Pod Cast Question - 3 Point Perspective
-
Writer/illustrator. I hope to create stories and characters that will endure for the long haul. On the low end, I have several stories outlined or written and hope that they will succeed and pay royalties for years, even if those royalties are small. On the high end, two of my ensemble character groups have enough story lines to franchise. My middle school novel has a sequel waiting for an outline. I have a few picture book stories that stand on their own. I may have enough material, if I can produce a high enough quality to sell to a studio someday. I learned to write at Disney, had a feature animation script optioned (by an independent producer) and been read at Blue Sky, Pixar and Bluth Animation. Although I would, possibly, sell to a studio someday, I'm not interested in chasing Hollywood. That's a business that eats its own children and I'm quite happy not being the main course. I joined SVS to learn to be a good illustrator. I'm very happy here. I have income outside of my writing and that gives me a safety net to cover however long it takes for me to get this right. Looking forward to the podcast. Cheers!
-
@Will-Terry I would be a well known author/illustrator with a series of simple concept books with really fun characters that kids and parents love to read.
Not necessary, but hey if we're dreaming, I'd be happy with the same level of fame as Sandra Boynton, Mo Willems or Oliver Jeffers.
I'd make enough off of royalties that I wouldn't have to do art, but I would anyway because I love it.
️ -
This post is deleted! -
I would like to write and draw my own graphic novels. I want to. Be very well known, because I want to put my mark in this world. I don’t care as much about miney, as long as it’s enough to live on and a bit extra. But I want to write and draw stories
-
@Will-Terry oops forgot to tag you, Hi will I would like to write and draw my own graphic novels. I want to. Be very well known, because I want to put my mark in this world. I don’t care as much about miney, as long as it’s enough to live on and a bit extra. But I want to write and draw stories that will be timeless classics
-
It would be great to create meaningful books that kids remember even when they're grown up. The dream would be to promote an illustration career without promoting myself. Maybe it's just me, but it seems exhausting and feels inauthentic to attach something as deep as a creation from your heart with a name and a face.
-
In my perfect world, I'd be writing and illustrating my own books. I'd be making enough off of my art to live comfortably, be able to hire my own assistant to manage social media for me, and be able to pay a CPA to file my taxes quarterly. I don't care about being super famous, I just want to be able to work from home/a studio and make enough to support myself and my family, if I had one. I guess the dollar amount of that dream income would vary depending on whether I lived in California or Oklahoma...but maybe an average of 80k a year.
-
In my perfect world, I would be making money from the art that I love to create to help support my family. My marketing skills would be so overwhelmingly awesome that I would make bank and my husband could retire early and live out his dream, which I believe involves a drive in movie theatre and a mini golf park. It might sound shallow to say I want money, but I'm a realist. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure makes things easier. =)x
-
In a perfect world, I'd be an author and an illustrator working with people I really admire that create meaningful work - editors, art directors, writers, illustrators, all kinds of artists. It's more about working with people and collaborations for me. In a perfect world, I would have understood that this was what I really wanted when I was a kid and sought it out right away.
-
In my perfect world I would mostly be working on illustrating my own stories. My picture books would be in stores worldwide and parents would read them to their children and have a cozy nighttime routine together, enjoying my books. I would not have to alter my style or subject to fit any commercial idea but create from my own inspiration. I would make a comfortable living (support my family) doing this, but fame and fortune would not be as important as creative fulfillment.
Ps: I would never have to make a pet portrait commission again
. -
Great podcast idea! I would love to make enough money from my work to live on. I'm quite curious and enjoy learning new things all the time so I'd probably love to work on books, written by others and myself, illustrating for magazines, painting shop windows, making puppets, doing stop-animation. Initially I'd be just happy to get paid for doing what I love most which is making art
-
Hello! I would like to write and illustrate nonfiction or historical fiction. My degree is in history and I would love to combine history and illustration. I want to make work that feels like mine and that I feel good about making.
I’d like to make enough to make a good supplementary income, but I would still want the flexibility to be home with my kids.
-
@Will-Terry In my dream world, I think I would like to write and illustrate my own novels and graphic novels, but would certainly not turn away paying jobs for quality authors. I would make enough money to be able to stay retired from my teaching job but maintain the same level of lifestyle we currently enjoy. It would be wonderful to make enough for my wife to retire, too. I am not really interested in fame but only in producing such quality work that people in droves want to buy my books and collect my work.
-
My dream is to write and illustrate picture books, board books, and books for early readers. My husband runs his own business, and I'm the primary caretaker and part-time homeschool teacher of my young children, so this is a goal I'm trying to take small but steady steps toward as my kids grow. I'd like to make enough to help my kids pay for college or help them launch into their careers, and be able to put some toward retirement. The older I get, the less interested I am in fame, to be honest. When I think about "fame," the dream seems unattainable. To me, the marker of success would be that I make a story that is true to what I've been called to communicate, and that a child connects with it. That seems like an attainable dream.
-
@demotlj I love it!
-
@Will-Terry I'd love to write and illustrate a children's book. Will and the gang - do you think it is necessary to HAVE children to write a good quality children's book? I don't, but I was one once! I have retained - I hope - a humourous view of the world if a little cynical. Looking forward to the discussion, Jane in New Zealand
-
I think in my dream world, I'd be creating characters for The Star Wars films. I love creature design. I'm a sculptor, and I made a few with this in mind last year. I caught the attention of some Lucasfilm and Disney ppl, which was more than I could have asked for I guess. I'm a schoolteacher and I gotta say, I love that job and having art as my hobby is pretty great. I get home from a job I love, and do a hobby I love. So maybe this is a dream world? It certainly was my hope about 5 years ago.
Here's a sample of my Star Wars stuff.
But I also would love to write a few children's books. If I could have a book I wrote on my shelf at school, one that actually got professionally published... Those kids would HAVE to stop shooting spitwads at my head, right? Right?!
And here's an example of my drawing style. Too much like animation, and I'm workin on fixing that.
-
@Will-Terry What a fun topic! I'm currently doing freelance illustration full time and while I love it, I opened my online shop last year and really fell in love with that part of my work. I love developing, creating and selling my own products and not having to answer to any art director or publishing house haha.. I love the challenge of entrepreneurship and the game of finding new ways to make my shop grow. I learn more every day and currently my shop makes up about 1/3 of my income (up from 1/5 at the beginning of 2020!) I really hope that by the end of 2020 this will become my full-time income, but maybe it'll take longer. The wonderful thing is as long as I can keep learning and experimenting, there is theoretically no limit to how much my shop can grow, since I sell 100% digital products. It would be great if this ends up making not just a full-time income, but more than what I earned at my studio job. That's the dream! I'd like to still take on books once in a while, but only when a project I'm really excited about comes along. I really like having more control over myself and keep craving more - looking back, I can't believe I ever was able to tolerate working in a studio for years!
vanessastoilova.com
instagram.com/vanessa.stoilova/Check out my Youtube channel for tips on how to start your career in illustration! www.youtube.com/c/ArtBusinesswithNess
-
When I was in college, my dream was to get good enough to become a VisDev artist at a major animation studio. But my time in college was extremely hard; I quickly learned that my skills were not developed to the level that they needed to be to stay on track to graduate within the program's timeline. So my dream of working in a major studio...basically went out the window because of my skill set, which was hard to deal with for a long time. So I studied, became an art teacher and tried to get better, until a family friend saw some designs I had done for Inktober and asked if I would illustrate a children's book.
So now...I think my perfect art world would have me be able to get to a point where I can teach part time and freelance, and that my skills would be in such a place where creating art didn't give me a lot of anxiety most of the time I work.
-
@Will-Terry In my perfect perfect world, I would be producing a rich and lustrous animated series of all of the Dresden Files novels. But I'd have to win billions in the lottery to make that happen. LOL!
An only slightly less impossible perfect world would involve me creating my own illustrated novel with an interactive augmented reality component. I would love to create in-depth motion book novels with art that isn't traditional "comic art" and figure out how to get rid of the text bubbles and frames that characterize it so strongly. I would love to enhance the experience of reading a good book with visual and aural components.
Ryan Woodward's Bottom of the Ninth animated graphic novel lit a fire within me. When Madefire Comics came out I was enthralled. Then I found the works of Brian Selznick. More recently Timeless by Armand Baltazar really made me sit up and take notice.
Telling a long-form story with text in some sections and then shifting to non-textual visual imagery to continue the story is really intriguing to me. I'd love to be doing something like that but for digital platforms that would marry rich literature and high quality art with motion components and compelling AR that are integral to the storytelling and not just superfluous or decorative or tertiary to the story.
I'd like to get paid to do that someday. If I could earn $50-60 thou a year, I'd be ecstatic.
But in the end, the reality is that I just dream of being able to get paid someday for my art. Baby steps. I feel like there's just simply too much for me to learn and master to ever become a self-supporting artist. Having a few jobs here and there is literally my dream right now.
