Business of Illustration class is live!
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@Lee-White I was thinking and I was wondering where would you put "fantasy/sci-fi illustration for (board) games and books" in your "our customer" breakdown. Is it too small market? For example, can Magic the Gathering artist make enough for a living? I dont think I will ever be able to get to this level, but I was thinking illustrating for some smaller card/board game companies, book covers, RPG books could be a viable option. I still got day job so I dont need to make living by doing such illustration, but I thought it could be a good start.
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@Jiří-Kůs a few people have asked me about that. From my understanding, Magic the gathering is basically the same as working in entertainment. EXCEPT they pay far lower rates. They switched to keeping all the rights a while back and still do. They have loosened the restrictions about artists using the work in their own art books (how generous). But ultimately the rates are really weak.
Now, you can still use that to your advantage. They have a HUGE audience and if you do a couple of jobs it can increase your exposure dramatically. Then hopefully you can switch to high paying entertainment work, or maybe get jobs where you own the work and keep the rights.
I'll do some more research and put it in the next video (which I am working on now).
In the meantime, here's some reading on the subject: http://www.vandalhigh.com/blog/2015/7/3/the-problems-with-artist-pay-on-magic
SVS Faculty Instructor
www.leewhiteillustration.com -
@Lee-White wow, that artice, just wow.
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@Lee White thank you so much for the eye openers. I have a studio in Phoenix and show in galleries but I have been really terrible at my business model. My art is all over the place. My website is a mess and I am awful at time management. I have started to implement the scheduling tips and I will be deleting all of my art from my website and starting over.
I did not go to school for art. I went for health care so I have been winging it for years now. I am really happy to have found the youtube videos that led me to SVS. I am looking forward to the rest of this series.
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@Lee-White I just finished this class and it was amazing! Thak you so much! I have never thought bout my rights over the images, and It´s making me rethink the way I negotiate my projects. Unfortunately, I realised that i´m working on a great project, but with a really unfair payment right now
But this was good to teach me and to take more care in my next jobs. Now I´m more than certain that I want to get out of entertainment and get into Children´s book area 
I have a few questions about the class.
1 - How does the royalties work? Does the publisher have a stablished percentage above the product, or something like this?2- What´s the amount of time you are used to spend in a Book´s project?
I know this depends on the ammount ou money and pages, but I only want a reference. Nowadays, I´m used to stablish my price based on my hour value, and I feel that sometimes it isn´t the great way to charge. -
@Lee-White I have a question....If you load illustrations up on your webpage for licensing. Do you upload a JPG or TIff? and must it be CMYK or RGB?
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@karien typically I upload a high resolution RGB file. That way they can use it for web if needed or convert to cmyk for printing
SVS Faculty Instructor
www.leewhiteillustration.com -
@Lee-White Cool thanks!
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I really enjoyed this class and have listened to it more than once. I find it helpful and encouraging how Lee discusses the practicalities of an artist having multiple income streams. Certainly the way he has designed his website is a smart one with the availability/access to prints and originals. My problem is I have squarespace and personally, it doesn't seem as easy to navigate the storefront option - pricey in my opinion and looks to be somewhat complicated to intricate paypal for processing.
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Hey guys, just want to let you know that I'm putting the finishing touches on the business class right now. I actually built the whole class and then scrapped it because I wanted to make all the information more visual and much easier to understand. Hopefully launching the video sometime in the next two weeks!
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I just talked to Will and we decided to do something special for this class. A few weeks after the class is released (and people have had a chance to watch it) we are going to do a FREE online Q&A for anyone who wants to attend. You can ask us anything you want about being in our industry. We will record the session and include it with the video for others to use as a resource for questions they may have. : )
SVS Faculty Instructor
www.leewhiteillustration.com -
@Lee-White That is fantastic! I have learned so much from what I watched already. Thank you for working so hard to put that together for us.
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I'm still stalking SVS for the Part 2 Business class. I know you guys had a busy weekend filming and can't wait for the WC class too!
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The watercolor video we shot isn't the big class on watercolor. It's a demo on "loosening up" while you are doing final art. Many people really tighten up on final art and make it difficult on themselves. So this one shows how to address that and keep a "freshness" in the final art.
It shows me painting this image from start to finish in about an hour and 45 minutes (real time). Big watercolor class is starting filming in June and should be done by Sept.
SVS Faculty Instructor
www.leewhiteillustration.com -
I'll check and see when the businesss class will be live. I think late this week or next week sometime...
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It will be great to see some tips on staying loose when doing finals. I'm trying to do parts of my 3rds Thurs in watercolour right now and I'd like to keep a certain sketchy freshness, but with the pressure of thinking 'this must be good', it's so easy to tighten up.
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@Lee-White The trees, the bunnies! Love it! It is really hard not too tighten up and over do something, I think especially in watercolor because going back to fix X is not so easy. I look forward to seeing it!
I think it is awesome you guys are putting so much into the production/time and film quality for these classes...you really are taking SVS to a whole new level. It is awesome!
