Day 4

Thursday 8th March

Working as a Freelance Artist (Printmaker) - Ann Bridges

Ann Bridges graduated from Glyndwr in 1999 with a First Class Honours. She is a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy, and has developed her own style of stencil based mono-print. She mainly produces, original artwork to sell on, but some of her work has been used in editorial work etc. After college, Ann felt it important to keep putting her work in exhibitions, as a way of building her C.V. This makes a lot of sense to me, even though I won't be working as a freelance artist, I will be working as a illustrator, so this is the same as getting your work known to publishers, and/or agencies. This is an important factor to take into account after leaving college, as it is your way of making contacts and getting work in.

Ann had to get into something straight away, so she saw an advert in Artist Newsletter for an opportunity to work as a artist-in-residence at Chester Zoo. She quickly set up a website, and balanced her Chester Zoo work with freelance work.

Ann still gets involved in educational work, in particular, short projects in schools and educational centres. This is something that I would really like to think about doing in the future, as it would be great to work with schools to create a piece of work, as I believe that working with children is a very rewarding experience. Ann has also worked on several pieces of collaborative work with fellow ex-student Helen Bate, which were a series of picture books designed for adults with dementia, you can visit the website here.

Since 1999, Ann has been keeping a visual diary for writing and drawing. She doesn't draw everyday, but may spend more time drawing on certain days. She is now on her 33rd sketchbook! Her reasoning for using sketchbooks so passionately is that sketchbooks document all your work done over a certain period of time. Sketchbooks are the point of reference. Personally, I never realised the importance of keeping a sketchbook until I started at art college. In A-Level, I always used to hate presenting work in a sketchbook, and had to pull pages out to put them in a display book. Now, it's the other way around. I do admit, I still need to push my sketchbook work, but I am starting to see the importance of sketching every idea down, no matter how simple or silly the idea is.

Ann loves discovering new things when something goes wrong. She's always experimenting to try to achieve new techniques. Her favourite thing out of all of her work is when she discovers something new about the piece, and "when an idea takes you on a journey." She is part of the open studios network, Helfa Gelf. She describes this as a inexpensive way of getting your work seen. At the last Helfa Gelf, Ann sold just under £5,000 worth of work.

When pricing work for a gallery, be aware that the gallery will take anywhere from 30% upwards of selling price. The average is 40-45%. Ann had already started exhibiting work, so that helped her gain some knowledge about pricing her work, but the advice she gave us was:

• Start noticing what other people are doing
• It's still difficult to get it right
• A lot depends on the context the work is being shown

She evaluates her work all along the process. Ann never gets to the end stage and thinks that she hates it, it's usually in the beginning she feels like this. If you don't have the facilities available to you, then you need to make your style not so dependent on this equipment (you need to limit yourself), for example, Ann couldn't afford a press and had no where to put one, so she developed a way of working where she didn't need a press. You also have to adapt your way of work depending on the time scale. This is something that I need to consider, as I am working partly digitally, I need to keep in mind size constraints for scanning work in, and printing it off.

Her number one piece of advice for anyone before you go freelance would be, you need to have experience behind you before you start.

Overall, this session was quite useful. It was interesting to get a different view point with a different type of media, and from more of an artist's view point. As for advice, it wasn't the best session, but that could just be because I don't want to work in print, so didn't really relate to her advice.

The Chip Shop Story - Andy Cheetham

Andy Cheetham is the owner of Cheethambell JWT, which has been around for 20 years. This session was, again, one of the best of the week. It was very insightful and also very inspiring.

In 1991, Andy had been made redundant 3 times in 3 years. He had never worked out of Manchester and there was also a recession on, so he had no job to go to. He had 5 years experience, had never been in a management position, and had no reputation to get a job. It ended up getting worse, as his car was then stolen. He asked himself 'what do you do now?' His answer was to get a reputation; he would do this by getting a portfolio. On his side, he had youth, boundless enthusiasm, a little talent, and he had no significant debt or assets that he wouldn't gamble. He also thought that if no agency would employ him, he'll start his own, the only problem was, he had no clients, no money and no contacts. The idea was to make/buy a reputation, using 3 creatives in similar conditions/situations, and all the money he had.

Barnacles is a fish and chip restaurant in Llandudno. It's owned by Andy's mum and dad. Andy started creating press ads for the shop, which were low cost, full page ads in the local press. They started to enter these advertisements into awards; the awards rulings said the ad has to run, BUT it didn't say how long/many times it had to run. The ads were really simple ideas, playing on the quality of the food; after all, people love a good concept! They then started to move onto bus campaigns. These are a good idea, especially in small towns, as there's not many and they tend to run an ad until they get a new one through. Eventually, though, there was an uproar about the ads; any ad for a small brand became known as a "chip shop ad."

One year later, the awards loophole was closed, as they tidied up the awards. They couldn't enter Barnacles any more, as award owners had gotten many complaints from creatives.

Twenty years later, many people don't know why they're called 'chip shop ads,' it's just what they've always heard them called. The Chip Shop Awards came about because of these 'chip shop ads', which is a global award ceremony. "The Chip Shop Awards is about fostering and recognising creativity with no boundaries and no rules. It's an international creative awards, open to anyone with great ideas." The slogan for the awards is "Creativity with no limits." The results, twenty years later, include:

• CBJWT is rated as one of the top UK agencies outside of London
• Andy has been a campaign A-List member since its inception 9 years ago
• Made a fello of IPA
• D&AD executive committee member
• Part of JWT World-Wide Creative Council
• 300 plus awards, plus 2 lifetime achievements
• An Atlantic yachtsman
• And also has a property portfolio

When asked if Andy is proud of his achievements, he answers yes and no. It's a dog-eat-dog world, where most creatives have manipulated an awards at some point. It has, however, created opportunities he never would have dreamed otherwise.

What's changed since the Chip Shop days?

The world became digital! Making things became easier than ever and cheaper than ever. People still love great ideas, and it's up to you to make it happen with new tools etc. Finally, the economy was bad in 1991 too, so don't be disheartened by it now.

The advice Andy gave us was:

• Show your personality when e-mailing your portfolio's etc
• Make an effort in EVERYTHING you do!
• Interrogate the brief, find out what the brief's about and get your core idea
• When it comes to awards:
• The best work wins
• Only enter your absolute best work
• Try to spend more time getting the few bits right, than scatter-gunning the awards with rubbish
• Always play to win!

Tips:

• Know what's good out there (know what's commercial out there, why things work etc.)
• Self-filter - if you can spot a flaw in something you've created, a creative director will too, and will grill you about it
• Edit, edit, edit
• If it's been done before, it's likely a creative director has seen it
• Get your core idea right
• "Be what people are interested in!"

Overall, Andy's session was really insightful into how you can make a success out of the most simplest idea. Although I don't agree with his approach of manipulating the awards, it was only because of this deception that Andy hit the 'big-time'. It is such an inspiring story, of someone who was so down on their luck, after being made redundant 3 times, in 3 years, and then no one wanting to hire him, and eventually going on to start your own company, just working small time for your mum and dad's business. It just shows that ideas come from anywhere.

A Career in Children's Illustration - Helen Papworth

Helen Papworth is an ex-student from about 6 years. Helen has always loved bright and vivid illustrations, in books that were small enough you could fit them in your hand. She became a teacher and taught art in Yorkshire in 1987. In 2003, Helen decided she wanted to work overseas and became a VSO volunteer in Ethiopia.

After spending 10 weeks in Rwanda, Helen came to Glyndwr, and started the Illustration for Children's Publishing course in November 2006. Her reasons for choosing this course were: she loved books, loved writing, loved drawing, wanted to be flexible, wanted to work from home, didn't have another job, and she had enough money to pay the course fees. Her influences were Arthur Rackham, whose illustrations she described as "magical," and just lately Shaun Tan. I completely agree with how she described Arthur Rackham's illustrations, because they are so enchanting, and out of this world. A lot of her influences also come from sketching from life (or using TV and Media, if not available). Helen was encouraged to do one sketch a day, which she felt was a  great learning/exploration process. Her number one tip for anyone in the illustration industry is to try to capture anything you can; get your sketchbook out whenever you can! A great place to do this is Illustration Friday. I think that this is a great way of drawing for just the sake of drawing, and for people to see your work. This is something I will definitely start soon, when I suddenly feel inspired by a topic.

Helen is influenced a lot from her African experiences; she visited Ethiopia for 2 years (2004-2006) and spent a couple of months in Rwanda (2006). So much so, she started work on her thesis at the end of her second year, which was a study of the influences on Ethiopian illustrators/illustrations. Helen returned to Ethiopia in June 2008, where she was asked to design books for primary and secondary schools and teacher guides to go with them. There is now at least one of these books in every school in the country. This is how she gains satisfaction; the fact that every child in Ethiopia will be learning from her books/illustrations. It was refreshing to meet a illustrator who works mainly for the satisfaction of children learning from her illustrations, rather than just for the money. I'm sure that every illustrator works partly for the satisfaction, but there is always the big factor of money. Helen made it clear that she is in a situation where she is comfortable for money, so doesn't need to work for it. I'm also pretty sure that every young illustrator sets off into the industry saying that they don't care about the money side so much, they just want the satisfaction of knowing people are creating that personal relationship with their work, however, after a few months of trying to break into the industry, and struggling, they soon realise that this 'dream' is not the reality.

Helen was worked for several publisher in Ethiopia, including Shama Books, who are publishing a no-words picture book entitled "Ten Donkeys", and Hable Books, who published a introduction to Amharic which is designed for people adopting Ethiopian children, called "Amharic with Amen". The biggest issue facing Ethiopian publishing industry is how to improve it; the artwork is lost when printed, as the ink runs over detailed pieces of the illustration.

Helen firmly believes that if you're illustrating for a foreign country, you can do it if you study the country enough, and embrace the culture. This is something that I agree with to a certain extent. I think it is very brave to start illustrating for a audience who's needs you are not used to, and respect Helen for this. However, I believe the same as Helen, that if you are passionate about it, and are willing to learn and experience a new culture, then you should be fine.

This session was quite interesting in the fact that Helen illustrates for an entirely different market, and it was good to see a different insight into how you could work in the future. Although Helen's work didn't exactly connect with me, I can appreciate the fact that she has so much passion about her job, and really just does it for job satisfaction, rather than the money. Helen was a refreshing insight into the industry in the sense that she recognises her limitations, and boldly says so. She also knows that she is still learning, and knows she doesn't know it all. Any person who can accept this and admit it is at the top of their game in my opinion; you (well, I personally) don't want to get to the point in my career where you think you know everything there is to know, and so start being arrogant or cocky, and start not enjoying your work, it becomes more of a chore then rather than a passion, and you may start loosing loyal followers. This is the point where I would hope someone would come up to me, and say I need to step back, and take a look at the bigger picture.

Day 3

Wednesday 7th March

Publishing - Martin Steenton

This session was a talk with Martin Steenton, a publicist at Blank Slate Books, via Skype. Martin couldn't make it down to the university, so our lecturer set it up that we could talk to him via Skype. This was probably the most useful talks I attended over the week. I made PAGES of notes, so this may be a long post (sorry). The format for this talk was mainly questions and answers, with the odd bit of advice thrown in, so that's the way I'll post it on here.

Martin studied Media Studies at uni. Though he's not an artists, he always had a huge passion for comics. He and his girlfriend, set up a blog about comics, in particular unpublished French comics. The aim was to build an interest in the comics, and then hopefully be able to publish them. This blog attracted US publishers, which helped him attract UK publishers.

Martin started working at Blank Slate Books as the Translator Editor, which then led to more and more odd jobs, eventually becoming a Utility Man.

How do artist's 'weasel' in to publishers?

• Have a name that already exists - e.g. published works, etc.
• Be smallpress - through Twitter, Facebook etc.
• Pitch to them at conventions and/or on the internet

The main piece of advice Martin gave with this question was, the more visible you make your work, the higher chance you have of your work being seen, and that quality ALWAYS shines through.

What does a publisher do?

It varies from publisher to publisher. Some want to see fully formed ideas/pitches, which they can assess on the spot and buy for a certain amount of money.

Whereas other publishers, like Blank Slate, don't mind seeing unfinished pitches, that have a few pages, a good idea and a formed talent (i.e. skill set), they would then pay you to finish the book. This approach is usually more for smaller companies.

Bigger companies want to see a full body of work, but Martin would advise against this, as he said you could spend years designing the work, but then find that nobody is that interested in buying its rights.

You HAVE to know how to sell your work - know your key selling points of the text and the images.

The Process

You need to research what each publisher wants/what style of work they are after.

You have to tailor your work to the people you want to be published by.

Martin, then went on to say that you have to stick at it; some people work years and years, with no success, but it's because they have gained attention because of this. Martin gave an example of this, using Darryl Cunningham, the author and illustrator of 'Psychiatric Tales', which has gone on to be Blank Slate's most successful book. Daryl knows the strength of his work, and is confident in his narrative. He also got lots of eyes on his work through Blogger etc. 

Established artists will be more than willing to help you - ask them for quotes on your work, which you can give to publishers; publishers love it! After all, there's nothing better for a publisher than an artist with an established following from their peers. If you have any heroes, get in touch with them, and ask for a quote. Conventions are also a good way to interact with professionals.

Do publishers have house styles?

Yes, a lot do. Look at the "semiotic values" of what's on the page. 

Blank Slate has no house style, just as long as it has an appeal. They have a big scope of styles, ranging from cartoon to photo realistic.

Whereas, publishers like Self Made Hero, and DC Comics have a house standard, that's marketable and has a very high quality.

You need to think about what sort of artist you want to be - do you want to make work for the market? Or for yourself to sell?

Money side:

Again, this varies. A small company tends to be small money. The general rule is, an artist comes with their work, then the publisher buys it with an advance, but the rights they buy will depend on many factors. A publisher can buy its copyright, but it's often time limited.

You'll find a lot of the time, if you sell the rights to one of your characters, then you lose YOUR right to it.

Most of the money is invested in what happens between after publishers have brought your rights, to when you're work is actually published; it provides a marketing and publicity platform for you.

Is traditional publishing going the same way as vinyl records?

He can see companies like DC Comics etc, going digital because it's an entertainment form, while independent publishers going/staying in print. But this is just speculation, because no one really knows for sure.

Publicity and Marketing:

Pitch Tips:

• Have a fully formed pitch - have as many pages as possible (even if you have just a few, use your roughs)
• Give your artist insight into your work - why did you do that? Why does it work? Strengths? Key marketable points?
• Quotes from peers - quotes are easier to get from your peers, as reviewers will tend to go more with published artists
• Send your pitch to them, by e-mail's fine - if you have more than e-mail address for people at the company, send it to BOTH
• Don't be afraid to talk to publishers - get their attention long enough for you to show them your portfolio yourself - show them a few pages, then leave it with them - if they liked it, they'll look at it, and remember you personally when you contact them again

Don'ts:

• Don't be too arrogant! - if they think you're going to be difficult to work with, they won't go with you, as it will cost them more money and time
• Try not to be too unfocused when showing your work - it's got to be your most coherent work possible
• Don't send your work to people that won't be interested
• Don't ask for honest feedback unless you're ready for it - don't be afraid of honest criticism from peers and editors.

Convention dos and don'ts:

• Make your table look as nice as possible - make it look like a shop with book stands, table cloths etc
• Be friendly and polite
• Don't bring everything you've ever done, bring the work you think is your best

His number one tip for making a living out of comics would be: try making money from illustration as

well.

The International Markets:

The UK:

• The UK is a fractured market - to get a comic book, you have to go to a comic book shop, not your local book shop
• Almost entirely all of the market is defined by the US market; we are an extension to the US
• Over the last 5 years, publishers like Self Made Hero, Nobrow, and Blank Slate are now in book shops.

The US:

• This market is dominated by mainstream work
• The UK needs the US market to survive - we need to to grow so we can stand on our own two feet

The French market:

• Comic books are seen as another respected art form in itself
• All type of comic books are available in one place.
• Definitely pitch to French publishers if your work's suitable - try to do a French cover letter.
• A lot of people get published in France first, and then in the US, UK etc. e.g. Joe Daley author of "Dungeon Quest"
• France is more accepting to more diverse work

Is there a specific thing publishers are looking for? What makes work more publishable?

A good mix of understanding comic grammar, layout, a good storyteller, draws coherently and knows what's good about their work and expresses it!

Remember...

You are pitching to people just like you! People who are passionate about comics.

This session was incredibly helpful, and was a great insight into the world of publishing. This isn't something that I have encountered yet, and is quite a scary thing to think about, but Martin's talk really helped to get my knowledge of how publishing houses work etc up to scratch.

Putting a Portfolio Together - Jason Minksy

The aims of this session were: to explain what's included in a portfolio, and how to impress with it. Jason studied at Glyndwr, and then sent to Manchester. He worked for several artists, then decided to work for himself, then went to study for his MA.

One of the important things Jason told us when putting a portfolio together, you have to remember that the things that interest you, may not interest the person who's interviewing you, but it gives them an insight into who you are.

Think about the order you put your work in. The order of your work, should be like a story; it should IMPACT the viewer, with a very strong beginning, a strong middle, and a strong end. Information about each piece of work should be on the back and should have a plastic cover on to protect it.

Getting your work professionally printed looks so much better than some pieces of copier paper, that you have printed at home.

Get your work out there! Whether that be through a website, blog, or twitter.

A showreel is about 'how do you show what you're about in 4 minutes?'

Think about:

• Who you're showing?
• What's relevant to them?
• What do you want out of it?
• How much time do you have? Can you plan it properly with this time-scale?

Be prepared! Be confident in what you're showing your potential clients.

Portfolios are ongoing things, you don't just stop updating them.

This session didn't prove to be as useful as I was hoping it would be, but I did gain some useful bits of information from it. I was hoping that it would show us how you would literally go about putting a portfolio together, for example, how do you choose work to go into it? And how much work you should include? That sort of stuff. Saying this though, some of the advice etc Jason gave us, was really helpful,  for the beginning of a long process I will be doing in the near-future.