3 Point Perspective: The Illustration Podcast

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. 11:40 Jake 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 Focus You 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 System This 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 Conferencing How 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 care of their family and doesn’t have the time to generate that portfolio every 6 months? Like we mentioned before if you are that family guy and don’t have as much time, just be honest with yourself, realize that it will take longer and chip away at it. Long story short: Don’t replace real work with conferencing and tutorials. Regardless if it’s your portfolio or if you are also professional or semi professional, don’t let a year go by without you doing some sort of actual project, whether it you paid for, or if it is a personal project or some research and development and see how people and the market like it, how did they respond to it. If it’s a year or every 6 or 3 months. A year should be enough time to finish some sort of project and put your stamp of approval on it. If gives you something that will ensure you are actually spending time working on it and making sure it gets done, you’re creating something you can point towards, you can put it on your portfolio or your resume, it shows your latest work, or it can be a calling card. 42:30 Be Student B Please be student B, not student A. Will would have these classes where he would set up a still life and it was a class for beginners. Student A, would get set up, and they might be painting an apple or a lime or something. Will would ask them to spend the whole 2.5 hours working on the painting. Usually student A would only paint for half an hour and spent the rest of the time talking and visiting with others. Will would have explained and showed the students things to look out for and things to focus on during the class. They were more concerned with being done. They wanted him to tell them what to do. If you are going to play it smart, try to understand more of what is being asked of you. That is student B.Don’t just go through the motions and focus on just getting done, be willing to experiment, Be a tinkerer, be an inventor. Challenge yourself and always do your best work. If you have teachers who don’t do demos, you need to go find another school. There is nothing worse than a teacher who isn’t willing to step up to the plate and swing. Some teachers are either scared of their inadequacies, or they are just lazy. You should have teachers who are willing to demonstrate and show you what you need to do or possible solutions or ways of approaching a problem. Lee always did demos and all of his favorite classes included teacher demonstrations. Shoutout to Perry Stewart! Whenever Will had a class after him, Perry would still be in the room helping students and sometimes would still be helping students even after Will had started his class. He was not getting paid extra, he was dedicated. 49:03 Don’t Only Practice Another addendum to the over conferencing roadblock: students get into the practice mindset. Practice is good. But it’s not the best when you never really put it on the line and create something of consequence or something that is meaningful to you. If you never put something out there, you never risk failing. Sometimes you need to say, “This is the best that I could do, I hope you guys like it.” 50:13 Getting Around Cliches Lee sees cliches all the time, even at big conferences like CTN. Stuff like, “Monster Under the Bed”. Sometimes portfolios and things are just way to generic. You see this with style too, there is this LA animation style that is a modernized version of Marie Blair. When 100 people are doing the same thing, how can you set yourself apart? A good example of standing out is Cory Loftis. He is in this scene but he doesn’t do that flat painted style like a lot of other artists are doing. He’s got this classic Bugs Bunny, Looney Tunes, Chuck Jones style, mixed with the stuff that Disney does, mixed with this edgy modern style that comes from his time working on video games. He played a big part in Wreck it Ralph and Zootopia. He is really respected and looked up to. He is putting together dots. We all have these dots that we collect whenever you talk with someone, have an experience, or learn something new you have a new dot that you can connect to other dots. Whenever you create anything you are connecting dots. You can see the same pattern that someone else has created with their dots, and you take those 10 dots and add or switch out a couple of dots. But sometimes it can still feel derivative. A way to separate yourself is to find dots that others are not using. Anytime Loftis does personal work it is always super out there and different from what everyone else is doing. When Lee sketches out a concept in his sketchbook or on his iPad before painting it, there always this gap and he’ll spend a couple of days doing other stuff and then come back to it. He has this little list and he runs his concepts by this list before deciding to paint something. Lee always asks himself these questions: What about this is interesting? Has this been done before, and if so, am I adding any new information to this? If I answer yes to both of those, nothing is interesting and it’s been done before. Then the only place to go is, “Am I trying some really experimental painting technique that will add something different to it?” Monster under the bed? Yes, kids can relate to it. Has it been done before, yeah, a million times! Jake’s friend calls this the Pixar Pass, when something has been done a hundred times but you can do it and make it cool and refreshing, then people will give you a pass for it. So, Monsters Under the Bed? They did Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University. If you really knock it out of the park and do it in a really creative and interesting way, people will give you a pass. The Incredibles is like the Watchman meets the Fantastic 4 with a fun modern art style. If you do it right, you can make cliches feel really fresh. Add Irony Cliche topics, look and see what is out there and then add some kind of twist to it. In one of Lee’s character design classes they looked at different portfolios and realized that all of the monsters looked angry. So Lee gave them an assignment to make the scariest monster that you can and make it embarrassed or nice. Another was a prop assignment where they were to take some benign innocent looking object that would turn into some dangerous mechanism. Irony is really powerful to create fantastic stuff. Sometimes people just have poor tastes. Will saw how people drew faces, but wanted to do something original, and give people more geometric faces. Some sort of cubism. Upon sharing his idea with his professor, his professor told him, “I’ve seen people try to pull this off before (Lesson 1, You are not original) and it never works (Lesson 2, because it is not appealing).” Will was just trying to be different. Yes, it’s unique in a way, but it also has to be appealing. Appeal is an “X-Factor.” It’s very important but can be hard to teach. “Don’t be basic.” In Review: Roadblocks to Success: You don't have focus, and you don’t have specific goals. You are spending too much time going to conferences and watching tutorials, spinning your wheels and not enough time making actual work and progress on those goals. You aren’t digging deep enough to be original. You’re taking too much of a surface level approach to your work. Today’s episode is sponsored by SVS Learn.com. We’ve got a 7 day free trial, try it out and see if it’s the right thing for you and if you like the teachers and the teaching style. 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. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

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 Student Part 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, 5:35 Addressing 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’s Will’s list of things you should avoid as a student (and as a professional). Chronically late Chronically unfinished work Always talking and having side conversations during lectures Always giving excuses and shifting the blame Asking the teacher to change the assignment (if this is a norm, rather than an exception) The last person set up to paint Feel guilty because they haven’t made progress since the last time you were given a critique Wearing 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 more wisely and strategically. Attack classes appropriately. Post and participate on the forum. Give and take. Take the classes that attack those different weaknesses that come up in critiques. It’s not Netflix, there’s this weird phenomenon where when you are watching someone do something it seems so easy that you feel like you could do it too. Lee would watch these tutorials, of Feng Zhu a concept artist on Star Wars, and feel that “Yeah i can do that!” Then when he would try and replicate it he would totally flounder. You need to put the pen to paper and put some marks down to learn, you can’t learn just from watching it. Until your hand has done it, you haven’t learned it. If you only have a couple hours a day, you shouldn’t put the pressure on yourself that someone who is in art school full time (9 hours a day of class). You should take one class at a time and really go through that class thoroughly. Sometimes people run through the classes and it doesn’t really show fully in their work. We have talked about having illustration tests and that hopefully we would have enough staff at that time that we can give you a critique on your illustrations, like we do in our interactive classes. Take it slow, when starting to post on the forum, and make sure you are looking at other people’s work and sharing comments and feedback. The atmosphere on the forum is extremely supportive. It’s a nice community Sometimes it is hard to get an honest critique out of people, they might say, “Well, I’m not an instructor, but this is my opinion…” You don’t have to be an instructor to give valuable critique and feedback, your opinion is valuable. You should go in there and read and engage and then people will be more willing and happy to give you a critique on your work. Be specific about what you are looking for in a critique. There are a lot of things that can be learned from this episode. If you are already a professional, you can look at it as how can I be the best professional that I can be? Best of luck with being the best student and lifelong learner that you can be! We are all learning. 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 p odcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

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 Sketchbook What 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 Pencils For 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, Plain It’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 Pencils Watercolor 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 Pen Reason 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 Brush The 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. Paper Canson 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 work traditionally and bring things into Photoshop. Nice to Have: Good studio printer. The printer is something both Lee and Jake use quite a bit for professional work, making prints, and Lee uses it for taking sketches from his sketchbook and then he lowers the opacity and then blows it up and prints it on watercolor paper. It is so important to take the magic of the sketch into the final. You can buy things used! People usually take good care of these things. Lee’s laptop was used, Will’s Wacom was used and he’s had it for 9 years with no problems. Wacom is having this problem where they made their products so good that they aren’t breaking fast enough. Jake: iPad pro or Cintiq computer combo? The latter, the Cintiq computer combo. That’s where all of his professional work happens. It needs to be able to save and store all of those files. An iPad is designed to last 3-4 years and the computer Cintiq combo should last a long time. The Cintiq, Photoshop, computer combo is the standard. This is the grouping that will serve the most people the best. Will did a review on a cheaper non Wacom drawing pad and it felt like a first car vs a sports car when compared to the quality of a Cintiq. With all of that said, you should be able to draw and create with anything. For a costume design class Lee brought in his son’s 64 pack of Crayola’s and did demos using those. You don’t want to be tied down to your magic pen. These essential things are nice to have but the important part is the art. We use all of this technology but it is all about the image and the art. It’s what’s in your head. It’s not the tools but then again it is the tools. There are nuances that you can only achieve with certain tools. 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 p odcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

Failure There 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. 7:07 Low-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. 12:30 Be 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 choices Caused by others, and their choices Caused 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. 15:00 Test 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. 21:20 Failing Forward Failing Forward The 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. 32:00 Critiques For 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 Daviscourt She 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. 39:45 Will’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 Dragon A Marvelous Toy Will 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 Failure Lee did a childrens book, did a whole dummy, it goes to acquisition and then you assume that It’s a long letdown, it can cover 6 months of your life. It’s not like one painting It’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 48:50 Jake’s Failure He 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. 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 p odcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

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. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

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! 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. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

3PP 19 Life Cycles of a Children's Book Projects: Will: Still working on the Painting Color and Light class. I’m gonna be working on it for a while. Loves working on classes, and loves having them. Loves it. It takes a long time but is very satisfying. Lee: Going into the last week of his basic painting class, and it’s amazing the progress people have made between weeks 1 and 10. Started a bunch of projects, and is working on a big series of book covers for his agent, he is trying to move into that genre, because children’s books take a long time, so he is trying to find things to do to supplement his children’s books. Working on classic novels right now, and just did Lord of the Flies. His goal is to do 1 cover a week. Be willing to move without the ball. No one is paying Lee to work on this book cover project, but he is doing it because he feels that it will be good for him. Good things happen to those who take initiative. Jake: Working on coloring his Inktober drawing. It’s a challenge, but it’s satisfying. Also is working on his Inktober book. Life Cycle of a Children’s Book Today we talk about where a book starts, what it does in its lifetime, how it ends, and all the hands that touch it. There are two different branches to children’s books, and they are: Author, illustrator combo. Or an Author who is also the illustrator. We’re going to focus on the first, and talk about how a book is made and published going through a publisher. Not self publishing. The Manuscript After a writer has gone through all of their ideas, and has a manuscript nailed down, they then submit that manuscript to their agent. The agent reads through the manuscript and decides if it’s something they think they can sell. Then the agent usually will give notes back to the author. If the agent is good, then they should know the market and what’s selling right now. Once that stage is over, then the agent will take it to publishers and start shopping it around. Should you chase what’s hot? If you really believe in the story, then you can tell your agent to try and shop it around. But maybe you aren’t super attached, and you don’t mind making the suggested changes. Pick your battles. Usually Jake defers to people with more knowledge and experience than him. Often an agent’s suggestions are very valuable because that is their job and normally they have so much experience with this than you do. The Agent Takes it to the Publishers She takes it to publishers and gauges their interest. more often than not they will have a list of go to editors that they will show it to first. The publisher level might want to get on board too if it’s a really good idea. The editor takes it to the publisher and they bounce it around and see if it’s a book that this publisher wants to publish. They will talk to all sorts of people about schedule, etc. And if it all works out and is a good fit then they will come back with an offer. There is a lot of work that goes into this and it’s something you may not see. Victoria Jamieson, Roller Girl She’s an author illustrator now, and she used to work in publishing. She had a wonderful slideshow that walked people through the process of how a book is made. There are like 100 people working on deciding if a book should be done or not. There are a lot of people that have to give their stamp of approval. It’s good to not know about all of the near misses because then you will be beating yourself up over them and spend way too much time worrying. The money you are offered is a fraction of the money that will be spent making the book. There is printing, marketing, sales, etc. all involved. They all need to have a say to make sure it will work across all departments. Would you trade this for a less free but more stable job? Jake loved animation, but he is happier with the independence that his lifestyle offers now. Will would get into lively discussions with his wife, because she was wanting him to have a “real” job. She was tired of gaps between checks and the uncertainty. But now she is grateful and is glad that Will stuck with being an independent artist. Will has lived long enough to see people with regular jobs experience plenty of layoffs. If there was a house style for picture books, it would take a lot of creativity out of the market. The Publisher Strikes a Deal With the Illustrator. Once the light is green. Once you get the green light, an offer is made, and you are in a good position if you are getting offers from multiple publishers. Then once the offer is made they will start looking for an illustrator. If you are an author then they will have a short list of Then if you are an illustrator then you will get to look at the manuscript and decide if you want to take this project on. Is this something I want to spend months on, will it align with my style and my brand. Is it enough money? Then if you choose to accept the book offer then they will give you a real offer. They will give you a loose schedule and an offer. You need to know your process inside and out. You really need to understand how long things take, comps, scanning ,etc. At this point you should be thinking about your schedule. If everything feels good to you and looks good to you then you accept the offer. Then your agent and the publisher will go back and forth about the money, royalties, do you have rights to the artwork, etc. Usually you want to retain rights to use it in your portfolio, and on your website. You want the rights in case the book takes off and they decide to make other products, like pajamas, mugs, posters, etc, so that you can get royalties. Receiving Your Advance, and Getting to Work Once all of this is squared away then you sign the contract and at that point you get an “advance”, this is upfront money. This protects you as an artist because you get money upfront to see you through the creative process. This is how an advance works: Let’s say you have a $20,000 advance. There are two options: ⅓ signing, ⅓ delivering final files, ⅓ book is printed. ½ siginign, ½ delivering finals (more common). The advance is against the royalties, so you would start making royalties after making the $20,000. Then you get a check and it feels really good depositing it. We like to be real in this podcast. And you don’t get the check immediately upon signing the contract. When you sign it, it still usually takes 1-2 months for you to actually receive the advance. Publishing is weird, horses still bring you your checks. This speaks to the idea that you need to be good with your money and learn to budget and plan ahead. Also in the contract, it should outline the game plan for the actual production of the book. It is usually around a year or 2 years later. The reason is that once you have started creating some art, then they can use that artwork to start selling the book to bookstores, libraries, etc. This all happens well in advance. Stores and libraries all are projecting and trying to predict what will sell or what will not sell in the future.All of this starts to happen as you start sending them files. Usually your production time is 6 months to a year. It takes forever. If you just sat down and just worked on the book and nothing else, you could get it done in maybe two months, but there is all sorts of back and forth, getting feedback, receiving notes, and making changes. Marketing people usually give lots of their feedback on the cover, they judge books by their cover. Production Process Process in a Nutshell Send in initial rough sketches, get feedback. Then do a final illustration and get that approved for the finished look of the book. Receive approval. Then once that is approved, final sketches. Then do the rest of the final artwork. Then turn it all in. Then there are notes on the finished artwork. Then make any necessary changes. Then they get all of the work and they have a lot they need to do on their end with it. It’s so simple, right? It sounds complicated but they are directing it, and so all you need to do is meet your deadlines and respond to their emails. You are working intensely with other people and so there are people skills. You work back and forth with a lot of different departments and people. You are apart of a team, and it’s not like you are just creating an image for a class. Final Check on the Proofs After all the art is in their hands, then they will go through and format it, they will format the type. They will prep everything for print. At the same time, you will start bugging them and telling them that it is time for that second check. You aren’t quite done yet. A few months later you will get proof back, usually you will get prints of the book, physically. And you will see what the book will look like in print. They are larger and are not cropped at all. You look through it and make sure that the color that they are printing is matching your screen. If it all looks good then you let them know or you can ask them Lee will try and send in a couple of finished images and also color swatches of where the color should be. Lee sends a hard copy proof, and then they can match it as best they can. He sends them his intention for how it should be printed. Because if everyone is looking at screens, then they might all be getting something a little different, they are trying to hit a moving target. After the proofs then you get the FNG’s, short for Folded and Gathered. These are the folded sheets, and it is what the book is really going to look like. This is where you can go through and double check everything. It’s probably too late to fix minor things but if there are major things then you can try and catch it before the book is printed. True Story: First time Will went to ALA, his publisher was sending him out there. His editor told him that he will see those “FNG’s”, and he couldn’t tell what was going on and if she was mad about something. FNG’s. There is this lingo, and little terms that get thrown at you that you never learned in school. Book Reviews After the FNG’s are approved then you will receive some advanced copies. The finished book. Not just you but other people like librarians with a book review audience, book reviewers, other publishers and agents, all people who are connected to this book somehow will get the books so that they can start reviewing them and telling people what they should think of the book. What you are looking for at this stage is for good reviews. A starred review on Kirkus is usually a good sign. The reviews are usually heavily focused on the writing and is not as focused on the illustrations. If you do not get a “starred review” not a 5 starred review, but a starred review, then people will look at the book as a miss, and it most likely won’t be a commercial success. Reviews. A lot of reviews are kind of arbitrary because the people reviewing them aren’t artists and the reviews are being given by individuals. Lee did a book and the review was saying that the book was quite poignant, and full of emotion, great. However, he drew a girl without a helmet, and got a bad review because on one page Release Day Book comes out, you are tweeting, and posting on Instagram about the book deal. There is some marketing that you need to do as author or illustrator and it all leads up to the launch of the book. If they want to and if you can, then you may be sent on a book tour. This is quite rare though. Book tours are more reasonable when you are both the author and illustrator. Publishers are hoping that at least one of the books they published will get an award. Every eighth or twelth book they publish is paying for all the others. You go on a book tour, and then you go home, or your book goes onto a best-seller list. You usually find this out, a week or two after the book is published. These accolades are not essential but feel good. Getting onto the The Best Seller Lists, sometimes it’s really easy to gain your way or you can sneak your way onto their lists. Even more important than the Best Seller Lists for how your book is selling is the Amazon seller rank. If you are anywhere under 10,000 for best selling books on Amazon, then you are Bonaparte Falls Apart is seasonal but it was in the 700’s. David Hone’s Christmas book gets into the teens on Amazon’s seller ranking. Basically he is receiving off the charts royalties. Periodically you will receive a royalty statement. Gives you a break down of how many books sold in different areas. It tells you how much you still need to pay off of your advance. And if you have paid off your book’s advance, then you get a royalty check. Death or Eternal Life for a Book Then your book will either die and go out of print. Or it will continue to get royalties. If it goes out of print, then you retain all of the rights and you can self publish it or you can find another publisher. If it never goes out of print then you continue to receive royalty checks for it. You never know what’s gonna happen. The publisher does a lot of work. They do a lot of heavy lifting. So you can look at it this way, you are getting paid to create and you are also receiving free advertising. Big advance or big royalty? Your sales record follows you around, if you have a big flop then it can hurt your future deals. There is a balance between advances and royalties. If they can’t get a bigger advance, then you could ask for a bigger royalty. School visits, Jerry Polada does a lot of school visits, the fact that he does school visits every week and that volume of visits and work he does can help him with getting books sold to publishers. 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. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

Society of Visual Storytelling: Our show is sponsored by SVSLearn.com. It’s like Netflix for a high quality art classes. We love the guys down there at SVS. :) If you are interested in learning more, click here Current Projects: Will: Working on redoing a class for SVS, and originally the class was done live and so now he is giving it a facelift and making it more organized and coherent. Lee: While waiting for a book project to start, has started working on a basic Digital Painting class for SVS. He has done 90 videos done so far. Also, took a week to dial in his studio, his process and needs have changed over time, so now he has taken some time to customize his studio and built things to streamline it. Fancy customization. Jake: Just finished, Inktober! Yay! Finished all the Inktober posts, has been doing a ton of work on the Inktober posts, which is a ton of work. Did all of his personal Inktober drawings, plus another 20 or so to promote sponsors. Cleaned the whole studio with his trusty assistants, Aaron and Tanner Now is working on the Inktober book which is all about how to ink, how to do Inktober, and where do you fit in the world of Ink. November Art Challenges: Slowvember: taking time to slow down after the franticness of Inktober and just focus on making one thing beautiful. Another popular art challenge is Huevember, combined with Sketchtember, and Inktober. People do sketches during the month of September, ink them during October, and then add color during Huevember. Slowvember, all about creating an amazing Last year Lee did 2 pieces during that month. 2 weeks a painting. In today’s world it seems like it is all about speed, so it’s so nice to slow down and work on a painting and give it 100% of what you’ve got. It’s the last 20% that makes you a professional. Students can totally get to that 80% mark but they get stuck and don’t know what else to do. It’s that final 20% that is the hardest part and this challenge is a perfect way to work on getting past that. We love this podcast! This is what are meetings used to dissolve to anyways, so we’re happy to share it now with you. (time) Today’s topic is: How to Working with Art Directors. The nuts and bolts of working with an art director is usually learned on the job and is not covered as much in school. So hopefully this will be helpful. We have some questions that were submitted to us by a former art director who thought these would be helpful questions to discuss and consider. How much creative freedom can I expect to have when illustrating a book? For most children’s books that Jake has done he has been hired based off of a specific illustration he has already done. Some artists have only one distinct style and so if that’s the case the client most likely wants something in that style. Usually Jake will email them and ask what type of style they want for their illustration. The freedom lies in how you can use that style to tell the story. You have to stay in that box of the style and work inside that box and all of the storytelling and design you do should fit in that box. Usually Lee will ask the publisher why and for what reason they chose him. Then they will send some images that they like of his and start to describe the look and feel of the project. Your creativity doesn’t change as much as your confidence does. Lee feels that he has the same amount of creativity and capacity to have good ideas now as when he started, the difference, however, is his confidence and ability to pitch those things and more creative solutions to the art director or publisher. We all need to overcome self imposed limitations of what we think the art director wants. There is a freedom to pitch things out there and see if they are received. It took some time but now Lee has confidence to think outside of the box and to propose new solutions. Talk to the art director like a person, and give them more options. Don’t only focused on “will they like it?” Focus on coming up with creative solutions. Overcome self-censoring to do what is fun and exciting. Here’s an example, for a book Lee gave them three different options of approaches they could take on it and listed the pros and cons of each option. Talk openly about all of those things. Jake likes to think about the current children’s book as the calling card for the next one. So he tries to really push things as far as he can and do his very best on at least a few spreads so he can show that stuff to other publishers. If you give them boring stale work, and that’s what they want and that’s what you’ll be continued to ask do for them. Lee gets shut down all the time, and that’s okay, he understand and has developed confidence. “I love the limited color, but maybe we go full color..” Anything you draw is never wasted. Anything can be reused, shown, and you get to become better as an artist because you went down that path and explored that option. Have you been as satisfied with your professional work as your personal work? Lee has done 24, 25 books and still feels like he hasn’t been able to hit the mark of his best work. Of all of Will’s books, Bonnaparte Falls Apart is doing the best. It was published by Random House and it is the book where he had the most freedom. As a rule of thumb, the smaller the publisher, the less freedom you’re going to have. Lee: is working with imprints of Scholastic and Simon and Schuester. Jake has worked with Chronicle and Harper Collins. These publishers are at the top of their game, they allow you to do your best work with creative freedom and they will give directional nudges, and are not overly micromanaging. Smaller publishers may micromanage and have silly requests. Will will approach art directors and show them really rough sketches and tell them that they are for their eyes only, don’t show these to the editor. This allows him to pitch concepts without having to do a lot of detailed sketching. You need to prove yourself with a new client and give them some nice sketches before you start showing them really really rough concepts, so they can know what your sketches entail. The caliber of client does change the answer to this question of how satisfied you may be with working with a publisher. Some smaller publishers will micromanage. A good example of trust and a proactive solution mindset. Jake noticed when the book was nearing completion that they had left out a spread and were a whole spread shirt, so he proposed an idea for a final spread and the author, editor, and everyone liked his idea and let him carry it out. The Twelve Sleighs of Christmas Throw good creative ideas out there, if you don’t really have a good idea, don’t throw ideas out there just to throw it out there! What to do if you don’t agree with the art director? You can definitely push back more the more confidence and experience you have. Would you do that as a beginning illustrator? Pick your battles, it can’t be a daily thing. Every project will have issues. you know there is going to be some push back to what you do. You are going to want one or two of your ideas, to be really gutsy and push back. But it can’t be a daily thing. When considering pushing back against feedback given, always ask, “Is this worth it? Is this more important than the other things that I really care about?” Pick your battles. Check out our monthly drawing challenges at SVSLearn.com! Be solution-oriented. If you need to make a change and it’s not your idea, then you need to love the change or revision. Will has loved something about a book and then had that thing changed and then he was able to love that new thing even more than the thing before. We are resistant to change because we have attached value to something and then when that is attacked we feel unsettled. Skeleton at Dinner Being a student, almost anything you pitch is accepted and your teacher just wants to see you create good work. As a professional, that isn’t the case, many things you pitch won’t be accepted or agreed with, but you have to keep a positive and team player attitude. When going into professional job, realize you are going to be apart of a team, it helps you have a better mindset. In regard to illustration, Jake likes to have the mind of a mercenary. You are hired by the author and the editor and they have a vision, he will, 9/10, go along with their vision. One good reason for this is that the editor has been through this process so many more times than you, and she works with a marketing department and has seen designs and books succeed and fail. Normally she or he knows what they are talking about. Jake tends to go with their feedback, unless maybe it is something specific that he feels strongly about. Push back on only a handful of little things. Trust their vision. Have you ever refused to change something? Jake, never done it. Lee, did this once. Did icons for a magazine and they got caught in this ongoing never ending revision loop. As artists we are all caught in this paradox where we are wanting to make money and also wanting to enjoy out art and this fun career path. Sometimes you need to know when to say yes and no. Sometimes you say yes, because there is a really good paycheck. Sometimes you say no, because it doesn’t fit with your brand or artistic vision. Will lost his rep by saying no. The art director was really upset because everyone wanted Will, the illustrator to rewrite the book, and Will knew that wasn’t his job or responsibility, and refused to do so. He lost his rep but stood up for himself. Soon after that publisher actually went out of business. Being an illustrator does not mean: “I will illustrate anything for anyone in any style.” I.e. Lee doesn’t do likenesses in his illustration work. Know what you’re good at and know what you’re not. You don’t have to be a Jack of all trades. But you also don’t have to limit your skill set but you can limit what you do. Is there a way to feel out the publishing team before you do a book for them, to make sure you see, creatively, eye to eye? Some questions to ask early on to help you feel out the your compatibility with the project and team. What images of mine did you see that made you think of me? Why did you pick me? How do you see this project happening? Am I primarily working with the editor or the art director. You want to know what you are getting into. Will’s friend wanted him to do a logo, and Will agreed to do it but had his friend show him 3 of his favorite logos so that Will could get a feel for what his friend wanted. Make them send you stuff that fits their vision, so that you have a better idea as to what it is that they want. Sometimes you have to spend a lot of money on your furnace. You have to stick with it having a consistent online presence, you need to build an audience a fanbase, when you are in need they will likely support you! How long do you wait on getting feedback on thumbnail sketches? It can take as long as 3-4 weeks. Worst experience with an art director? Everyone has nothing to share. Will already shared his. How to become friends with your art director? People like to work with friends and with people that they can relate to. Will tries to make it personal, “have a good time… this weekend”, “I’m going to be doing this, this weekend” Be kind and be their friend. Jake likes to follow them on twitter or to comment on their art if they are an artist to find connections and build friendships. A lot of Wills art directors are return clients. He has had 5, 10, 30 projects with the same art directors. Think about it, if you do good for someone, then they will count on you and look to you as a go to person. Be fun, be interesting, be a good person, care about them, show interest in what they’re doing. They will want to keep working with you if you produce good work, and are easy to work with. One more idea, send your art director or publisher a card or a print, and do something extra like that for them. Lee sends his new publishing clients his Kickstarter book so they have a really strong taste of what his process and finished work is like. We hope you liked this discussion, this is a good thing to talk about because working with art directors, it’s part of what we do! 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.

Most people think that in order to be a great illustrator you need to just be a great artist and storyteller, that's true. However, there is a lot more that goes into being a stellar illustrator and a more well rounded person. In this episode we'll go over 10 important skills that we all need to be developing, and we'll go over some of the reasons why they are all so important, and share some techniques and tips for improving your skills. "Art directors only want illustrators with great skills!" Just a reminder that this class is sponsored by SVSLearn.com with a library of over 80-90 classes. Here are some recommendations: Lee’s Favorite: Visual Storytelling Techniques, it gives a why for all of the marks that you are putting down. Will’s Favorite: Draw 50 Things, it’s hard but once you learn to swing a golf club then you can go forward knowing how to create images. Jake’s Favorite: How to Draw Everything, Really proud of this one, it’s an intro to drawing, and it’s also great for experienced artists. It’s always a great thing to make sure that you are doing it right. It corrects drawing problems, and you learn a process by which you can draw anything you want! SVSLearn.com is Netflix for art school. If you want to own a movie, you go buy it. If you want to have access to a library of movies you do Netflix. That’s how SVSLearn.com is set up, you can buy the class and own it indefinitely or you can subscribe to our growing library of great content. Project Updates: Will: Sequel to Bonnepart, still working on it and is on the second round of sketches. Lee: Working on a new book with Simon and Schuster, it’s a doozy, because it’s based on a song and the song doesn’t have a strong narrative, and so he is trying to create a story through the images. Great ideas come early in the morning. That’s when great ideas come. Working in the morning and then chilling at night, or some people like to work till late at night and that can be great too. When you get into a focus mode, whether it is late at night or early in the morning, nobody is there to interrupt you. Jake: Delivered all of the interior drawings for Littlest Snow Plow 2, and it ended up being 40 pages. Next up, is working on the Inktober Book with Chronicle: how to do Inktober, and how to ink, and Jake’s process. The 10 Skills that Every Illustrator Must Have Love Creating You need to love creating art. Will has had students who he has determined don’t love art, people who would show up late, and talk to people, and take forever to get setup, and then they pack up and leave early. This is true for anything that you want to do. If you don’t love it then you won’t have the drive to push yourself and become great. Art is great, it’s what kids get excited about in pre school, and we are so blessed to be able to “play” for our job. Will had a friend who was admiring his iPad and asked about getting one, and then Will told his friend that he shouldn’t get one because he doesn’t love drawing. The friend hadn’t drawn really at all in the last decade, and was kind of offended at first, but then when Will explained why he said that, he understood that what Will said definitely had some truth to it. You’ve got to love it in order to excel. Jake has 5 kids and all of them who like to draw. One of them loves drawing and is older, and has a younger brother who likes drawing but and is way more naturally gifted. Sometimes his older son gets jealous, however, the older one is way more passionate, and in the long run he will have the drive to grow and become an amazing artist. You have to love it in order for it to be a career. It’s fine if it’s just a hobby and you only do it for a few hours a week, but if you are going to be creating for 40-50 hours a week, then you need to love it. Unique Style Too often people settle and just copy someone else’s work and they don’t develop their own unique style. If you stick with it long enough, your style will emerge. You can be deliberate and coax your style out quicker with exercises such as collecting 5-10 illustrators that you really like, and then creating lists about the different things that make up their style. If you want to get published you also need to develop a style that is relevant. You need to be looking at what’s being published right now, and then you can push things, you need to be current. We’ll do an episode about this soon, because this is an episode in and of itself. Communication You have to talk good. You have to be willing and bold enough to ask questions, and call your art director to clarify things. Back in the day everyone called people even when people didn’t see it coming. However, it makes sense that sometimes people are nervous and don’t want to look silly or incompetent to an art director, and therefore, are afraid to call and ask questions. People are willing to help you. If they want to work with you then that means they value you and your art. You can be honest, “Honestly, this is my first time doing a job like this, and so what do you think would be a fair price?”, etc, people will find you and your humble honesty endearing and be there to help you. Power of Persuasion, People Skills Sometimes we look at persuasion as a negative term, as manipulative. But it’s not, and those things are different. It’s kind of like you get more bees with honey. Let’s say you’re a beginning illustrator, and the client asks if you can take on a project, you say, “let me check my schedule and get back to you.” When maybe your schedule is wide open. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a game, “What’s your rate?”, well, “What’s the budget?” That’s a vital question if you want to make illustration a career. You need to make your client comfortable, they’re nervous working with you if you haven’t worked with them before, do all you can to clarify and show excitement and interest, so that they feel comfortable and good about hiring you. Will wanted to get a Yorkie, and there were 100 people who were wanting it. Will wanted to try and get the owner to let him buy it, so he tried to reverse engineer the person’s perspective. Ask yourself, “What would I want to hear, if I were them? What would I not want to hear, if I were her?” Assess the situation and look for how it can benefit you and the person you are working with. Think win-win! Show that you are excited, be human. Don’t be afraid to be excited and to show it! The 33% Rule You have relationships that you need to maintain. There are executive relationships above you, peer relationships people who are next to you, and there are people who are “below you” (not in a condescending way) but they are maybe not as experienced at something. Focusing on all of these relationships helps you see where you are at in your career and in your ability, acknowledge what you need to do to get better and enables you to help those who are further back on the path than you are. As you help people who are further back, you learn and grow more. Your skills will increase as you have to teach people the process. As you spend time with people ahead of you, they pull you up. You’re the sum of the 5 people you spend most of your time with. That means you need to put people in your life who are better than you. What to do if you are the best? If you are the rockstar of your group? Jake was at an art studio, and eventually people above him had moved on and left, and one day he realized that he didn’t have anyone to look up to and to push him to be better, so immediately he started looking at higher up studios with artists light years ahead of him, and he ended up getting a job there and grew so much within just the first 6 months. Healthy competition can help push you to be a better artist too. Teach You don’t have to. But if you can do it, it’s so rewarding. You give so much to your students, and they give you even more. Your students build a great circle around you, and it increases your quality of life. Some people have different personality, and like being alone more. Will’s case for why you should teach: When you have to break something down, and have to explain something, then you are creating different pathways in your brain and you have epiphanies as you are teaching. You are held to a higher standard: if you teach your students to do something then you are more accountable to try and apply what you teach in your own work. Most of the most successful illustrators that he knows of, all have done something to teach and share their knowledge and experience. As a rule of thumb, you should be out of school for 5 years before going back to teach, and those years of experience will validate you. You’ll be a better teacher and have the students respect. Students smell blood in the water and they can tell if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Your art will get better if you teach. Jake took a teaching job and right away his work got so much better. Personal Projects Every successful illustrator that Jake knows of that has taken their career somewhere has done personal projects and more importantly finished them and put them out into the world. Ship It. Check out our episode on this: Ship Happens Not the continuous project on the side that never gets finished. This is the only way to avoid burnout as a pro. Sometimes you just want to paint or draw something that’s just all entirely yours. Sometimes you do a personal project and it works its way into your professional work. Personal projects and style are so interrelated. You can’t work on personal project without developing your style and artistic voice. Sometimes they turn into bigger things. Missile Mouse, a side project started in 9th grade, turned into graphic novel deals with Scholastic. Little Bot and Sparrow, a 10 page story for a comic anthology became a children’s book. Inktober was a personal improvement project, now it’s a world wide art challenge. Will did Bonaparte Falls Apart, because Jake convinced him to do the fanart and his Little book style. When you have a personal project you have to answer questions and solve problems that you don’t have to when working on a project for someone else. From doing Kickstarters, having to work with printers, and having to prep files, it has helped Jake work better with clients. Yearn to Constantly Improve So many people get to a point where they wonder where else they need to go. Simona Ceccarelli: a good example of continually learning. She made it a personal goal, that her portfolio would turn around and be a completely different portfolio by the next year. “Eternal student.” She was a scientist for years, but she loved art and started studying it. Be an eternal student. Will’s interview with her. Will was impressed with one of his highly experienced teachers in school who would constantly take notes whenever a visiting artist came to campus. He was humble and always trying to learn. Take notes. Have an Online Presence You can have great art, but if no one can find it, then you won’t have any work. Most illustrators that are doing really well have some sort of an online presence. You can find them easily, they have a website, they are present to one degree or another on social media. Simona has gotten work from twitter and instagram. Not only can you find work but you can start to build your own personal fan base. Personal projects can sustain you if you have an audience that wants to buy your work. Think of Yourself as More Than an Illustrator. When Will looks at some of the best illustrator many do more than just illustration. Strive to combine an additional skill with your illustration: i.e. writing, programming for a game you’re making, maybe it’s a board game so you’re combining it with your creative ideas for making the game, etc. Develop another skill that you combine with illustration. You combine things and can create something that is more than the sum of its parts. Some artists transcend the idea of being a hired gun, or “just an illustrator.” You’re never going to be paid as much as the creator rather than just the artist. You have to stand out in some way, you have to be unique. It’s important to create that mindset that you are a creator, even if it’s not illustration, even if it’s something completely different. Sometimes while working on other things you’ll receive insights and inspiration for your art. It’s all about how you define yourself. “Illustration is one of the things that I do, but I’m able to do lots of things.” There is so much more to life than just illustration. Be more than just an illustrator. Taking classes: Jake reads books and learns from them, art and non art, Jake did a marketing class, and went to a conference. Lee has this spark and wants to take some art classes, onsite. John Love watercolor workshop Lee did it. Will would like to get into Plein Air painting, has never done it, but wants to get into it. Svslearn.com Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44 Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo 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. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.

Our Current Projects: Lee: is working on some fun little promos for his agent, and he is getting feedback and having different studios look at one of his books. Will: Just submitted the second round of sketches for Bonaparte Falls Apart. Jake: Super busy with Inktober and it now has several sponsors, which takes a lot of administrative work, looking over contracts, and providing content for them. Also, shipped Skyheart, went to New York and talked with editors about working on future projects, and built friendships and connections. Reminder Svslearn.com, is an online illustration school, and a sponsor of Inktober! There are inking classes, and right now we have a Free 7 Day Trial going one, If you are interested please click here. Be sure to check it out! Drawing Challenges Have you guys ever done an art challenge? Will created the Draw 50 Things Challenge, it’s a design challenge where you try and create an illustration that has at least 50 different recognizable objects in it. Lee once did a 14 week long art challenge, painting a digital landscape painting everyday, 7 days a week. Which is a TON of painting! Drawing challenge: you do something daily or you have a project you try to finish in a certain amount of time. Take something you want to get better at and do it every day, for 30, 50 days. Jake created Inktober, which is where you create an ink drawing ever single day during October. How to participate in Inktober. He also created the Draw 100 Somethings challenge, which is where you draw something and then draw 99 more different somethings, all within narrow constraints, i.e. 100 different dragons, 100 different pirate animals, the key is to not be too broad, the constraints will push your creative muscles! Why You Should Do an Art Challenge There are 3 main reasons: Improve your life, and become more creative. Improve your habits and develop your craft. Get attention and exposure. It is so important that you do it everyday, at first it’s really awkward and it takes time to get in the rhythm, but eventually it becomes second nature. When you first try something it’s harder and then when you do it again it gets easier. Repetitive attempts drill it into you. You will become a better and more creative artist by the end of the challenge if you really do it justice. While in college, Will got let into the illustration program on probation. He had to prove himself during the next semester to stay. He kept asking professors what he needed to work on and ultimately it was design. That’s why he made the Draw 50 Things Challenge, to help push people to sharpen their design and creativity skills. Lee created the art challenge of Slowvember. You create something every day for Inktober and it is really fast paced, maybe you have then during Slowvember you slow down and spend time every day working to create and polish one amazing piece. Lee is an advocate for slowing down and doing things right. So many people can get paintings to 70 or 80 percent of where they need to be but it’s that last 20 percent that really pushes the painting to the next level and its that last 20 percent that takes the longest. Slowvember gives you the opportunity to push something to 100 percent! Challenging Yourself in Different Ways Inktober: you should have a vision for it. Think of how you can do it, have a goal. Don’t do Inktober just do do it, but make it specific and have a goal. Be deliberate. Don’t just swing at 10,000 golf balls, but have a specific target or goal you are trying to create, then swing for that. That deliberateness will help you learn and improve so much faster! Maybe you want to do quick 30 minute sketches for Inktober with a goal to get faster at doing quick sketches, then that’s great! Just make sure you have a focused goal and you will get even more out of it. For the vast majority of people who participate in Inktober its hobbyists, people who love creating but aren’t doing it professionally for their career. They come from all walks of life, from middle school to adults that all like drawing and being creative. Proportionally there aren’t as many professionals. If you fall into that category then for you it doesn’t have to be good it just has to exist. You’re building a habit of drawing and you’re trying to build the creative mindset. It gets you thinking. After 7 days you start to run out of ideas, and you have to push yourself creatively. There is value in just doing it, even if it’s not amazing...yet! Are You Allowed to Do It Digitally? Do you think that the guy with the turkey feather guy got mad when the guy with the metal nib pen came and drew next to him? Will, Art is art, the tools don’t matter. It’s about what you make and how you make the viewer feel. The problem with digital is when you don’t understand the traditional medium and the look that you are going for. When you know how to do it traditionally, then you can recreate that feeling and look, digitally. Lee’s Challenge to Digital: Do half digital, and half traditional. That way you will get pushed and those two halves will begin to complement one another. Jake was blindsided last year by Inktober contention over digital vs. traditional. Jake lives in this world of traditional and digital and going back and forth between both. He sees digital as valuable and the best thing that has happened to art; and that tradition is valuable and the best thing that has happened to art, there wouldn’t be any digital without it. Inktober was created to focus on linework, don’t have to worry about color, but just keep it nice and simple. You can still do that challenge with a stylus, you can still make it simple and beautiful digitally. There are certain lines you can’t do digitally that are easier to do traditionally, learning to create those lines digitally is a skill in and of itself. There is value in doing the Inktober challenge digitally. It’s a different skill. However, there still are things to learn from stepping away from digital and doing traditional. Jake did a post encouraging digital artists to do traditional, that offended some people. People took it as him saying that they wouldn’t be getting the full experience. However, there is value to both digital and traditional, they both have their virtues. Jake didn’t mean to invalidate people. Jake took Inktober on as a personal challenge. Lately Jake has tried to ink digitally more with the iPad and Cintiq, and saw how there is something special to digital, both traditional and digital are so useful. Still should be simple with just line work and maybe a splash of color and don’t create full color paintings. If you normally work digitally, try it traditionally! Inktober, all about doing it daily and improving as an artist. Be Creative Will, don’t worry about what others say Inktober has to be. You can try to be different. There are not Inktober police. When people are saying you’re doing something wrong then you are on to something. After Picasso got others to start doing cubism, a cubism group quickly emerged and they kicked him out, however now he is the only one that is well recognized. You don’t want to be an “if only” artist. You don’t want to be an artist who can draw “if only” they have the right gear with them. You want to be able to draw with anything around and draw and paint with them. You don’t need all this stuff. Inktober for writers, there was a writer who writes a little story to go with each daily prompt, and there is a group of writers that have gotten together to share their Inktober stories. That’s great! Well if Inktober means that you can just do anything, then it doesn’t mean anything. There is a reason for it, but you can be creative and do what you need to do. Contests Zebra, Adobe, Pentel, Blick, and Kingart are all doing Inktober contests. There are contests. It could be that they are looking for traditional instead of digital or a dash of color. If you are going to enter contests, be careful that they don’t own your work. Pentel did a contest, they said that they own your artwork. They said that you could use it for anything they want to use it for. People were upset with it. Their lawyer looked at it and Inktober’s lawyer looked at it, and it has specific wording to be able to use that work to post it and share it on their channels, not to use to advertise on their products. They went in and adjusted some wording. Really be aware of what the contest rules are, just be aware. If the contest is worth it, then maybe do artwork specifically for the contest for exposure. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter has similar wording to these contests. There are some risks and things that you just have to deal with, that’s just apart of being an online artist. The Power of Inktober Jake never would have imagined that Inktober would have turned into what it is today. He started the challenge to have: Constraints, Accountability, he tries to be a person who does what he says he’s going to do. Wanted a way to get more exposure as an artist, and a reason for people to come to his art blog. Inktober is still all about getting better at art, and getting people to want to come look at your work. Inktober has changed a lot of people's lives, got them in the habit of drawing, and boosted their followers. Inktober is like New Years, it’s a time when people say, “I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna make it happen.” It’s a line in the sand. Happy drawing! Thank so much for listening! LINKS Svslearn.com Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44 Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo 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. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. 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.