I am the terror that flaps in the night, I am a special news bulletin that interrupts your favorite show.
(Content: 90% reblog - more of a reference tumblr than anything else)
How to drawHere it is! The FULL SET of EVERY how to THINK when you draw TUTORIAL I’ve EVER DONE, in ALPHABETICAL ORDER!Enjoy, link, pin, share! Cheers!
Happy Holidays, everyone! Thank you all for sharing and supporting this
series this year, I love Tumblr, been posting on here for years, and you
guys are all amazing! Got SO MUCH cool stuff coming up for you in 2019!
This goes for everybody asking anybody else for a portfolio review or asking any sort of career related questions. There is not one “Art Industry.” Whenever someone refers to this nebulous “art industry” I find myself spending more time explaining that there are a huge slough of things that could mean than I do answering the question.
When I personally refer to “The Industry” what I mean is the animated TV show and feature film industry because that is what I largely work in, alongside being an independent artist. I only do this when I’m speaking in context of my work. But that is only a handful of the studios that exist and only one facet of a very wide variety of industries within the umbrella of “Art”. If it seems like my advice is slanted toward this career path its because it’s the one I’m most familiar with. There are better people to ask for advice working in the editorial illustration industry, for example.
Even saying you want to work in the animation industry is often not specific enough. My advice for someone who wants to become a 3D animator or texture artist is going to be a lot different than my advice for someone who wants to be a visual development artist.
If you want to work in animation, look up the pipeline and start getting familiar with it. I’m going to look up “animated feature film pipeline” and see what comes up. Im looking for something that would apply to a movie like “Moana.”
A quick google search pulled this up for me. Does it look like a confusing mess to you? Start googling each term and finding people who do that job. Look at the kind of work on their websites. Is this something you’re interested in doing?
Or maybe you don’t want to work on 3D computer animated things. Maybe you want to work on a 2D animated TV show.
Cool, now you have a new set of jobs to look up. Find 3 different people who do each thing you’re interested in on twitter and follow them. Go look at their professional websites and really think about if you’re up for and excited to make a portfolio that covers the same ground.
Or maybe you want to work in advertising. Maybe games. Maybe book illustration. Trading card illustration. The more specific you can be when asking questions, the better advice you’re going to get.
ALSO. The better you can target the right people to be asking questions to, the better answer’s you’re going to get.
If you ask me about children’s book illustration I’m gonna throw my hands up and point to someone else. It just isn’t my specialty. You can find 15 better people to ask by just looking for popular children’s books that are currently out and emailing the people who illustrated them (polite, concise, non-assuming, with direct questions).
Movies and games have credits. Start familiarizing yourself with the people who made the things you enjoy and you’ll get a much better sense of what you need to focus on. You’ll be able to tailor your portfolio and your questions much more specifically toward things that actually matter. You’ll also be able to get much better at pulling up useful information on the internet for yourself. Finding better search terms to use is going to advance your ability to discover information faster than anything else. Following people who are deep in the industry you want to be a part of (particularly on twitter) is going to give you access to that language and terminology that will help you ask more targeted questions.
I really don’t want to come off as being too forceful. I just genuinely thing that learning to find the information you need, getting REALLY GOOD at narrowing search terms and diving deep into the depth of knowledge the internet has to offer… might be the most important thing you can learn. I know it was for me.
Ok, so RECAP
Stage 1: Figure out the broad industry you’re asking about. Off the top of my head… TV animation, Feature animation, animation for advertising, video games, tabletop games, trading card games, editorial illustration and other publishing, book covers, children’s book illustration, comics and graphic novels.
Stage 2: If the industry you’re interested in has a pipeline, learn the pipeline. Target the specific job or job’s you’re interested in, and learn as much about them as possible. Find artists who do these jobs. Spend time scouring the internet for as much information on these jobs as you can. Find their professional websites. Find their imdb pages. Scroll back on their instagrams and see where they were 5 years ago.
Stage 3: Now you’re ready to go ask some targeted questions. Find the right person to ask. Ive written a lot about how to structure emails like this before so Ill leave it for now at “be polite, be concise, expect nothing”. One great question to ask is “Do you know of any other great artists who do the same job as you that I can follow?” The answer is almost always yes, and you’ll be opened up to a whole new list of industry artists, many of whom may not have a huge social media presence of their in-person friends of the initial person you asked. Someone who is not being emailed constantly may be a great person to ask longer, more in-depth questions to. Ask people what industry language was confusing at first that you should learn if you want to get better at gathering information about the field. Ask what tools and resources industry artists in that field are using regularly. Remember that you aren’t owed a response. If you are kind and gracious, you will likely get some responses.
Stage 4: Take the information you gain from the answers you receive and launch a new round of information gathering.
If you can get this process down, you can go from zero knowledge on a subject to a fairly acute understanding of it in under a month.
The information is out there! You have the ability to learn this process. Go forth and succeed.
PS I am not saying you need to choose one thing and target that and only do that forever. Just target one thing at a time until you’re familiar enough with it to decide if it’s something you want to pursue right now or not. People often do all kinds of things, but saying you want to be a generalist is highly unhelpful especially if you don’t even know what they means in the context of a studio environment. Do yourself a favor and learn specifics first.
