Month: February 2009

Folklore – Beating the Shinies out of Faeries


After so many serious posts at this blog, I thought I’d offer a brief interlude for my mid-week post.

As it stands, I cannot hide that there is a bit of geek in me. I’ve always harbored a love for anime and video games and sometime last year I began a wholesome little epic on the PS3 entitled Folklore, a PS3 exclusive title that came out early on in the system’s lifespan. Why am I talking about it on my art journal? Because it is my belief that video games are a highly realized art form, despite popular belief in its low brow value as a form of entertainment, and it can be inspiring the same way music, movies, and books are for me.

Folklore is one of those games that just tickles my muse silly.

From concept to execution, form to music, Folklore has a story and a look that hooked me from the start and breathed a little life into my muse when I was feeling less than inspired some time ago.

The Story? A young woman named Ellen ventures to the nearly abandoned village of Doolin in Ireland to uncover the secrets of her past that have been buried there. With no memory of who she is, she quickly finds that Doolin is not all that it seems and the strange calling of the ancient Henge beckons her enter the dream world of the Fae to find out.

Enter Keats, the other main character, a self proclaimed skeptic who writes for a dwindling paranormal magazine and yet doesn’t believe a word he himself writes. A strange phone call from a scared woman claiming to be threatened by faeries draws him to Doolin where he is soon embroiled in the mystery of Ellen’s past.

Review: Faeries, tattooed men, colorful characters, a superb artistic style, mystery, murder, and action, to boot! I felt like this game was designed for me. Others complain about the repetitiveness of the gameplay, but I always found something new and exciting to try with the numerous faeries, or Folks, whom Keats and Ellen befriend in each realm, even though I found myself sticking to a trustworthy few who would get the job done. In order to ‘befriend’ a Folk, you have to beat it until it’s ‘Id’ pops out and then use the motion controls on the PS3 controller to literally yank it out! This was one of the most stress relieving effects of the gameplay and why I like to say that ‘beating the shinies out of Faeries’ is one of the most gratifying activities you can do in this game. I also love a good mystery and each level dropped enough clues to keep me wanting to know ‘whodunit’ in the end.

The strength of this game for me, however, was in its visual flair. Each dream realm the characters enter is created from a certain emotion which humans feel towards death, such as the Faerie realm, which was created from the belief of ancient and medieval man in a Elysian Field type of Heaven. The Faery realm is accordingly bright and colorful with a dreamlike haze while other realms, such as the Endless Corridor, conjure mankind’s idle thoughts on modernity producing a realm full of Dali-esque melting landscapes and the abandoned skeletal forms of clocks, thrones,and book shelves. Each level contains a boss, or a Folklore, created from the lost souls of each realm and suiting to its design. I found myself wanting to get through each realm just to see the terrifying or just plain weird creatures at the end of each one.

All in All: This is one of the few games I will probably do fanart for, which is rare for me. If you enjoy a bit of action, mystery, and well…Folklore, than this game is for you.

And now I shall leave you with a brief cut scene from the game which will explain why I list tattooed men as one of its virtues:

Next on my video game palette: Assassin’s Creed, because nothing says ‘badass’ like taking a leap of faith into a hay pile off of a 20 story building.

Confessions of an Artist – Part 1

As I enter the current round of trials in my life where I seek to find a way to organize myself professionally and to push my artwork to the next level, I’ve realized there were a few things I wish I could have done differently in the past or that I wish I had received proper advice on. I’ve made some mistakes and I feel that sharing some of them might help others, which has thus begun the first of what I hope to be a series of “Confessions of an Artist” so that hopefully someone might avoid the mistakes I made, or at least be able to face their own challenges with some sort of advice in mind.

As an artist, I’m still growing and still expanding my horizons so it’s not my intention to speak down to you as if I have already learned everything there is to learn. More than likely, I’ll keep making mistakes and learning new things as this wonderful world of art evolves.

My Confession of Discouragement

This is the biggest mistake I have ever made. Moreso than a mistake, it was an attitude I nourished early on in my life when I was in high school. I got a failing grade on my AP Art portfolio and despite my love of the arts, I let other people, including my parents, talk me out of trying for scholarships to attend art school.

“You’ll never be able to feed yourself as an artist.” Everyone intoned unanimously. “Art school is just a waste of money!”

I tried not to listen, but when you are young and reliant on your parents for college funding, you tend to go with what they want for you. And so instead of even trying for those scholarships, I went to a state school to earn a degree in English so that I might one day teach school and be able to afford to feed myself. That is not to say that teaching is not a noble profession and that I won’t someday do it, but I’ve always felt my fate lay elsewhere in more business-related ventures.

The more college classes I took, the more I started leaning towards art, art education, and business courses which soon pushed my education past the 4 year mark. By the end of it all, I had a double major in Art and English, a partial minor in Business Information Systems and far too many years of school under my belt. I regret my indecision and how much time I wasted as an unfocused student in a fine arts program that taught me next to nothing about commercial illustration, the field I was truly interested in. I must not be too harsh on these years in my life, however, for I learned many skills and met so many wonderfully talented students and professors at my college. My life would not be the same without having attended the college that I did and meeting the inspirational people that have entered my life since.

It was not until I worked through my lump of doubt after 7 years of undergraduate school that I bit the bullet, applied for a scholarship to the Savannah College of Art & Design, and managed to somehow obtain a significant fellowship, without which I would never have been able to afford graduate school. It showed me that it can be done, if I tried hard enough, and kept on trying. I only wished I had tried earlier. Now as a graduate of a Masters program, I’ve only just now begun to accept the mistakes I’ve made in my earlier decision making and have learned to move forward with my art career, a career which you are destined to fail at if you are not determined.

I am driven by the thought of “What if I had tried for those scholarships earlier? What if I just take the safe route and get a 9-5 job with my own cozy cubicle?” Sometimes the answers to these questions still terrify me…

My parents, and most parents, are right to worry about those of us with a twinkle in our eye and an itch in our palms to be artists. It is not an easy profession. You will most likely starve for your first few years until you are more well established. Only the most organized and driven of artists get jobs right off the bat. The competition for art jobs is massively high with more qualified candidates in existence than there are jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To survive, one must be driven to improve, organized in their finances, and willing to work more than 40 hours a week starting off in most cases, particularly in the illustration field where you must meet serious deadlines.

The most common mistake I see in younger artists is that they think to themselves “Hey I like to draw. It’s fun. I should be an artist!” They give no real thought to how they can unite their love of art with a marketable format. This is a mistake of mine as well that led to much discouragement with the fine arts program at my college because I just could not find a gallery which would accept my kind of work. I felt like I was playing myself false…trying to inject themes into my work that would make me appeal to a wider “fine art gallery” audience when my heart lay elsewhere in more literal illustration. It did not even occur to me that someone COULD make money off of fantasy and book illustration until much later on. There were more options than the gallery (especially with the advent of new internet technologies) and I believe that to be a major discouragement for many artists going through traditional fine arts programs even today.

Even without the insistence of the gallery world, most young artists I know fail to even research what markets are out there that they might apply themselves to. Again, I cannot reference the GAG (Graphic Artists Guild) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics enough. Young artists, or even those who just feel lost, I encourage you to inform yourselves about your options. Art as a profession is not simply about drawing or painting. You must siphon your talents and skills to where they most suit your artistic drive. There are set designers, art directors, fashion designers, concept artists, scene designers, graphic designers, greeting card artists, and a whole multitude of specialized industries dealing with all facets of art. If you cannot reconcile the market with your work, you are merely pursuing a hobby, a personal pleasure, that will end up discouraging and frustrating you in the end if you try to make it your sole means of income.

Sometimes, even if you like to draw or paint, it is better not to pursue it as a profession if you find it impossible to push yourself to adapt to the demands of a business environment. And sometimes, this is okay. Some people are happier and more inspired without the expectations of business dealings hanging over their heads. That does not make them a failure and that does not make those of us who do business ‘sell outs’ ( a whole other rant there I’m saving for another entry).

In the end, all I can say is this.

Keep your eyes open, always work to improve yourself, research your options, expect to be driven hard and keep your head held high. There are artists who have become successful out there. They are not just random figures of serendipitous fate. They worked hard to be where they are now and they ignored those who told them that they couldn’t do it.

I wonder, how have you all faired? What mistakes have you made? And what have you learned from them?

My Confessional is always open.

Serious Business!

There’s that funny word ‘business’ popping up in this journal again. As many of you know, or may not know, I’ve been working towards getting my studio name, Angelic Shades, off the ground as an independent, one employee, go-to art studio for fantasy illustration for the past couple of years. My dream is to work in illustration while writing and illustrating my own books. I didn’t think about seriously establishing it as a business till I wrote business and marketing plans for Angelic Shades in grad school last year. It occurred to me that perhaps it WASN’T so impossible as everyone made it out to be.

Even still, I’ve waffled back and forth on what to do and ran away screaming when I’ve come up against the extra taxes, registration fees, and insurance that come along with starting a business. Lately, with the promise of a huge commercial project on the horizon, I realize I need to get serious about incorporating if art is going to be my main means for an income for my own sake, and for the sake of organizing my finances. I’ve been looking at the following forms of business setups and trying to make a decision. I am in no way a lawyer or an accountant. These descriptions are what I’ve garnered from my own readings and attending lectures and are how I understand them:

Sole Proprietorship – This form of business is the easiest to form. All you need is a business license, employer ID number, and tax ID number.

Pros

    * Easy to setup and manage

    * Tax forms are filed as part of your personal taxes

Cons

    * There is no separation between your personal income and your business income, meaning your assets are in danger and you have no liability protection if sued for damages, or any other such reason.

The Limited Liability Corporation – The LLC combines the best of the sole proprietorship and allows for great flexibility in taxation, depending on what form of LLC is chosen.

Pros

    * Protection of personal assets from damage claims.

    * Taxes are handled as an attachment on your personal taxes for each managing member (or in this case just you if you are operating it alone)

    * Flexible taxation. LLC can be changed to suit the business’ needs

Cons

    * More complicated setup process involving the creation of articles of formation and other declarative documents.

    * Higher fees for registration.

And let’s not forget the PRO for starting a business or being self-employed in general:

TAX DEDUCTIONS! This subject is a whole other ball of wax that I’ll go into on a later post.

Many of the artists I have interviewed chose a Sole Proprietorship as their business format due to its ease, but also, I believe, because they began practice before the establishment of the relatively new form of LLC, which first came about in the late 70’s. I also noticed a few of the artists I’ve spoken to have opted to form Corporations for themselves, due to the heavy amount of product licensing and business dealings they handle. Personally, I am avoiding the Corporation as the thought of double taxation on shares and having to do separate tax forms sounds like a bit of overkill for my small start. In the future, I may tackle the formation of a Corporation, but for now, LLC sounds like the way I want to go!

It may be more setup, but the protection against losing my personal assets sounds wonderful if, for example, a piece of art should fall on someone’s head at an art show or someone decides to sue me for copyright infringement for whatever reason. These cases are extreme, but they can and do happen.

So now begins my quest to tackle my fear of paperwork, tax forms, and record-keeping. I hope that in a month from now, I can proudly declare that I am no longer just Angelic Shades, but Angelic Shades incorporated!

If any of you have already incorporated your small businesses (or are thinking about it), what business formats have you chosen? How has it helped you with furthering your ambitions? I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories.

Are you afraid of buttons?

Koumpounophobia – the fear of buttons on clothing. Plastic buttons, metal buttons, buttons on coats,…buttons in doll eyes?

This past week I hopped in the car with my movie adventuring mom and caught Coraline on opening night. I went in with the high expectations of one who has worshiped Gaiman’s work since reading Sandman in my younger days and came out as amazed and satisfied as I had hoped to be. Admittedly, I have not read the original novel, but this movie has sparked my interest and it’s yet another book on my monstrous pile of ‘to read’.

Synopsis: Coraline is a disgruntled preteen who has just moved in to the Pink Palace Apartments with her parents, who are far too busy to make time for her. While exploring the house, Coraline discovers a locked door which has been oddly sealed by the wallpaper. Beyond this door lies a world which she never could have imagined…a world where she is happy.

…or is it?

Review: What I find most impressive about this movie is its unwillingness to devolve into yet another sickly sweet animated film that preaches to children that everything is without challenge and consequence in life. By putting the main character in real danger, she is more apt to learn a lesson and to prove herself than if she is completely in a zone of comfort where there is always someone to protect her. After all, this sense of grappling with morality and the darker side of life is what made Grimms’ and Anderson’s fairy tales so provocative. Children learned to fear the darkness, but they also learned that there are those who have challenged it and survived. Some may tell you this is not a movie for kids, but I would disagree. It’s the perfect movie for children over 12 who are already beginning to wonder about that scary world of the unknown.

After all, when I was 12, my friends and I were already sitting around telling one another ghost stories and challenging one another to go into the bathroom, turn the lights off, and spin 8 times chanting the name of Bloody Mary.

Then again, perhaps I was just a morbid child?

This movie particularly reminded me of a story we used to tell about how you can see ghosts by holding up a ring and peering through it. I was always too afraid to try and could only look through the ring for a couple of seconds before wussing out.

As far as the movie itself, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was not stop-motion or claymation, but rather full on CGI (EDIT: Actually it IS stop motion animation apparently. Glad to see this form returning! I saw some 3D models online and thought they were computer animated. That makes this even MORE impressive in my book). It takes real talent to make a computer animated film look as if it was done by a traditional method and every bit of it, from the delapidated gardens to all of the personal touches in Coraline’s room made the film have a distinct and well planned atmosphere.

The voice acting was superb and the soundtrack suiting with its softer moments of piano and the children’s choir which gave it an appropriately creepy main theme throughout.

Overall: I give this movie a 4 out of 5. Enjoyable to more than just children. Definitely recommended for fans of Gaiman’s work or those with a sense of macabre.

For those who fear buttons? I am afraid you are out of luck with this one!

Selling Yourself Short


I cannot count the times I have heard the following from fellow artists:

“Raise my prices?? But then no one will buy my work! I have to be competitive!”

“I just don’t think I’m good enough to charge more.”

“If I charge less, I’ll sell more!”

I have thought these things myself at one point in my education as an artist. After all, we all start at a level which is inevitably not as good as professional and well-established artists who are painting masterpieces in oil when we’re in class learning about the color wheel and the basics of line, shape, form, etc. When we decide to combine money with art in order to sell our work at this early point in our careers, we look around and decide that it’s better to sell ourselves and our work for cheaper because we think that’s all that people will pay for it.

This works for awhile, as people tend to pay that $25 for a character sketch or a portrait of their dog. It brings in a little extra money for pizza and art supplies. However, as an artist grows and enters the level that their work is taking more time, is of a consistent higher quality, and the artist decides that art is a career and not a hobby, they need to evolve past the point of accepting less. Artists, please get serious about your prices!

When you continue charging less for more, you not only undersell yourself, but make it harder for other artists to make a living and lower the standards and impression that customers have of artwork. This pattern of underselling is especially rampant in the community of fantasy art, my personal port of call. It seems the general attitude is that fantasy art is ‘cliche’ and therefore is not worth as much as fine art displayed in a museum or gallery.

Fellow Fantasy artists, I encourage you to fight this stereotype! Charge what you are worth! Show those who don’t know fantasy art just how talented and professional we can be.

No matter your genre, if you expect to be professional, this means acting professional and pricing professionally. Some may disagree with me and say that pricing competitively is the only way to sell, but when it comes to selling original work, I personally refuse to back down on charging what I’m worth unless I am really not proud of the piece. If I want to make a quick buck, that is what prints and ‘fluff’ pieces are for.

To be certain, it is smart to price your work to be fair for selling to a certain audience. For example, I would not charge more than $100 for a piece at a smaller anime convention, as the general attendee at an anime convention is in their teens, is still dependent on their parents, and is not independently wealthy. On the other hand, larger fantasy conventions tend to attract more eccentric audiences of all ages, including older independently wealthy fans, therefore it is easier to sell a higher priced item. These are just the trends, however! You never can predict when someone will buy a work if they connect with it. I had a person buy a framed print of mine for $80 at an anime convention, a truly surprising thing! This was a print of a piece of mine that hardly EVER sells anywhere else. I tend to fit the pieces to what sells at the convention, which means I will generally have less original work at anime cons, as they are naturally too high priced to sell there due to the fact that they are original paintings.

I myself am at the point where I have now stopped taking commissions unless they are near the prices suggested by the Graphic Artist’s Guild, the organization that sets the standards and ethical guidelines for professional artists. My prices are negotiable based on the budgets of the commissionee but I use the GAG guidelines as a reference point. I did this for many reasons, including the fact I no longer have time to charge less for commissions and also for the fact that the work turned out for these commissions, due to their underpriced nature, was decent, but not what I consider to be portfolio quality with the exception of a very select few. As an emerging professional, I need to pay more attention to building a successful portfolio with work that I have taken great time and care on. This time and care was cut short on my earlier commissions to help them be cost-effective, something which I find myself no longer willing and able to do.

In the end, we must temper competitiveness with fairness to ourselves and to our work. Foster an attitude of positivity and faith in your own talent and success. Be honest to yourself and never sell yourself short. Raise your prices as you develop and grow your talent so that others will not be dragged down by the expectations of buyers who see cheap prices for quality work.

It may be hard to do this at first, but you will be thankful in the future when you finally reach the point where you can be paid fairly and are considered a ‘professional’ in your field instead of yet another starving artist in need of a handout.

Heart of Ink

I saw Inkheart last week and it really got my pondering juices flowing. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the latest in Brendan Fraser’s stream of young adult novel to movie adaptations. Not the best flick, but it had it’s moments. I loooved Paul Bettany as Dustfinger. As a movie, it falls short of really hitting the nail on the head for an adventure flick, but what I found the most intriguing about it was the concept of the “Silver Tongue”.

Silver Tongues are individuals who, by the act of reading aloud, can bring anything into existence. Now imagine that you are an author and you are suddenly confronted with your own characters, who are quite tormented and angry that you’ve put them in the situation that they are in (something which occurs in the movie).

What would your characters say to you if you met them face to face? What inspired you to make them the way they are? If your characters suddenly became real, how would they react to the ‘real’ world? It was interesting to see how villains in the Inkheart world adapted to use the technology of our world, which made their jobs of being thieves that much easier.

The whole concept got me to thinking about the relationship between an author and a character. Why do we make them? Why do we torture them?

Personally, I started creating characters as a young child in order to sleep at night. I always needed a good bedtime story to get to bed and I never grew out of that. If I’m not dreaming up a story before I’m sleeping, I can’t sleep at all. Every night, I imagine a scenario of some sort, my prince Ramah racing across a moonlit beach in his desert kingdom; Melakim hunting a dangerous adversary through a dark wood; Aurora diving off of a skyscraper in some elaborate aerial maneuver to penetrate a building’s security. There are all manner of stories and situations that end up fueling my art and writing at some point.

Where would the fun be if you didn’t put them in danger? Everyone needs a little tension, though I will admit being a bit of a sadist when it comes to torturing them. Aren’t we all?

Or maybe it’s just me…

Productivity in a Can

Latest Developments in Angela’s Checklist to Take Over the World by Art Storm:

  • Updated my eBay shop with more original artwork and matted/signed prints.  Felt really accomplished after 15+ postings!
  • Currently reading 3 Weeks to Ebay Profits. Extremely helpful thus far!  Will post more once I’m done reading.
  • Posted my first ever video tutorial on Color Pencil Tools!  I need to learn how to not curse when I mess up my dialogue so I don’t have to shoot so many takes.  Perhaps an outtake reel is in order?
  • Making concrete plans to attend more conventions and saving up to hit more Artist Alleys for networking.  Already sent out to Katsucon, for starters!
  • Huge plans in the works to start on several longer series of illustrative works.  Time to see if I can balance those muses and to focus my artistic ADD.
Because sometimes it’s just easier to list things rather than ramble about them.  I got alot done this week and I am only full of hope as I slowly, yet surely, begin to see all these efforts pay off. I still have a long way to go, but it’s great to finally be able to check off a few things that have been on my to-do list for years now.
Plans for this week:
  • Put the finishing touches on glass tile pendants and list them on eBay/Etsy
  • Dig the original art out from under my bed and mat them.  Need to start working harder on presentation!
  • Practice more digital media with some orthographic concept sketches.  Practice more watercolor techniques while I’m at it.
  • Start prospecting galleries in town to see if any will display my work. Gotta give my local galleries some love!
  • Start looking for academic publishers for the thesis paper, if there’s time!
I promise a meatier, more thought-provoking post the next time!  I’ve recently seen Inkheart and it has my ol writing urges simmering again.  More on that later!

Sorry for all the exclamation points in this journal. It appears I’ve had about four times the quantity of Dr.Pepper than I usually allow myself!!!!