123 (The Sequel)

As expected of me I get to look back on this past year as an illustrator and pick 3 things that have been important and worth remembering to me in terms of my career prospects and my wellbeing as a creative individual.

1.) "Illustration as an adjunct" 

A conversation with my lecturer Gary Spicer at Stockport College has enlightened towards something that I find easy to forget. And that is it's easy for me to think of the image as a superior form of expression when in reality it is just one sense, illustration should be made not to rival the other senses such as taste and sound. When you look at a movie poster or at album artwork it shouldn't have to be a translation of the other senses that the object already expresses, the Illustration should enrich the experience when there is one already there, in other words it becomes an adjunctive part of the object that the end-user ultimately experiences.

2.) "Art is the ultimate goal" - Young Ha Kim

You can learn a lot from children as they build their sand castles not caring how the sea is going to wash it away. Kim describes within his TED talk that work needs a purpose for it isn't something you can enjoy, hence it being work, not play. It's easy to forget how fun art can be when you want to get payed for it and be professional. To a child art is the goal, they get to make something and that is their reward. Half way through a project when things seem not so fun I'll remember how lucky it is to be rewarded just for what I'm doing, the goal of art is just to make it, getting payed for it, that's the bonus.


3.) "Respect the arts and protect your career" - Steven Silver

Going completely against the last one and making sure no one misinterprets the last advice, I have chosen to paraphrase the title of two youtube videos from Steven Silver, Although being creative can be fun it is something that does take our time and as an adult we do need a goal to our actions and we do have bills to pay. Silver uses the allegory of mowing a lawn. A brilliant way to describe what creative professionals do because being creative is just as relaxing as mowing someone's lawn but no one in their right mind would expect someone to cut their grass without paying them for their time. Time is money after all and Steven Silver gives me confidence towards pursuing illustration as a career.

An Interview with Sonia Leong

As part of my contacting practioners module I'm posting the interview I had with Sonia Leong back in the August of 2012, it's really the first time I am posting this. Sonia is a comicbook artist and illustrator who has produced work through SweatDrop, a studio made by manga artists from the UK. (link to their website here: http://www.sweatdrop.com/about-us/ )

Sonia is a hard working, intelligent and articulate person, within Sweatdrop she has made three manga comics, Once Upon a Time, Love Stuffing and Aya Takeo. Her past clients include Channel 4, Axis publishing and Seven stories Press. To see her portfolio, contact info and anyother info just click on the link below:

http://fyredrake.net/me.html  

Now for the interview...

Jim:    Comic Conventions over here and overseas must make for great publicity but how would you be able to cope if you didn’t have them?

Sonia: Art fairs, animation fairs, Japan-related cultural fairs, local markets - there are always opportunities and it's just a matter of seeing whether you can fulfil a niche. That said, I don't think events are the be-all/end-all, most of the time my work is done from home, along with my advertising - there are lots of places to get noticed online. Publicity is something that you have to peg away at on many fronts and it can take years for the results to roll in.

J: Being freelance do you work at home or in a studio and are you always in a position to have a choice between the two?

S:  I work from home. I would always prefer to work from home. I like being alone. But that is a huge contrast to when I travel to attend an event where I deal with thousands of clients, or have to give talks to hundreds of people at once. So I need to be alone to make up for it! I like having all of my stuff to hand and not having to worry about travel for everyday work.

J:    How did you get the opportunity to work for movies and TV?

S:  Publicity - a film person looks specifically for a Manga artist, finds my stuff online, and emails/calls me. Networking - I know a lot of film-makers and I have friends who work with film-makers, so if they know of something that would suit me, they pass my details along. It's the same for any other industry or hobby.

J:    Since working at Sweat Drop studios what is your responsibilities and working process?

S: Sweatdrop Studios is something a bunch of like-minded people just set up. Some of us have administrative responsibilities -  for example, I'm the official Company Secretary, which means that I deal with submitting Tax Returns, Accounts, company records and sign all legal documents. Another one of us deals with distribution, another one of us manages group commissions/events. But that's all the designated responsibilities. Creatively, we all do whatever we want - we mostly produce comics entirely ourselves, just with backup and advice from each other. Sometimes we swap jobs as needed - i.e. we write something for another person to draw, we are the Editor on the next anthology.

J:    I believe your work has been promoted and published overseas, how does the translation process work? Do have a lot of control over it?

S: Afraid not! I guess it depends on the ownership over the work in the first place, but for Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet for example, SelfMadeHero (http://www.selfmadehero.com/about.php) own the whole work copyright and can do what they like to negotiate a foreign deal on it. Sometimes, the results can be really funny! Like some countries prefer crazy colour combinations. Ultimately it rewards me though, as I get cuts/royalties from such deals. There are times when a foreign publisher approaches me to acquire one of my works, then I have a little more say, but it's not really been something I worry

Sonia has done work that includes making mascots, such as this character here who narrated

for visitors at the 'How Manga Took over the World' exhibition that I visited at the Manchester Urbis in 2008.. ah now certainly  that takes me back.

J:  Your philosophy is to never reason away from your vision but what are the necessary steps for those who wish to pursue a similar career to your own?

S: "Never reason away your vision" - means don't talk yourself out of your dreams. If you want to do something, and that something is actually real and possible, however improbable, then there will always be a way of doing it. A little bit of luck makes things happen faster, but lot of hard work is absolutely necessary. Put in lots of hours improving your artwork, networking, going to lots of events, making sellable products, promoting yourself, enter competitions, look for job opportunities, talk to other artists, talk to publishers, pitch, pitch and pitch your work, learn to handle rejection and criticism. And you'll get there. 

Finishing The Big Sleep

I have completed my task of getting my book cover design for this year's penguin/puffin awards done. I don't think it is portfolio worthy since what I submitted was rushed and I didn't experiment enough in emulating the effect of the stain glass look, until I create a revised version where more texture is on certain details and lighting/tone is used cohesively I won't put it in my portfolio, The use of fonts also haven't been experimented on. Overall the composition and the whole look of it in general is satisfactory and shows what I originally intended, I do hope the judges like it and instead of seeing it as a finished design they see it for the possibilities it can become.

Dissecting the elements you can see I use a typewriter font to evoke a sense of the time the book is set, Marlowe's hat is another signifier. The stain glass and the image of Marlowe catching Carmen is (to me) extremely iconic when you ignore the usual cliche's of the private eye image. I chose this image as a subject because it's one of those moments in the story where your attitude towards it changes by the end of the book. I had to make a decorative pattern but the shapes had to represent something, A chessboard is too obvious and looks repetitive so I chose orchids and made it look like a jungle, a metaphor for LA is a steamy jungle like the green house where Marlowe meets his first client. The tone of the cover the use of black spots corrupting the colours and the idea of Phillip Marlowe being this illuminated figure like the old knights on the stain glass windows was inspired by this qoute I found printed behind another Phillip Marlowe Novel.

The majority of the cover was done in photoshop, images were scanned for the purpose of texture, this included pencil shading, smudges and acrylic paint brush strokes on paper. My only regret is that I wish I had done more stuff so capture the stain glass look since I know photoshop air brushes is not the only way to go about it.

Takato Yamamoto... A Man With Mechanical Hands

I recently found this interview from one of my favourite artist, Takato Yamamoto, (the link is here: http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/takato-yamamoto) What surpried me is how painterly this man's technique is, when I see his art it looks very tight and mechanical due to the look of woodblock prints, even when I tried to emulate people like Aubrey Beardsley and Vania Zouravliov I always found my ink being badly coagulated since I was basically drawing and not using any print techniques... so in future I have got to try printing! He also has an interview with Yoji Shinkawa in the Art of Metal Gear Solid 2 book. It's rare to find an interview but it's great when I find one.

Another thing that I will do is practice more in my free time with digital techniques, maybe using a computer can help me emulate Yamamoto's technique too or maybe I'll have to do it the old fashioned way, what ever it maybe I have to try and find what works for me.

Digital Painting Studies

I have been finding it hard to motivate myself so I wagered a canned drink to get my work done tonight, competition is also a good motivator so I may as well throw in a mini risk/reward structure for an extra motivating push for both me and my peers. The work I've fallen into doing in the past week is more a study of me practicing this digital painting craze with my new wacom cintiq. I practice by drawing beautiful women and pin ups (Holly Valance and Chisato Morishita being the most recent), it's a very productive form of calming my nerves but not as addicting as sweets and cigarettes I guess.

 

I like how quick and precise using photoshop for painting is, the digital practice lends itself well for idea and concept communication, as a sole work of art to be valued on it's own not so much but as a design process for a product that needs instant travel and communication I would say there is something valuable with this method.