Interview with Kagekabuki

Jim: Do you still use tapas after the controversy a while back?

Kagekabuki: I do still use tapas! I considered ditching it over the right of first refusal thing, but they responded to it and rectified it pretty quickly. I'm keeping an eye on things there now. I also use Smackjeeves, Webtoons and Comic Fury. I've used Smackjeeves for over ten years now, all told.

J: Are those sites paid for by advertising? Do you get any residual payment from those sites or is it More like youtube? YouTube tends to pay you through advertising only when you have a certain amount of views, third party content is immediately ad heavy, they count you as the uploader and editor but the content isn't yours, so in such cases there’s no profit for the uploader.

K: For the most part yes, they're paid for by advertising- Tapas has a 'tipping' system where you can buy digital coins to tip creators and unlock pages of premium comics, I imagine they make a lot of profit from that. You can also get ad revenue from Tapas but like YouTube, it's very little.

I believe Smackjeeves has a premium account option too which includes FTP, a custom domain and more storage

'Sacred?' by Kagekabuki ©

J: Do you not have digital versions of your comic for sale? Something for kindle/tablet readers?

K; It's something I plan to do, but only after I re-colour the prologue and chapter one as the screentones are awful when resized.

J: It would prove really cost effective, I hear that it's far better way of getting money than print on demand at least. But how come it is important for you to use screen tones?

K: It was, for an 'authentic' manga look, but now I just use flat greys as it's much less of a headache.

 J: So what's a good day like for you? And what environment do you create manga in?

K: I guess one where I actually get time to do art as I work too! I usually create on my laptop, in my bedroom. I don't have space for a desk. I have a Wacom Intuos Pro.

 J: What are your creative habits? Does it ebb and flow or have you made it a comfortable past time? For example, I have a ritual where I always keep hydrated and have a podcast on. When I am really busy I will consume protein and granola bars to save me from preparing meals.

K: I find that I really need to be in the mood for it, it's hard to make myself do art if I'm tired/stressed (which is why I've been so quiet while uni finishes). I often do have tea and some music/YouTube on.

J: YouTube is too distracting for me. Even podcasts can be but I tend to use that for the boring rendering or glazing process.

'Sacred?' by Kagekabuki ©

J: What comes into your mind first when you pick up a pencil? I know some people just start with characters, others moods and some places.

K: Lots of things inspire me! A song I've been listening to, a concept I find interesting... Some things just come to me and I need to draw them.

 J: What's the average time you spend on drawing comic pages? I imagine a single panel is fast.

K: Haha... not really! Usually each page takes around 3-4 hours. But I'm getting faster, and it depends on how much dialogue/detail there is.

J: That's good!

K: Is it? I feel like other people do them in a couple of hours.

J: Professionally paid ones do work with assistants. You ever thought about having an assistant if you were in high enough demand?

K: That would be lovely but I don't know if it would ever be feasible.

J: Perhaps a boyfriend who could fill in the blacks maybe?

K: Haha I don't think I would trust my boyfriend to do so.

'Sacred?' by Kagekabuki ©

J: Is your comics only available online? And will you be at some conventions in 2018?

K: There is a print version of issue one. I had it listed on my online store but that's offline, should be back up again soon. Issue two will be coming at some point... Probably early in 2018, At the moment I don't have any confirmed as I was finishing my thesis/skint when the tables opened, but I'm on the waiting list for SunnyCon and may be at Canny Comic Con in Newcastle if it's on.

J: Is it print on demand or do you have a stockpile?

K: I have a box full!



To see more work from Kagekabuki, you can follow her respective tapas and twitter pages.

[This interview took place on December 2017]

Interview with Vacuum Chan

James:  First I would just like to know your background. What was your education like? Did you learn how to be an illustrator or was there a moment where you just realised you was one?

Vacuum: To be honest, I still don't feel like an illustrator and it's still somehow weird to me that this is like?? My actual future job?? Woah. Maybe because I'm still studying and I haven't worked full-time yet, who knows. Answering your question, I'm learning how to be an illustrator because at some point of my life I realised I wanted to be one.

J: I see, they have a word for that feeling "imposter syndrome" and from what I read even the greatest authors such as Neil Gaiman feel like that from time to time. Are you currently studying on a BA or MA? Looking at your website and professional style I assumed you already have or had a client.

V: I'm studying on BA right now, last year! That's flattering, thank you. I do freelance sometimes but that's it so far.

J: You've got quite a lot of followers on twitter, it's through this that I was able to find you. Is twitter (and other social media) a hobby for you or is it more a job to market yourself and make a brand?

Did it come naturally to have this brand for yourself or was it more thought out is what I mean.

V: I think it was more natural, I started with tumblr and it was a hobby, I posted art, reblogged some stuff. When I noticed that people actually liked my art then I eventually made it into an art blog! I always enjoyed twitter as a social media and had a personal twitter for a while (but mostly for my friends) and when I got more followers on tumblr I was asked a lot about an art twitter so I made one! I have this account for like what?? 1.5 years?? And I'm honestly blown by the response, because I never thought about twitter as an art platform before (it's really fun using twitter for art though). Since I do freelance, social media are a great opportunity to well, get some freelance work, so in the end I think it's a combination of both.

J: I'm getting Aya Takano vibes and maybe more so a Shintaro Kago influence in your work. What artists inspire you in particular?

V: I get a lot of inspiration from manga artists, to be honest. My favourite ones are Asano Inio and Kenji Tsuruta!

J: What are your daily habits that contribute to your whole brand and illustrations. Do you have a set time of the week or day to do uploads? And what is considered a good or bad day for you?

V: I draw almost every day I think! I don't really have a set time, even though I can say I draw mostly at night (the opposite of a morning person T B H) I usually just sit down every day and either draw something I was thinking about or sketch something random; Doesn't always go the way I want to but ehh that's just how it is. (If I don't have any deadlines of course, then I organize time and schedule to be sure I'll get it done in time). Bad days are the art block days for sure. It's terrifying in some way, one week you draw every day and then bang and you can't draw anything for 2 weeks.

J: Interesting, I recently read the midnight disease by Alice Flaherty which says a lot about block. That it's usually caused by problems in personal relationships and having experienced it myself I found that it's better to leave the studio just for a moment to sort out what the problem is. And something as little as counciling or seeing pastors can help save the day rather than waste it by procrastinating. I even recommend that if a tutor says something that bothers you it is okay to tell them, as avoiding so has actually put me in a block state.

You also seem to work extremely fast and consistently, it never looks like a sketch with you. Is this because you favour digital work over traditional tools? Or do you have plenty of reference when you begin?

V: I don't really think it's a good thing, because I'm rarely chill enough to just sketch and post it,, I think this is perfectionism, and maybe it helps that I usually know what I'm going to draw so I just go straight to the thing?? I don't reference a lot, mostly I use references for details, backgrounds and sometimes poses! Sometimes I have such a specific pose in mind that I can't even find a right reference for it (though glad I can just sit in that pose and make photo and use it for my drawing LMAO).

For artblocks I think it really depends on a person! I usually get art blocks after exams because I'm tired, I've been drawing things I didn't wanted to draw for a month and I've been in constant deadline. Usually just taking rest and procrastinating helps me, and I slowly regain my powers and go back to drawing! In terms of feelings and relationships I think things that I draw while being sad or having breakdowns are the ones which I really love after? They come out much more personal (also drawing is a good way to distract yourself from over thinking haha)

J: I hear that a lot in art, that usually when you express bad feelings you get a catharsis and meaningful art. What drives you to illustrate? is the subject important or is it more the practice? Maybe both?

V: I think both?? I mean to learn I concentrate on a practice, but when I draw for myself I think about what and how I want to draw a thing, that's pretty much it.

J: It's mostly portraiture, full body shots with you. Character must be an important thing for you, so do you base them on real people? And if so what do you feel about those characters to want to draw them?

V: No, I rarely base characters on real people, at least intentionally! I do of course have influence from people I see and I incorporate features that I like in my drawings. I love drawing people so yeah, my stuff is mostly portraiture; I think about mood first, character and what surrounds them comes out from what feeling?? vibe?? I want to express (when I'm drawing original stuff with random characters of course). For OC's and fan art I just concentrate on their personality. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that pose and space are just tools to express something and usually first I try to think about how it will all look together.

J: I see, so it's mood and personality of character that you concentrate on and any decorative elements comes from that idea. I think Vania Zouravliov has a very similar process to portraits. What time of the day (or night) do you usually begin your work? And how long do you go for until you need a break?

V: Usually I start at 5/6 pm and work until night; I have a really bad habit of not taking breaks so it can be from 2 to 3 hours until I need a short tea break! If I work with traditional media I start earlier because of natural lightning.

J: Ever considered getting one of those blue daylight bulbs? Do you upload work the same night that it is finished?

V: I don't work traditionally a lot, so for now I'm fine with what I have to be honest. And yes, I usually do try to post the same night I'm done with the piece.

[Vacuum can be contacted via her respective Twitter and Etsy pages]

[This interview took place on October 15, 2017]

Interview with Naniiebim

James: Do you have a job besides illustration?

Naniiebim: I used to wash dishes/ work in reception at a restaurant alongside illustration, but have worked freelance for a long time. I'd say I do half and half Illustration/ artist.

J: Do comic artist ever meet up for a drink during your cons? I’ve heard that for the San Diego comic con you have to burn the candle at both ends if you’re ever to see the editors.
N: I meet up with friends- mostly to chat, eat and hang, but have not bothered trying to get in with socializing purely to climb the social ladder.

J: A serious concern for me is that illustration isn’t seen as a respected profession. We live in a world where you hear terms like hipster and yuppie, very derogatory stuff. How do you maintain an environment that respects and supports your creativity?
N: It’s been much harder to work as an illustrator in the more recent years because the market is saturated with a lot of artists who are used to being paid much less than they ought to, it's a vicious cycle of people needing work, and having to take lower and lower pay because so many other artists will take the job if they don't. I have probably burned my bridges.  I only really work with clients now who I work well with.

J: Have you ever lowered the price of your comics at cons in response to seeing the prices of other’s work?  N: The books and going to cons have a certain overhead I have to cover which has been set in the price of the books to cover a number of selling possibilities- selling in the shops for example has a very high overhead to cover posting books to the shop, and to cover their commission charge for sales in store, which can be 30-50%.

I’ve lowered prices occasionally at a show when a customer has individually tried to haggle with me- usually this happens in exceptional circumstances- and I'll usually barter them a piece of their artwork for the cut price, or it has happened at the end of the day when they have expected us to lower prices- but don't know that as small publishers, if we lower the prices, we literally get nothing from selling them the book because of the costs involved involved.

J: It also seems very self-destructive that hobbyists and docile graduates are competing with proffesionals. Do you think the response to this is that many illustrators are now taking an entrepreneurial attitude to things? Making their own products and establishing an audience. To survive in the industry is it important for one to be independent and have that relationship with their audience at cons? Or is there another way for it to get better? E.g. in house studio jobs be it for games or cartoons etc.?

N: It’s a difficult and very complicated subject with a lot of factors. I can only really say that the development of my methods are individually decided over time and because of personal preferences.  The situation has become pretty bad for both Graduates, Hobbyists and Professionals alike because of the lack of respect for art and artists in the industry- and it's ended up with all artists and illustrators undercutting each other constantly- the only ones who gain from this are the industries that use artwork.

I made the choices to work as I do because they work and are supportable by me as an individual, and unfortunately, freelance work like my job is pretty unique to each person doing the job. I've only gotten where I am by trying a lot of things, making mistakes and avoiding them in my next step.

As for being independent or inhouse, it really depends on which sort of life you can cope with!

J: You stated one perk of self-publishing was getting away with not having a title on front of the ZERO art book cover, so what are the pros and cons of making an official book (with registered RSBN) as opposed to something you crafted?

N: ISBN's get you into libraries and large distribution chains. Library lending means you can apply for PLR funding for you book. The number is needed to be entered into catalogues so shops can order your books to sell. The trade off is: You sell you books for a really low cost wholesale- when you fund short run printing yourself- you may only profit in pence per book for work you will have spent a long time on. You'll have to spend a lot more time dealing with multiple outlets for distribution- you will no longer have a personal hand in customer service. You book will have a shelf life- the distributor will only increase orders if you sell well, sell badly- and they'll probably drop you.

I was interested in self-publishing without joining mainstream. The trade-off is control and freedom, but a small audience and more PR work. It's more personal, harder work, but I get to go out and meet people on my own terms for doing so.

J: What’s the plan for Mephistos book 6 and the rest of the series?

I usually update news on my Patreon about the state of work I'm in, I'm currently in the middle of a longer period of work with a client than I first thought, and this has severely delayed a number of HBD projects I was partway through last year. I have to work my comics around my client work.

J: Would you allow your fans to influence the direction of the series albeit with fan service or are you a bit more precious with your own stories?

N: I don't mind people drawing fan art based on my work, that's always lovely, but would prefer if they didn't sell it and compete with me with my own IP (intellectual property).

J: If someone doesn’t have the time or money to attend your conventions, then what best way would they be able to purchase your work?

N: In general, I usually tell people that the conventions are the places to pick up the books, ideal for me and for readers. The second would be Etsy; although I feel very bad about the extra postage cost and the fees added due to maintaining the listing- this is a problem mainly affecting overseas sales though. The last would be in the shops- the postage cost, the large commission cost is entirely incurred by me- I can't really say what state the books get to the customer, I can't add freebies or

check they can get the full available range unless I spend a lot of time contacting the shops personally to check. I use Travelling man as they've been the only ones of a very small range of small press accepting shops who have looked after my stock and made efforts to sell them though- Astral Gypsy in Coventry are my other comic shop stocker I usually see them at cons and drop my stock of when I see them. They're a lovely little independent shop- and I thoroughly encourage you to buy from there is you can visit it!

[This interview took place on January 2016]

Naniiebim's twitter:

https://twitter.com/naniiebim

Naniiebim's Etsy:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/naniiebim

Portfolio Meeting: The Opinion of Practitioners

In a previous post I mentioned how I was able to have my portfolio reviewed by the illustrator Natalie Wood. Recently when I was in London I got the chance to meet the Day Job Collective. A band of Illustrators who make a cohesive team, juggling projects and contacting clients as a group, which in essence allows steady jobs and productivity, basically they got a better chance of keeping the illustrator life as a day job through their collective (which isn't just specifically illustration but as a whole they have a multitude of skills). They have their own tumblr page and it's beautiful!

The Opinions I gathered from them was very similar to what agents mentioned but because they know what its like to be on the creative end they were very much interested in the development process. I learned from them that practical and traditional printmaking is still valued but also that it is very standard to use digital procedures to clean up and tweak the work. Their advice to me was to just keep being computer savvy, understand printing and file formats. And be considerate of colour modes and file compression. They also told me that a good website is just as good and all that is needed instead of using a PDF portfolio (although the PDF is there since not everyone has a net connection).

Portfolio Meeting: Opinions in retrospect

Because of the bad luck of not finding any potential clients to speak to within the past month. It got me thinking about any time where there was a potential client I spoke to in the past. So this post is a retrospective of the time I visited the Futureworks in Manchester,, at that time I was interested in a career in video game design (and still am considering what being an illustrator can get you involved in). I spoke to the people at SmashMouth Games, which in itself is a studio that acts as neighbour to their videogame design course at Futureworks, a practice most studios could do with.

My portfolio was very different from the one I had now (it had still life pieces which I wouldn't be caught dead with having in my portfolio now). The opinions I took from that meeting, especially from speaking to a man named Zuby Ahmed, was that for a career in video game design clients want to see characters in many different angles and poses because of the fact that they need to be animated and may involve being in full 3D, what's more better for them is to see characters interacting with others and their own environment. Another thing to note is on environment, the fact is that games as an interactive experiences need concept art that creates a specific mood and sense of place. This is something that I want to involve in my final major project.

Tackling Folk Tales (My Final Major Project)

Red riding hood was chosen since it was already has a familiar story that would save me from having to work on an original plot and instead give entire focus on just the imagery. Also the familiarity adds to the experience. Anticipation is there and it’s as if a gauntlet has been set.  The real challenge that people expect to be delivered is to witness my own personal vision and take on the characters. You see my designs and they are supposed to be distinctive enough to make you wonder how they would look like in the next page. If Red looks cute now will she look cute when she is eaten by the wolf? And will the wolf eat her? How does the wolf eat her? These questions are all about verisimilitude. There will be logic to my take on the story.

Bettelheim’s psychological analysis of the folktale showed me an interpretation where Red subconsciously wants the wolf to kill off her Grandmother. It gives my Red a dark motive to why she reveals the Grandmother’s location to the wolf. It’s a crucial moment in the story since how she behaves towards it directly gives consequence to the plot. The moral comes from how Red reacts to the wolf.

Catherine Orenstein explores the permutations of Red within pop culture and much more.  Reading her book helped me contextualise the folktale itself. It gave me an awareness of who tackled telling this story. I need that sort of road map because you can’t expect to play with characters that have been in better told stories and yet not even know about them.

In the early days of the project I went to visit a nature reserve, this was done for basic primary research but it was also effective in understanding the mind of the characters as they travel through a forest setting. Specific feelings and keywords were listed. This helps me develop a mood and sense of place for my illustrations.

Portfolio Meetings: The Opinion of Agents

During the past months I’ve been trying to get my portfolio reviewed and it proved far more difficult then I imagined. I discovered the hard way that agencies don’t like to meet you face to face unless they know enough about you in interest of hiring you.  I also discovered that undeniably the capitol was the best place for business contacts and job opportunities, that’s not to say there isn’t elsewhere but it is difficult. A successful illustrator may have to get use to travelling to unknown cities for clients if they want a secure and steady income, having said that this is an industry that deserves a “whatever works” mentality.

My first portfolio review was by Fig Taylor, a genuine authority since she is an illustration agent and a. Her opinion was that my digital painting style seemed to be my strongest work which is very time consuming for me to do. Such work from me is rare and would deserve a client and subject that I would have to be in love with. Her advice was “to take out work that others can do better”, which is another way of saying be true to yourself; the main problem with my portfolio was that it was having an identity crisis and I think the reason behind this is that in my past projects I was obsessed with what the client would want that I actually forgot about my own taste, and that really confuses clients.

 

 

My second review was by the guys at Illustration Ltd. and they were very kind and gracious. Again they took a liking to my digital work but they did however explain that in today’s age it is important to use a combination of traditional and digital for best results. The main advice was that I should always have work within context, clients love to see work in its final phase, be it a printed or screen captured so it’s not just the original concept and sketch that people will see. It shows a level of professionalism but an exception to this rule is not to have photographed work framed and on display. A footnote of the exhibition is more than enough for your portfolio.  Alice Ball gave me encouraging advice in respect to what Fig Taylor said. A portfolio can still have a variety of styles and experimentation, the key towards it being any good is to have a high and consistent ratio of one particular style.