Professional practice: 2014

Saturday, 20 December 2014

Childrens books

Dr Xargles guide to Earth Tiggers

its set as a alien teacher telling its fellows about Earth and what to expect - it’s part of a series to introduce ‘aliens’ to Earth. Its language is playful and is matched by its pictures.

Use of repetition in the face to show movement and elongated cat streak.

This is the twist at the end of the book... they’ve been taught about domesticated cats, not tigers.

Avocado Baby

I likes spread as the babes facial expressions are simple but get the message across - he’s not happy!

Mogs Christmas

here the expression is so funny, it expresses what we see in our cats. The children look so content compared to the cat.

The composition in this makes us follow the general activities of the festive season...and then we see the grumpy cat.

I’ve chosen these books as the simple lines still express strong emotions and feelings that we can connect to the character. The colours in all of them are bright and in Xargles and Mog, colouring pencils are used as well as a wash.

Monday, 1 December 2014

Ciara Phillips

http://www.ciaraphillips.com (22)
nominee for Turner prize 2014
She caught my eye as she works with screen printing which is something I’d like to follow a bit further with.

Antonia Reading, part of GENERATION at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

The winner of the Turner prize was Duncan Campbell

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2014/turner-prize-2014-artists-duncan-campbell (23)

Saturday, 29 November 2014

Publishers and interests

Every book you sell, you get a % of the price.

but, it goes from the publisher, to the retailer.

He's with Random house and gave an advanced price...
If you were to get 10% royal tie on a £10 book...you first have to sell 3,000 copies and £3,000 before you start earning any of the royalties.

A FLAT PAY is where you get a sum money and no further.
ADVANCED PAYMENT is in 3 instalments...
1. when you sign the contract
2. when the artwork is handed in on the deadline.
3. when the book is published.

READ THE CONTRACT... within it it will contain the deadline date, if you miss this you won't receive your instalment.

Fumio missed this deadline, and his book got delayed a whole year.
Publishing houses release books before christmas and before summer.

Working with an agent, they would negotiate prices and times.

Publishers get discounts.
net price- book stores buy in bulk from the publishers, and get about 50% discount.
The publishers make about £8.70 profit, from which the royalties and promotions have to come from.
So from that £8.70 you get 85p fro each book sold....

Each time a book is published, it's a loss. You have to earn back the loss before any profit is made and the author can start earning.

With translations, they pay the author 75% of sum money (price of book)
and publisher 25%

A french publisher gave Fumio an advance of 7,000 euro.
Royalties .. 9% on first 30,000 copies
and 10% after 50,000 copies.
and 11% on every copy after.
So if you sell a lot of books, the better!

A USA publisher offered 10% net on the first 20,000... the most for least so far.
But they asked for a different cover, which Fumio had to design again free of charge.

Public lending rights..every time its loaned out you get a %

To go to a publisher with an idea, submit scenario and page numbers. Say 160 pages full colour. Send 20 finished pages to send and they'll say yes or no.

Do lots of competitions...
The Observer ran one, where the winner gets their book printed.
Fumio did the competition for a couple of years running, and on the 4th time he came runner up. One of the editors read it and they had a talk about it.

Thursday, 20 November 2014

Georgina's career

Illustrattion can be many things, but two words that stood out for Georgina was Adaptable and Reflective - being able to think about your contacts and how to improve.
She does screen printing and has her own small company and bookmaking, (http://www.pirrippress.co.uk/blog) (24)and she has a freelance agent (eye candy.co.uk) to represent her.
( http://www.eyecandyillustration.com/home/georgina-hounsome/)(25)

She's been through her childhood sketches and made some typography prints from them...
A project called 'older and wiser'.

She began doing a BA sculpture course, but realised she preferred the drawing stage rather than the actual making. She then followed to do a BA illustration at Bath.
after that she became an art technician in a secondary school and did freelance work.
She did a teaching course, as well as freelance but didn't enjoy that so she applied for the MA in Falmouth as well as still teaching and freelance and started lecturing after that!

When she came out of her BA in Illustration she made her portfolio on CD and sent it to 200 agents...out of which only 3 replied! One of them was Eyecandy, who is run by a nice couple.
Her applications were also to publishing houses such as Penguin and she made sure she had the persons name she was sending it to on there.

Younge creative network (http://www.ycn.org) (26)do lots of free competitions -
(one for next year)(27) (FolioSociety one)(28)

JOIN DO FREE COMPETITIONS it keeps you thinking and developing.

She then followed story telling, and for her MA final she produced 40 calligraphy prints which you could arrange in different ways and create your own stories.

For the Cheltenham illustration awards she came runner up!

2 years after her MA she wanted to collaborate...

She did an art residence for the Coldpress in Norfolk (http://www.thecoldpress.com/store)(29) for 2 weeks where she printed aquatints. She found it refreshing as you're there to do art work and nothing else.
(Collaborations)(30)

Every 3 months or so she looks back through her sketchbooks to see if there's a possible narrative growing.

She did a printing workshop in Exchange gallery, cornwall and has 2 weeks to create form scratch a book and print it. In the studio, people could see the process sand talk to her...which was sometimes annoying as she had set the ink out to print and it would dry as people talked to her!
She and her friend made 50 screen printed books. (http://www.studionumbersix.blogspot.co.uk/2011_05_01_archive.html)(31)

A curator in Berlin saw this work and asked them to do a similar thing for his gallery. (2012)(http://www.enblanco.de)(32)
They had to ship the screen prints over, which was nerve wrecking as if a screen gets a tiny tear in it, it rips and cannot be used.
(http://www.enblanco.de/index.php?/archiv/june-12--the-island/)(33)

The project was inspired by nature magazines... one of them included all the awards that have wiped out species. She wondered, if without these hazards, can one continue to grow and live forever?

60 books made and printed.

Beautiful Quink ink studies of objects found on the Island.

from the gallery website... "The Island’: a fictional account that explores ideas around protection, the natural world, and human being’s place in it. They have taken a scientific hypothesis as a starting point: some cold-blooded species have no fixed adult size, as humans do, but continue to grow until they die. If these species were completely protected, they could theoretically keep growing and live forever. The Island exists as a completely protected place for the carefully chosen candidates of a scientific investigation."

She used to re-draw from her sketchbook but now she scans directly from them. Because she usually knows what she's sketching for, e.g screen printing, she'll sketch like the method which makes it easier to work from.

She went to Kristiansand in Norway for another artist residency, 6 weeks. She had applied for 10 residences and this one accepted her! Its the 5th biggest city in Norway and yet it was tiny. She went to Oslo...and there was no one to be seen.

They focused on the environment which was amazing and inspiring. They did all their research there, no printing as there wasn't any facilities. They printed it in Bristol with Spike Island. The project was called 'Light and Sight' as whilst they were there it was only 2 hours of darkness...very productive time!

Her latest visit was to Portugal...

Wow! Feel like I should create something!!

Saturday, 15 November 2014

Talk from the creators of Papio Press

(https://www.facebook.com/pages/Papio-Press/798953303497901)

Iphone cases sell well, but of course new phone types are being brought out all the time s they're not stable...
Tea towels at stalls sell well.
Tax... Print off from company
Mugs aren't so good as they're expensive and you have to make sure they're packaged properly.

They're on Etsy (where there's lots of lovely people), Facebook and they're biggest...Notonthehighstreet.com (http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/papiopress).

Quick shipping is important! 'Etsy' is costed as product price and it's extra for shipping on top. 'Notonthe...' is free shipping, so the price is included on the product.

They had a stall at Capewarm stall. Its a cornish show for 2 weeks, you set up the stall and leave it.

Framed work is too costly to post, so they sell them unframed.

250gm paper and recycled/ eco ... people love eco!

They look at other peoples prices for comparison ...

includes commission, postage, envelopes - make sure you never work at a loss.

Everything you earn from the store, put back into the business and make it grow.
Keep with UK retailers... ones abroad can steal your work and make things out of them without you knowing.

Friday, 14 November 2014

Interview with Nathan Haines, concept artist

Nathan Haines did the cover for Olio 8 and an entry. He works in concept art for TT company.

He's always busy with projects, one of the most recent ones is Batman Lego gem.
He's been within the company for 1 year and 4 months.
deadlines at every hour! he found it overwhelming at first but now he gets an email and off he goes!
Each sketch you do is pasted onto another person.
he's had Marvel superhero projected onto a building.
BUT when working for the large companies, you've signed your ownership over to them, which means you have to wait for 2 other projects to come out before you can show people that work. E.g in WarnerBros you have to wait 2 titles...
Works about 10 hours a day, but every hour you work over 8 goes towards holiday.
He has about 5-6 projects on at the same time.
5 or 6 people work in the 2D design sector, and 3D there's around 50 who develop and follow up the work.
Lota of sketching, emailing them off and correcting anything.
Can earn £18-26,000 for working in a relatively known company. For the big ones, anything from £25-30,000!

How long do you have to develop concept art?
Depends what they ask for... if it's thumbnail ideas then under an hour. 2 Days then for changes and feedback.
What is the best thing to do to get into concept art?
Thumbnail sketches, observational drawings on the tablet, look at light and dark... PRACTICE PRACTICE!

CV time

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(http://targetjobs.co.uk)
(http://www.talentcupboard.com)
(http://www.conceptcupboard.com)\
(http://www.artquest.org.uk)

Artist in residence - works in a public organisation and encourages others to make art e.g in a school. Your job is to motivate, inspire, communicate, keep stock count on supplies etc.

WHAT DOES THE ORGANISATION DO?

A CV is an ADVERT for yourself.

What to include:

Name
Photo
Email
Qualifications (academic) from secondary school (GCSEs) onward.
FULL title of degree
Industry related experience (worked in a big group?)
Profile - 3 or 4 selling points that summarises what you're doing, skills and where you want to go.
Skills, transferable
Additional e.g published work, awards, prizes, anything sold?
Interests? Say why you've included it!
reference - one at your university and one of choice.

How to present it...

Conventionally

2 pages
plain
logical flow e.g About, Qualifications, Interests....
Standard typeface
non illustration skills
no visuals or links to portfolio...

Creative

2 pages
colour
creative skills
links to portfolio
typeface...choose!
graphically presented?

Think about paper quality... NO STAPLES OR PAPERCLIPS

If you make a website they usually have a Biography. It includes inspiration and approaches, written in 3rd person.

For cover letters or emails.... Write your name, why you're contacting them and why? Is it their ethos? Why you? I look forward to hearing from you, a thanks...goodbye.

Saturday 18th, symposium

We had three guest lectures in, Will Morris, Nick White and Ben Newman.

Will Morris, 'The Silver Darling'

Will Morris (http://whmorris.com) is Cheltenham based and does comic books.
He had an Archaeology degree, but went into comic and graphic novels instead.
He met people through Thoughtbubble in Leeds (http://thoughtbubblefestival.com) and TCAF (http://torontocomics.com/about-tcaf/).
Inspired by Gipi, an italian comic artists. (see right)
He's done a comic called 'The Silver Darlings', about superstitions on a fishing boat, and silver knives being brought aboard can lead to bad luck.
He advised to enter competitions and meet at comic book festivals, as the comic scene is small in the UK so everyone knows everyone.
He's never had an agent due to being present at festivals - all the publishers are there.
He also said to experiment in your own time, not on a live commission as they see your style and expect something similar, so if you continue experimenting , their paid work will differ to what they've expected.
Approximately £150 for a page. He'll try and work in a day to make the pay work it.
For panels and how to lay them out... What's the 'moment' on the page...make this the biggest panel. Work with the script. He works at an A3 size if he's working traditionally.
With perspective and exaggerating, he uses Manga Studio program.

I found Will to be interesting as you could see development in each project he did. His style, with inks and paint differ from conventional digital comics, and give it an organic feel. You can definitely see a connection between his and Gipis work, mainly through the medium used.

Gipi comic

Nick White - (http://www.thisisnickwhite.com)
(http://thisisnickwhite.tumblr.com)

Worked with Anarak - (http://www.anorakmagazine.com)
Unsinkable press
He has a teaching job in Norwich, where sometimes in boredom he made tiny books and sold them in matchboxes. (link)

I saw Nick last year at the symposium...and was disappointed that he had the same slideshow and not much weight to what he was saying. His work is fun and colourful...but what more can you say?

Thursday, 13 November 2014

Fumio and his work

9th Oct...
http://www.fumioobata.co.uk (46)
Originally from Tokyo, where it’s big on comic books.
He then came to England and into the Glasgow school of art - communication and design in ’91.
He felt stuck, and started experimenting in collage and charcoal drawings.
Went into concept and background design, where there was emphasis on movement.

Went into a projection company, was set an animation (25 frames).
2004 for Duran Duran live show. He had 2 weeks to produce 4 minute video. http://youtu.be/6OZMaiIpiPg (47)

Art residential in Bradford for Channel 4. He had nooooo ideas what he was doing but said yes anyway. He worked with filmmakers in an open studio for 3 months... it was like being in a fishbowl with everyone looking in. ‘Shhh'...http://youtu.be/xmgvtXRmIhs (48)

Edinburgh animation, they taught him properly, with teamwork. You can’t do everything! 5 years there... worked on Dennis the Menace. Now they send animation abroad for cheaper labour costs.

In 2008 he left animation because he felt like a nobody. He went into comic books, and there’s a big scene in France.
He did an artist residence for the Angouleme festival in January.
He produced his first book with Nobrow, and moved back to the uk.
2007 - Guardian / observer competition. I his 4th year he came runner up and got a publishing deal.

He did work for NHS drug awareness and International magazine on earthquake awareness.

Now a lecturer for University of Gloucestershire!

Deadline for work experience report - 30th April
Work experience will be for 5 days in total. Keep a record of emails and other materials to prove you’ve tried to get a placement.
Scan images for a professional blog...there’s a photography studio at Hardwick.
In April there’s a Bristol book fair... make zines, be proactive!
London book fair - i week in April.