around and she realized that her work wasn’t at the level as everyone else’s. So she decided to make a change.Still doesn’t know why she was able to do that, while others really struggle. Lee had a friend in school and they all shared their portfolios with each other that they used to get accepted to their program. His portfolio was not that great and it matched his classwork. He was pretty clumsy and not much of a stand out for those first couple of terms. And then around the 4th term he really started to stand out some more and started to have some pretty good pieces from time to time.By the time that they left he was smoking, he was so good. He really did his very best with everything, every assignment, starting with the basics. And he just did it right, he really transformed as an artist.It was not through talent, but due to sheer hard work and listening to feedback. Will loves to see that transformation. Will went through that transformation himself and now he loves to see that transformation in his own students. The cool thing about teaching is that you can find teachers that really resonate with your learning style. How to Know if You’re Good 5 Common Denominators that show you are getting good enough to start making a living at this:People naturally gather around your work, without you having to point it out.You’ll start to win things: contests, awards, etc.You start getting unsolicited recommendations, “I want to introduce you to, so and so”, “You should consider applying to such and such.”You start getting scholarships.You start getting paid, you have people that start asking you to do things for money. It’s the people who put their head down and just work. They don’t keep their head down and work in a vacuum but they learn from other people too. Do Not’sWill’s list of things you should avoid as a student (and as a professional).Chronically lateChronically unfinished workAlways talking and having side conversations during lecturesAlways giving excuses and shifting the blameAsking the teacher to change the assignment (if this is a norm, rather than an exception)The last person set up to paintFeel guilty because they haven’t made progress since the last time you were given a critiqueWearing headphones during class, half of your learning is going to happen from the people sitting around you. If you are not hearing side conversations or building friendships, you are missing out on a lot of learning.Overly critical during critiques, but their work was unfinished or sloppy.Packing up 15 minutes early.Leaving class early.Turning in scribble sketchbooks, if you don’t want to do it, just don’t do it. The art director from Sony was giving a lecture on, “How to Make Me Hire You” and there was a student clickety clacking typing on their keyboard really loud and they weren’t taking notes.Lee was furious and really got after his students after the lecture for being so disrespectful. Pencil Mileage Jake had this student that was just heads and shoulders above the rest of the class. Jake asked her why she was so good, and what her process was. She said that since the 7th grade she filled a sketchbook every month until now she was 22. So a lot of growth comes from pencil mileage. Kim Jung Gi: he is the guy who can draw for hours creating a mural without any reference and draws with straight ink. We were talking about this and why he is so good and we decided that it probably came down to:He just loves drawing, even more than those of us who really love it. He probably draws from morning till night everyday. He loves drawing to the point that his life is maybe not quite balanced. Don’t drop the ball when people are counting on you. People who get hired are people who are fellow working student’s friends and people who did good on group assignments.Don’t be a person who bombs it at a group assignment. Part 2: How to Get the Most Out of Our Classes at SVS Don’t treat it like Netflix and just have it playing in the background, instead watch the videos, do the assignments, get a sketchbook for notes, and take notes. Look at it as your school, and really take it seriously and treat it as your school. Look at your schedule and see what you can do daily and then try and have a day in the week where you can give 3 or 4 hours to apply what you are learning. Really evaluate your goals. What do you really want to get out of it. A lot of people say that they want to work professionally. But do you really want to work professionally full time?Maybe you just want to do some freelance on the side, maybe you are trying to get better to do a personal project, maybe it’s just a hobby. It’s important to take inventory on your goals so you can approach your education m…

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Tools of the Trade Feb 13, 2019

Show notes

Today we are going to answer these questions:What are the tools, the programs, and the apps that we use to create the art that we do?What is not essential, what is nice to have, and what is essential? Traditional Tools:Jake: The last book he did was ALL digital. However, that is not the norm, usually he uses traditional at some point in the process. The sketchbook is where a lot of the traditional work happens for him but, a lot of times in the process he will go back and forth from digital to traditional at some point. Jake’s Traditional Toolset:Sketchbook, pencil, and a pen.The reason these tools are so important is that they don’t have to be charged or plugged in. You can carry them wherever you go. You can use them to jot down ideas, to work on a character design or a composition that you are trying to figure out. A sketchbook is absolutely essential. If you don’t have one, this is something you should reconsider. Jake used to work on loose sheets of paper, and that’s fine and all, however, sometimes he would lose an illustration or a drawing, or it was always hard to organize them by date. But now all of his sketchbooks are dated and kept in a drawer and are organized in order. Keeping a sketchbook makes it easy to organize your drawings. The Moleskines Cahier SketchbookWhat type of sketchbook should you use? It all comes down to what type of paper you like to use. Jake has used a lot of different sketchbooks but his favorite is the Moleskine Cahier extra large plain journal, they are flimsy, and the paper is just good enough to keep his pencil, ink, and marker markings in place, they don’t smudge too much. It’s nice because with this particular sketchbook it doesn’t feel too precious, it feels like a good workbook where it doesn’t feel like every drawing has to be pretty but you can do nicer drawings in there if you want to. PrismaColor Col-Erase PencilsFor a sketching pencil Jake wants something that works well with ink and doesn’t smudge with his hand, and the Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils are perfect. He takes an exacto knife with him in his tool bag for sharpening them, or a pencil sharpener in the studio. He likes the orange or vermillions, or the reds, they are nice because the ink stands out in contrast to the pencil while you can highlight things with the red or you can draw lightly and the ink will really stand out. Pens:Some sort of technical pen is essential. They are great for taking notes, a 0.3-0.8, maybe a 0.5 is good for jotting things down or doing quick loose sketches. Copic Multiliner 0.5 Pen.Brush pens are great for going from thin to thick in one stroke, they are a tool that you can use to bust out a really nice drawing or illustration very fast. Jake’s favorite right now is the Copic Gasenfude. Will’s Traditional Toolset: nothing is essential. Only the traditional aesthetic is. Lee’s Traditional Toolset:Sketchbook/portable workbook.Mechanical pencil. There is nothing worse than trying to draw with a dull pencil. It’s a visceral experience, almost like scraping nails on a chalkboard.Loves drawing on cold pressed watercolor paper. If you don’t sharpen your pencil it hurts your nice line quality. The mechanical pencil gets rid of that. Lee likes to use the .05 basic size. Moleskine Cover Sketch Album, PlainIt’s a new experience when you have a horizontal sketchbook rather than a more narrow workspace. The wide one is awesome too. There is another sketchbook that Lee likes. Nice to Have: Lee likes to make a sketchbook with the paper he will use in the studio. Then when you work on your final piece it is just a one to one translation and you know already how i the paper feels because you’re using the same paper. In watercolor the paper is everything, you can use cheap brushes or paint but the paper dictates everything. M Graham Watercolor Paints Great for use in the sketchbook and in the studio. The reason is because it is really easy to reuse the paint, if he just sprays some water on it with a spritzer it comes back like he just poured it out. This is great for when you are traveling. Winsor and Newton are great but they don’t rewet very well. This is the brand typically everyone buys when getting started and then when they try and make a portable sketchbook it doesn’t really work because the paint doesn’t rewet or come back Watercolor PencilsWatercolor pencils are great, and Lee uses them a lot mixed with the watercolor. The difference between that and a regular pencil is that once the surface is wet a lot of color is released, you can even draw on wet paper. He’ll paint and draw right into the wet and it’s great. Lee’s Favorite Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils: Tuskan Red or Indigo. Feels that other colors are too saturated. Beat up Dip PenReason for beat up is there is some oil on the nib from the factory., wash them with vinegar and water, or dish soap. Don’t use a lighter, it will ruin your pen. Dip pens are like guitars, there is something special about them when they are older. Chip BrushThe worst, low quality bristle brush from Michaels, or at Home Depot.Lee buys them for 59 cents, 79 cents, then he runs them over with his car or scrapes them on the sidewalk, you can get strokes with them that you can’t get any other way. They can make beautiful strokes like Chinese calligraphy or smooth washes. You don’t need a $100, $200 brush, people buy these expensive brushes for watercolor but they are unnecessary. Lee uses the same things for studio painting but then has a couple more essential things: The Incredible Art Board. That plasticy board that you can staple into. Lee has no patience for prep work, he wants to be painting, not sanding something. With watercolor, you have to tape it down to the board and wet it. He just puts the paper down on the board and then just staples it, the board can take staples over and over again. He has had the same board for 7 years. He’ll put the drawing down, wet it, and then staple it, and then just start painting it right there. From the time he had the idea to the time he can be painting is only 5 minutes, so very fast. Liquitex White Acrylic Ink In combination with the dip pen. It’s great because it’s fully opaque and it’s great to get that full opaque white. If you’re a purist you’re probably cringing but Lee’s not a purist and mixes everything in there. You can get things back to white and you can paint watercolors on top of it because it’s an acrylic base. Gouache Paints: Lee doesn’t love gouache, but uses it to add little opaque details back on top of the watercolor. Gesso, also uses this to paint on top of the painting to get it back to white and then paints on top of it. PaperCanson Montval: Cheap student grade paper, has a medium to a lot of sizing which means the water color doesn’t go into the paper too much, so you can do some cool effects with it. But it can be hard to work with, it depends on your style. Yeah, and that’s it! Haha, it sounds like a lot, but it is really only 10-11 things. Lee uses all of these in his studio and he has a more condensed list for travel. He can create almost any painting using these materials. A Word About Quality Will doesn’t work traditionally right now. But when he was teaching at the university, he had students who were using materials that could barely be called a brush or paper.There are times where you can cut corners and there are times that you can’t.With oil and acrylics paint there is Winsor and Newton: The Galleria Brand which like a lot of other paints is “student grade.” It’s watered down and doesn’t have as much pigment in it, so if you want to create thick impasto textures you just can’t do it. The same goes with brushes, if you want to make a graceful line, some brushes just can’t do it because they just are not the right brush.Higher end synthetic brushes are what Will would use a lot.In terms of paper there were students who would use low weight paper instead of heavy weight paper because it was cheaper. If the cheaper paper gives you the results you are looking for that is great. But if spending a little bit more on the nicer paper would make a difference in the quality of your work, in those cases it’s worth it to do that.Sometimes students would tell Will, “I just can’t do what you are doing.” Will would reply, “I couldn’t do it either if I was using your equipment, so you have to forego a latte or something..” A really good teacher can help you know what supplies you actually need. With traditional mediums you are dealing with physical properties. Going into an art store can be overwhelming because there are so many options. A good teacher can simplify that and help you know what you should get. For example quinacridone magenta and alizarin crimson look the same. When you mix them with white or any other color they don’t mix the same. The quinacridone becomes really vibrant, and the alizarin, on the other hand, becomes quite dull. Jake had a friend at Blue Sky who said that as an artist you have to budget as if you are poor, except with art supplies you need to switch mindsets and act like you’re a millionaire to get good tools. Maybe you need to make sacrifices to get the tools that you need. Traditional Non-Essentials:Millions of paints: all designed to separate you from your money. You only need a few and you can mix them to get the colors you need. Here are some of our color pallets that we use:Will’s Color Pallette List: It’s on the intro page for his Smooth Blends with Acrylics- Dry Brush Technique Class. Lee’s mom was taking a watercolor class and he was 3,000 miles away and couldn’t help, but she came home after the first day with a list of 21 different paints the teacher wanted her to get. Lee doesn’t know what he would do with 21 paints, let alone a beginner.With just a dash of a color you can make almost any of those colors.Using a small number of paints is great because when you make a body of work, and you used the same 5-7 pigments for all of them it will give all of your work a harmony because they are all made of the same pigments. Electronic drawing desk: a sweet addition to Lee’s studio. Can raise or lower it to meet his needs. If he is using a big canvas he can lower it to be at hand level instead of having to flip it upside down like he used to. He got his for $350-$375 on Craig’s list, but it’s a couple thousand dollar table at retail. Pencil Sharpener: Jake uses the Panasonic Autostop KP77N. It looks like it’s from an 80’s office, because it was. It sharpens pencils at such an angle that it is sharper than anything more modern. The engine is industrial strength. Full Set of Copic Markers. Anything from 50-150, usually there are colors you can’t get with watercolors, really nice bright sharp colors, you can lay them in quick and you don’t have to let them dry. Compact Watercolor Set with a Watercolor Pen. When traveling and want to get a full range of color.It’s the equivalent of 50 markers in the size of a large wallet. It has these watercolor biscuits. The pen has water in the handle so you can flush color out when you want a new one and you can mix colors in the tray.Pair this with a brush pen or pen that is waterproof.6 pack carrier of your favorite soft drink, use that to carry around your markers, has a handle and everything! Digital Tools What’s the most essential tool?A Computer, with a cintiq monitor hooked up to it, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Photoshop, and Procreate. Will loves the iPad Pro. It changed everything. You can work anywhere on this thing. But he feels that it works as well for taking things all the way to finish like a Cintiq can. He likes the Wacom Cintiq, but doesn’t like drawing on a tablet where your image and where you are drawing are different places. The hand eye coordination is tricky. However there are some artists, like Jed Henry and Jim Madsen who prefer the tablets. But if he had to pick one between the Cintiq or the iPad, he would choose the Cintiq and Photoshop. There are other ones but that’s what Will likes to use. With the Cintiq you are tethered to the office. The reason Will loves the iPad is because you can be at home and Procreate has new tools like Liquify. However, If you are a student don’t go to digital right away. If you are a beginner, or an up and coming artist. Then start with traditional and learn from your mistakes more. Digital, with all of the editing tools, can make it hard to develop your process. Unless you go into it purposefully choose to limit your tools.The problem that most students have is that when they start a drawing or painting digitally they might come out with something that they like but they can’t reproduce because the amount of tools and steps that went into it was so vast. Then when they try and do anything traditionally they flounder. Procreate is great and made for the iPad.Will does all of his initial thumbnails, sketches, and finished sketches in Procreate. He starts the process for getting them ready to paint. If he is going to do his color style then he will export it and paint it with Photoshop and the Cintiq. If he does his pencil crosshatch style then he will export it and do some quick color in Photoshop. Will has the luxury of having both.Lee uses the same things as will, but uses Astopad which turns his iPad into another monitor when hooked to his computer, and he can use photoshop on his iPad. Jake finally got an iPad as his end of the year gift to himself. Now he has done more drawing at home than he has in a couple years, it’s so nice to be able to sit on the couch and do a nice finished piece. Was up until midnight drawing without even knowing it.Can’t recommend this new version of the iPad enough. Essentials for Jake: Photoshop on some sort of computer. He prefers Mac’s. He spent a lot of time for a couple of years on the phone trying to fix his old Windows computer. Now with his Mac he hasn’t had to worry about that.A Cintiq paired with a computer is so essential. There is this designer that Jake follows, and he had to save up enough money to get a computer. And so he went up to Alaska and worked at a resort scrubbing dishes and saved all he could to get the computer setup that he needed and that is what got him started. Nice to Have: the iPad. Essential: Epson Scanner. If you want to...

Full show notes at the publisher

Successfully Failing Jan 31, 2019

Show notes

FailureThere are a few different types of failure:Low-level; these are the daily upsets and letdowns.Mid-level; they sting for like a week or a month.High-level; getting fired, getting divorced, these are life changing and really can be cause for a lot of introspection. Let’s start with a good quote, that’s how all good podcasts start, right?“People who succeed are people who failed but they keep going anyway.” Examples:Mohammad Ali. He lost his first fight and then, after the fight, was claiming that he would be the heavyweight champion of the world.Michael Jordan, didn’t make his 10th grade basketball team. This failure is the impetus of his success. This is what lit his inner fire.Babe Ruth, he had the home run record and the strike out record at the same time. He went for it everytime, it was all or nothing. Babe Ruth was so confident that he would point over the fence to say he was about to hit a homerun before going to bat. 7:07Low-Level Failures When Lee started art school he came to it really without any experience drawing or painting. The first 3 or 4 terms were kind of rough. Every day Lee would sulk into class and he would have done his best on his paintings and then would look at what everyone else had done and he knew that he wasn’t at their level yet. It was a daily failure, for the first couple of terms. It was tough and he really struggled with it; it was quite disheartening. He came up with a way to get through it:He was going to do 100 paintings and the wouldn’t start being judgmental of his work until he hit 100 paintings. He would keep tick marks on a sheet until he got to 100 and by the time he got there he was way better and more confident. By 100 paintings Lee was starting to find his stride and get pretty good, at that point at least it wasn’t daily failure. One problem we have is that we look at failures as failures. We have also been conditioned to not look at trying and failing as a learning and forward moving experience. Everything in school is all about moving up, what grades did you get? Were you right or wrong? We’ve been conditioned to not use trial and error for learning. In school we don’t get a good grade for trying and failing. All the results we see with report cards are all about moving up. That conditions us in a bad way for being artists. That model is good for math, it’s either right or wrong, but with a painting there is not just a right or wrong way, sometimes you have to wipe the paint off and redo the painting but that failure was apart of the successful journey. Will once had a student and they wouldn’t try anything with paint and were so afraid to make a bad mark, they were paralyzed. Will thinks that this was because they weren’t ever rewarded for trying and failing. 12:30Be 100 Percent Responsible Participation awards, now in youth sports there are always participation rewards, but kids know it is a game and there are actually winners. They know who won and who lost. There is another way to categorize failures:Caused by you, and your choicesCaused by others, and their choicesCaused by external forces. You can’t always control the outcome of the failure however, your reaction to failure is up to you.Typically Jake’s goal, regardless of what caused the failure, he tries to take as much responsibility as possible for what happened, or for fixing the situation moving forward. Hopefully that’s the lesson from any sort of failure, you’ve learned something, if it didn’t work you can check it off your list, okay this didn’t work, and then you can keep moving forward. No matter what happened you can check it off your box, whether or not you caused the failure. You don’t have to be a victim, you can choose learn, and then move forward. 15:00Test Your Hypotheses Art and life really is a lifelong learning process both on the micro and macro level. You’re always testing your hypotheses. You can always be learning. “I tested those theories and they didn’t work and so I am going to change the process, or change…” That’s how Lee learned watercolors. Initially in almost every painting he would fail. Watercolors are really difficult to master. Lee would constantly fail in every painting and would get frustrated because he had to buy these big sheets of expensive paper. He decided that he would start painting with the mindset that each painting was a test. And then that shift in thinking really helped him, instead of “I wrecked that painting and wasted that piece of paper”, it was, “okay, next time I need to put more water down.” he moved from frustration to a growth mindset. Rocket scientists almost celebrate when a rocket explodes. If the launch is successful sometimes they don’t know if they just got lucky. However, when it fails they get all of this data to learn from to solve the problem and then when the next launch is successful, they know that they were able to solve the problem. Jake feels the same way and if something takes off he is a little uneasy wondering if he just got lucky or if it was really good. Will was an early adopter of E books on Amazon and they his did really well and so he assumed that if he made interactive ebooks for the iPad they would see similar success and basically they totally failed, because people don’t buy iPad apps. 21:20Failing ForwardFailing ForwardThe subtitle of the book is: turning stepping stones into success. If you want to be a boxer you have to take hits. Your failures can motivate you and give you energy to persevere. Will would get upset when, in college, he’d show work to his wife and she wouldn’t like it, and he’d get frustrated that he couldn’t even impress his wife let alone others. So he would analyze his work and then used that frustration to keep working and get better. David Hohn, his wife was a graphic designer for Nike so he had a high bar to hit when he went home and showed her his work.Lee’s wife, Lisa, always has critique on his characters.Jake’s wife, Alison, always is straight up honest with Jake. Jake has to recognize that his target audience often isn’t his wife. But when it is something she likes she loves it and asks him why he doesn’t do more work like that. Jake’s mom would always give him a good ego boost, but not really any helpful critique.Sometimes your closest family will be your biggest fans or your biggest critics.Lee’s mom on the other hand would give him brutally honest critique. He never really drew, but it was raining outside and he decided to draw a picture of his great dane, he showed it to his mom and she said, “He looks deranged!” Will would always get critiqued that his drawings of children always looked too old.He was frustrated because he didn’t know how to fix it.He was putting the eyes in the adult places, and then he would add extra lines that are visible but unnecessary that would age his characters.Hard lines for the collarbone or the sternocleidomastoid (neck) muscle really make characters look older.One day he did a drawing that looked like a kid and his wife told him, “Now that looks like a kid!” But he lacked the skill to analyze it and figure out how he did it, so he used that drawing for reference and it took him a while to figure it out. People can really do a number on artists feelings pretty easily. 32:00CritiquesFor more depth be sure to listen to: Critiques What do you do when you don’t like it but other people do?Skyheart cover story, Jake redid his Skyheart cover and asked for feedback from Will that he liked it better, and then most people online and Jake’s kids told him to go back to the original. Jake told Will, what everyone was saying and Will, said, “Yeah, I didn’t want to tell you…” Now Jake makes sure that Will gives him his honest opinion. It’s hard to have people around that can really give you an honest critique. We know how much of a letdown it is to get help and then have to change a bunch of things. But that critique is so important! Usually for Will, his best work is the work that he got lots of feedback on.Sometimes we just want to go into our secret lair and come out with a masterpiece, but often times it fails because we didn’t get help from other people. Receiving other people’s critique and feedback really accelerates our growth and the the quality of our work. Anna DaviscourtShe has a 1 year residency at Adobe working on a book for them right now. Lee is her mentor, and they have an open dialogue and critique which has made her book really good. One of the reasons the Star Wars prequels turned out the way they did is because George Lucas was surrounded by “yes men.” You don’t want to surround yourself with “yes men.”Ironically, you need to surround your people who are willing to tell you “no”. Put yourself in a position to receive critique and then listen to those critiques.That’s a way to circumvent failures and then you can use those failures as stepping stones. It. Better to have a little failure than to wait and have a bigger failure. 39:45Will’s Failures:Beginning of Will’s career: we have this project and are looking for illustrators, are you available? He would only get 1/10 of those. Puff the Magic DragonA Marvelous ToyWill was really close to getting to illustrate the Marvelous toy book, which was a sequal to puff the magic dragon (which is still selling really well) Steve Cox got to illustrate the book. This is so true, there are all of these jobs that get talked about, there are so many books that you hear about or that get talked about. Especially for the first 5 years but even later. Lee would get all of these proposals and even some animation studios that were maybe interested in using his work to make a short, and then radio silence. It is quite disheartening. How to Catch a Bogle: Lee did a sample illustration and a couple of sketches for the cover and he thought it was a no brainer that he would get to illustrate it, but then he didn’t get it. So these hopeful opportunities that don’t pan out are plentiful. Mid Level FailureLee did a childrens book, did a whole dummy, it goes to acquisition and then you assume thatIt’s a long letdown, it can cover 6 months of your life. It’s not like one paintingIt’s out of your control, maybe marketing got these sales reports and they feel like another book would be better. Or maybe something really similar comes out.If they had just rejected it right out of the gate, it would be easier 48:50Jake’s FailureHe was working at Blue Sky and there is this unspoken hierarchy that character designers are at the top, and he was on a lower level. He got thrown a bone by the director, they needed some background characters.Jake dropped the ball, he fumbled it. He did his best but basically they just yawned at his result.He realized that maybe his character designs aren’t the best for this animation studios or for animation in general, but he realized that he wanted to move into a place where his designs could be appreciated.Find the audience that appreciates it.When people think of Jake Parker they don’t hink of him as a character designer but see him now as a comic book artist and children’s book illustrator.Maybe now he is more experienced and would have done a better job on it. Jake has put his effort, emotion and interest into projects that he gets satisfaction out of and if the audience gets satisfaction from it all the better. 54:50:High Level Failures Will’s High Level Failure:Will was getting a lot of work but not as much as before, he and his wife were doing really well before while she taught school and he did illustration, but then she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and couldn’t keep working. He was still getting good assignments and money you could live on but because they had been living outside their means, and they didn’t have her extra income so they got into financial trouble.Will saw these people around him making good money and he felt sorry for himself and felt like a failure, and that he was letting his family down.So… he almost quit to become a prison guard.All of the guys around Will were correctional officers, they were making 6 figures, and their wives worked and the central valley of CA is affordable. Will saw that these guys didn’t go to college and they have these really comfortable financial situations. Illustrators are more like dentists have to study and perfect their craft and he felt he should be making more.He felt really sorry for himself, he wasn’t honest enough with himself to say, “We got ourselves into this situation.”He went and took the PCA32 class and got unofficially hired but then he was talking to the CO’s in his neighborhood and heard all of these horror stories, they were telling him not to do it.He felt like a failure he had a 15 year long career in illustration, it was a cop out. No one that did that job was having a meaningful career.It felt like giving up. How did you get yourself out?He talked to his wife, his bishop from church, his neighbor who was a nurse at the prison, everyone was telling him not to do it. His bishop told him that he saw what Will was capable of doing, had seen his children books, and that the gifts that he had should not be squandered this way, and that he had developed these gifts that would be taking away from people and he wouldn’t know what good he had done. Jake has really seen the positive influence on others through Will’s youtube channel, art, and on him personally. Will and his wife were in a sticky financial situation and it really took learning to live within their means to help get them out of that. Just because someone else has something you shouldn’t get it just because they have one. Live below your means so you can save every month, you will experience lean times. Carrie Henry, “I hope you are putting money away because this isn’t going to last.”There are so many benefits to living within your means. Including happiness by not being tied to needing to have everything. Jake had a great job at an animation studio, but wanted to develop an independent career. He had an opportunity to teach at BYU in Utah, where he could have benefits and health insurance along with a couple days a week to work on his publishing work. But that job at BYU disappeared because after a couple of years they told him they wanted him to have a degree. He didn’t have So he found a full time job and gave himself a year to get 6 months of work lined up. The year came and went and he didn’t have 6 months of work lined up, he was really stressed and he was really down on himself, he doubled down on himself and he started to post on social media and posted daily and tried to post daily. He then landed a really good job from Google that would last them a couple of months, and he knew if he did a Kickstarter, and he got another childrens book. He added it all up and realized he had his 6 months of work he was looking for. That was 5 years ago, and he’s been doing it ever since, but it hasn’t been smooth but it’s been a steady trajectory upwards.It would have been easy to quit and just stay at that new job for 10 years, but he had a vision or a goal and he stuck with that. You never know what the future holds in store. There are always curves and things you didn’t see coming. No matter how good you are you will still experience failures. This is true for life and especially for a career in art. Once you hit a certain point it doesn’t mean that those things will go away. Typically all failures have a silver lining. Use every failure to look at what went wrong, what you can do differently, and how you can learn from it and be better. LINKSSvslearn.comJake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArtLee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteilloAlex Sugg: alexsugg.comTanner Garlick:tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlickIf you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These…

Full show notes at the publisher

A Year's Worth of Lessons Jan 16, 2019

Show notes

Projects:
We’re still working on a lot of the same things, and so from now on we’ll probably just give updates once a month instead of every episode..

A Year’s Worth of Lessons

We want to each share a couple of lessons that we had from this past year.

Concept is King, Will

At the beginning of his career, like most people, Will focused a lot on craft. And as he has matured he has learned that craft is what gets you through the door but what moves you forward is artistry, or the concept behind your piece. That is the most important thing. Craft validates you, but your concepts is what moves you forward.

It is all about the subtle things, the things that add to the story, the things that are left out of the illustration.

WillTerry.com, check out Will’s comic con drawings, a lot of time goes into making sure the concept is solid.

You don’t really get to see anyone’s real initial reaction when they see your children’s book that you illustrated. However, at the comic conventions strangers don’t know that you are the artist, so Will gets to see their natural reaction to his work and his fan art concepts. He has been able to really see, by watching it in real time, that people are not drawn to the craft but they are really drawn to the concepts of his drawings. The drawings with stronger concepts attract more attention from customers.

Will is trying to go through his Bonneparte book and make sure the expressions and everything add to the story. That those little details are adding to the story and concept behind each illustration.

Technique, perspective, etc: it all serves the story. Not the other way around. You don’t make the story about the perspective or about the technique.

Lee really likes his work to look raw, and has really gravitated to that look over time. He oticed that when he tried to make things look really rendered and realistic people talked a lot at how realistic his work looked rather than the concept behind it. But when he changed his approach and focused a lot more on concept and developed more of a raw style then people also began to focus more on the emotion and the concept.

Jake used to be very tight with his drawings using a technical pen, but has grown to not focus so much on that and instead uses a brush pen and it has given his drawings a more organic, hand drawn feeling. It’s more about bringing the drawing to life than making sure every part and mechanical piece makes perfect sense.

Ask yourself: What is the concept, and what is the emotional response that I want to illicit in the person viewing it?

With all of that it is hard to get noticed if you have bad craft. Having bad craft, is often from laziness. Will struggled with drawing and resisted getting better at it, and his excuse was that he didn’t want to hurt his style, but it was really just an excuse for laziness. Putting some effort at building your craft will help you better pull off any concept you want to tackle.

You need to still learn craft so that you are able to take on whatever artistic challenge comes your way. You want to be malleable, and adaptable. You need to be able to adapt to the times and not be stuck doing just one style.

In short, good craft will get you through the door, but good concepts and ideas will help you move forward.

20:00
It’s All About Lifestyle, Lee
This has been a big year for Lee and his family! They moved from Oregon to Tennessee and have been able to really lower some of their expenses which has taken a lot of stress from Lee to have to make as much money and helped give him more time.
They have been working at this plan to reduce costs for 3-5 years and it has really payed off, no pun intended.
Now Lee has a lot more time, and a lot less stress that allows him to be more creativity. Essentially, control your costs to enhance creativity.

There is a big relationship between what you want to do and the stress of making money. The more pressed you are for money the more likely you will accept work that you would prefer to avoid. The more financial freedom you have the more you can say no to those projects and work on the work that you want to.

Will was alive way back when not everyone had personal computers. He didn’t want to spend the money on one and kept putting it off but once he got a personal computer, that was a game changer for him.
If you need a particular tool to do the work that you need to do, that you want to do. Then get a job and work to save money for that tool.
If you are more wise with your eating expenses and your other flexible expenses, soon you could save enough money to afford an iPad or those tools that will help move you forward.

There are some practical things that you can do to help move you forward financially:
Don’t Live in San Francisco or another place with high cost of living; it will be difficult to move forward, starting off your career paying $2300 a month for an apartment.
Go through and try and take 20% off of your major bills: groceries, rent, etc.

Back in the 70’s you had to live in one of those big cities, but nowadays with the internet you can stay connected.

27:31
The Inbox Zero Method, Jake

Back in 2017, Jake had over 500 emails in his inbox, and he declared Email Bankruptcy, he took all of those emails and stuck them in a “Bankruptcy” folder.
This is his new Inbox Zero Method that he used in 2018:

Make a folder in your inbox called the “action folder”
Create different folders for different projects/categories.
Set aside time each day or every couple days to go through your action folder. I.e. send someone that file, or write that thank you response.
Any email that takes less than 2 minutes to respond to, just do that right away, if it takes longer then put it in your action folder.

Previously Jake would sometimes check his email 5 times an hour and then it fragmented his time and he wasn’t able to accomplish as much. The best work happened when he had 2 or 3 hours to get in the zone and focus on deep work.

Don’t live in a state of constant distraction. Don’t let the email control you, you control your email.

Lee has this program called Self Control and it allows you to choose the sites that are distractions for you: i.e. News sites, email, etc, and you can plug those sites into the app and create limits for accessing those sites. I.e. You can’t access any of those sites for the next 4 hours.

Lee’s Distraction Websites:
Instagram
Gmail
Facebook
Some news source
Craig’s List

So anywho, when he clicks the button on Self Control it removes those distractions.

Be Careful, Will

Story: One of his best friends runs the comic con side of his business and does all the scheduling, taxes, going to shows, etc. And then pays Will his portion.
Will and his business partner sent this person to run a booth for them in different parts of the country and this person had helped them $700 dollars. They sent him to another show and Will had a Facebook friend that tabling next to the man, and that friend emailed Will telling him that the person working for him was always showing up late to the show, and would leave the booth for hours at a time.
So when the guy running those shows came back Will and his business partner, Wane, talked to him about that email they received and he admitted that it was all true.

You really need to know the person that you are taking a chance on, and when necessary make sure there are checks and balances in place.

Storytelling differences:

Lee tells the point he wants to make and then gives the supporting details.
Will tells the story and and supporting details and then he gives the lesson or takeaway.
Jake likes to create orderly lists and bullet points.

Truly be a Content Creator, Lee

Being a content creator is where all of the fun and all of the income truly happens.

Lee is in the process of making patterns, and books to pitch and he is having so much fun.
He is making so much content that isn’t even being asked for, and then is going to see where it will go.
He’s having a great time and he hasn’t ever had this much freedom before.
Your ideas and your ability to come up with things will be rewarded.

Those who not only illustrate but also write their books have a better chance of being picked up by a publisher. Those who take the bull by the horns and go above and beyond just being an illustrator can do really well.
You feel like you are more in control of your future when you go the extra mile.

The best thing that Lee likes about having being a content creator nowadays, is that there is now a Plan B. Before you would have to just shop your work around to different companies and publishers, but now there is Kickstarter.
Worst case scenario: nobody wants it, then you can kickstarter it and make it yourself.

Jake disagrees that being a content creator over executing someone else’s vision this is the only way to be successful. More and more today people want visuals and good images to go with their company, and there is work for people who have craft. With that said though, don’t let your side projects die.

We aren’t saying that there is no more work for people who don’t create their own content and write their own children’s books, instead, we are saying that there are more opportunities for those that do.

You can become entrepreneurial. Will was not entrepreneurial, and now he is.

To do any personal project and have it be successful takes a lot more than just art. Each project is almost like it’s own business. A Kickstarter project involves logistics, marketing, etc.
You should learn some business skills to help out with the other side of things.

Be a content creator, it’s not entirely about getting work and being successful, it’s about reaching your full potential. Don’t just be a hired gun all the time, take time to do your own work too. There is something special about creating for your own project.

Not everyone has that itch to do personal projects and be entrepreneurial, some people love working at a studio or just having a real job. And for them that is all of the creative fulfillment that they need.

Making your own things, finishing things, and doing those personal projects gives you confidence that you can take with you into other endeavors.

Take Time to Just Draw For Fun, Jake

We all can get so caught up with deadlines, and drawing for specific projects that we forget to draw just for fun.

There is value in drawing for fun and you never know what may come from it.

Just take time to scribble and draw just for fun. Just like a kid, draw not for anything, just draw for fun. You never know what is going to happen.

Jake drew this robot and colored it and because of the colors he chose it ended up looking like an avocado robot. So he drew a bunch of other “food bots”, and they were all just for fun. Someone took his Hamburger Bot and made a 3D sculpt from it, and then with his permission made some real 3D printed statues from his design, and they have even been made into stickers for Art Drop Club . All of that just from Jake choosing to draw for fun.

2018 Remorses:
Jake wishes he had drawn all of Skyheart before the Kickstarter, instead of after. Jake feels like he could have been using all of that creation time of Skyheart as a build up to the Kickstarter. It would have been a better final product, and it would have saved him from a lot of stress. The great thing is that we can learn from our mistakes!

In the past, Kickstarter may have been more about helping to fund something that never would have been done. Now it feels like it has shifted to becoming more of a pre-order and the money is just needed to fund the production of it.

That’s it for today, we hope that some of the things we learned last year will be helpful to you with achieving your personal and artistic goals this year. Happy New Year, everybody!

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

The Stories We Tell Jan 02, 2019

Show notes

3PP 20: The Stories That We Tell

Stories are as old as civilization itself, and as humans we can't help but tell stories. In this episode we share common plots, themes, and ways to understand and better come up with good stories. We also share some of the stories that have been influences on us and who we are as artists and storytellers.

Current Projects:
Lee, Is continuing on his book cover series; he also worked on creating 50 patterns to give to his agent to take to a convention in New York for licensing.

Will, Still working on the sequel to Bonaparte, and is working on a new Kickstarter, to be released in February or March. Stay tuned for details! Sidenote: in case you didn’t know, Kickstarters are exhausting!

Jake: Is all finished with his Skyheart Kickstarter and is still just rounding up any stragglers, so if you are a backer and haven’t filled out your survey yet, log onto Kickstarter and fill it out so we can get your reward to you!

SVSLearn.com, sponsor of this podcast! Free for 7 days. Click here if you are interested in learning more!

What stories do you want to tell? That is the question that we want to dive into with today’s topic.

The Stories That We Tell

In illustration there are some recurring stories and themes that come up with similar plots and basic story details. Lee did a deep dive on the internet to learn more about what stories keep coming up in the world of children’s books and here are the results from the first website he found:)

Basic Themes, Plots, and Actions

10 Basic Themes in Children’s Books:
Courage
Friendship
Belonging /Identity
Family
Loss/ Grief
Growing Up
Anger
Suffering
Jealousy
Love

Lee did a little more research by clicking on the next Google result, and found this:
(The 7 Basic Plots, Christoffer Booker)[https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Basic-Plots-Tell-Stories/dp/0826480373/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546027154&sr=1-1&keywords=the+seven+basic+plots]
Overcoming the Monster, or overcoming some big thing
Rags to Riches: follows a rise to happiness.
Voyage and Return
The Quest
Comedy
Tragedy: riches to rags, follows a fall.
Rebirth

Jake’s 4 Different Plot Categories:
Winning
Escaping
Stopping
Retreating
These are the modes of action of the main characters.

I.e. Where the Wild Things Are, Max is escaping.

Little Bot and Sparrow It’s all about a robot that becomes friends with a sparrow and they grow in their friendship together, until one day the sparrow has to leave for the winter. The story is all about: Friendship, Belonging, and Dealing with Loss and Grief.
A subtle version of rags to riches.

Plot applies more to bigger, longer stories, stories with a 3 act structure. Children’s books can have a 3 act structure but often times they don’t.

Most stories: a problem that needs to be solved and then they find a creative solution.

The late Rick Walton: Come up with an interesting problem with a creative solution.

Are there things that you like to create?

Are there things that you like to create? What are you naturally drawn to creating?

If you are a student in school you should be creative enough when you get an assignment, you should be able to fit what the assignment is with what you want to paint or create.

Some themes that come up in Lee’s work and entertainment interests:
Kids that find something magical, and then that drives the story. Normal real life with a hint of magic, or one thing out of place. Like The Goonies, Iron Giant, and E.T.
With Harry Potter, he liked the details, more than the overall story.

3 Different Types of Creators:

World Building: get really caught up in the details, sometimes overlook the story and characters and can get caught up with plot points, etc.
Character Building: very focused on the characters and their development.
Plot Building: very focused on the overall story, but maybe doesn’t have specifics figured out with characters, the world, etc.

Jake loves Worldbuilding. What are the mechanics of the world?

It’s super interesting to have characters with conflict. I.e. A bad character who is forced to do something good.
The reluctant heroes, the anti-hero are very interesting and fun stories to follow.

What are you going to paint and create if you are left on your own?

Will’s goal is to become an Authorstrator.
Will and his wife were losing their home because of poor financial choices, and this was a direct influence on his story: (Gary’s Place)[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garys-place/id778805132?mt=8]: What if this gopher decided to dig a hole and then added a whole bunch of rooms, and then the house got flooded because the Gopher dug too far.

What do I like to do in the winter time? etc, then you can start thinking about situations and character ideas.

Essentially the stories that you tell will come from your life experiences, your interests, and from who you are.

How to come up with a good story

Why a story starts and why a story ends is so difficult, the resolution is the hardest part, it is difficult to come up with a story that ends in a satisfying and meaningful way.

You can say, I know that I want the story to be about this..., but instead of thinking about how it starts, think about how it ends. Then you can work backwards and reverse engineer it.

Some stories are serious, and others are just fun jokes.

Like Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.

The story is along the lines of a really good joke. It is simplified, toned down, and has a great punch line. Think about the jokes that you are drawn to. Funny picture books are just illustrated jokes. Every element is essential to help tell the joke.

[I Want My Hat Back] (https://www.amazon.com/I-Want-My-Hat-Back/dp/0763655988/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546029594&sr=1-1&keywords=I+want+my+hat+back)

No David! It is very loosely a story, but there is this interaction and story, and then it ends with the resolution of his mom hugging him.

Writing a simple short book that is also satisfying is very difficult.

Dr. Suess was amazing at creating stories that were deep. He started off as a political cartoonist and a lot of that carries over into his children’s books.
There is a lot more to it than what you see on paper.
Horton Hears a Who, he is making a commentary about the U.S. and Japan after WW2.
The Cat in the Hat, his message and commentary on authoritarianism.
The Lorax, it is about environmental stuff.
He is so good at making a story that is interesting on two levels.
But with these stories the story isn’t overwhelmed by the message beneath it. The surface story is also interesting.

Too didactic, is a warning zone. Don’t make it too preachy!
You want it to be fun and not focused on preaching.
Jake has got this note, editors don’t want it to be too strong a message. It has to be more underneath the story.
You can’t be hit over the head with a message.
“Don’t Run into the Road!” It’s not a story. There was this big name author that tried to create a story about that, but it never really sold anywhere.

Preachy stories are really off-putting. Beating reader over the head never works. We don’t read children’s books to be preached at.

Early Influences
What are your top 3 books as a kid? Why? Why do you remember them now?

Will: The Francis books, Will was fighting with his sister, and in the book the brother was being mean to his sister. The book showed the perspective of the little sister and how she was really hurt when he was being mean to her. It really hit him and helped him see that he was being the bad guy. It made him self reflect, and had an impact on his life.

Rick Walton: if you set out to teach a lesson, that’s fine. But if you have to make the right decisions to make the story good, and those decisions take you away from that lesson, then follow the story.

Jake: Richard Scarry books, Where’s Waldo books, stories with the faintest of stories but lots of amazing visuals.

Early influences play a huge role on who you are as a creator. Those early influences stay with you for your whole life.

Lee’s dream: to listen to the radio in 30 years and hear that a book he wrote had an impact on someone.

Lee: The Pink Elephant with Golden Spots. These kids are in an empty house and they find these keys that open a magic wardrobe, and they discover a pink elephant with golden spots, that ends up being taken to the zoo where all the other elephants make fun of it, but all of the visitors want to see the pink elephant, and all of the other elephants paint themselves to look fun and crazy like the pink elephant. Lee still cherishes that book.

These things stick with you for the rest of your life.

Will: I Wish That I Had Duck Feet
We want to be unique. We want to stick out. This book is an influence on him and his work.

Jake, what inspired you to draw robots?
Yukito Kishero’s Battle Angel Alida was a big influence.
Appleseed was full of robots, and in the back the artist, Sherow, would show robot designs with cut aways showing the insides of the robots and how they worked.
Jake likes to offset the high technical, really detailed robots with cute little animals. Richard Scarry liked cute animals driving cars and Jake likes cute animals with robots.

Jake likes the engineering aspect, the form and function of drawing robots. Star Wars is amazing, and they have all of these books showing cross sections of ships and how things work.

How do you avoid being cliche?
You need to connect dots that haven’t been connected before.
Just write a great story, that is totally original. It’s that easy!
Anything that is unique and original, there is an element of the familiar and there is something that is unexpected. This is why it is vital to fill your creative bank account.

Where are some unlikely connections? What are the interesting things that you notice?
Notice the things around you. Look for things in your life that are unique to you. Look for problems in your life and find ways to solve them.

Lee’s real life question: “What if it didn’t stop raining?” Led to him creating a story about a girl who encounters that problem, it doesn’t stop raining. Find the problems that you are going through personally and then solve them in interesting ways.

If you are stuck on doing the monster under the bed something then you need to do something unexpected.

Seinfeld, comes from real life. There is a level of richness and charm that has to come from real life.

Have fun telling and coming up with your own stories!