Where are you from and what projects are you busy with?

Chip Valecek

@Brad Welcome Brad! I am from the US Chicago southwest burbs. I work as a web designer full time and freelance. My passion has always been art. I am working on a book with my son with a goal to be finished end of October then I will focus my time on a contest that scholastic is having for graphic novels. I also try to do the 3rd Thursdays every month for fun and to keep my creativity flowing.

Lydia M

Hi Brad! I'm from Illinois. I'm also working on building my portfolio for illustration work while I have a part time job doing apparel customization. I used to work with watercolor, pastel and acrylic but now I'm hooked on digital painting.

evilrobot

I live in Prescott, Arizona USA. Small town in the mountains of northern AZ. I work full time as a business manager and accountant. Right now I'm working on getting a professional portfolio together. (Goal is to have 10-12 pieces of quality by the end of the year) Beyond that the dream has always been to find a way to make a living off of art. I've written a graphic novel which I've started and scrapped five times.....I've gotten as far as page 20 and then scrapped all the artwork. So my next goal would be to either finish that or one of the three children's books I've written. It would be nice if I could finish something I get bored in the middle stages and never finish. Beyond that I want to improve my traditional art skills. I really want to learn to paint with water color.

smceccarelli

I am originally from a mixed Italian/British family, moved to Switzerland nearly 15 years ago, where I live now. I have just completed a second course of study in Visual Development and switched to part time on my day job (art direction in corporate relation) to launch a career doing illustration. My goal is to have a stable income from illustration work within 2-5 years. So currently shifting my portfolio towards children's illustration and trying to understand self-marketing....
I am also working on a book dummy that I hope to finish by February (in time for the NY SCBWI conference).
I am on SVS (and also on a number of other online training portals) because I am a firm believer that learning never ceases - it also helps me to stay focused. The SVS forum is by itself the greatest resource!

QuietYell

Hey Brad! Love your buildings! (Saw them yesterday when you posted about using black fineliners).

I’m from Dallas, Texas

I work mostly in 2D Digital (Photoshop, Illustrator)
(Though looking to go back to and incorporate traditional as well. I miss inking, acrylics, gouache, & colored pencils)

Background:
Origin was illustration, but the past 18 or so years have mostly been in the advertising & intellectual property development industries, doing creative & art direction, ad campaign dev., content dev., logo & brand dev., graphic design, web design & dev., product & presentation dev., strategy & biz dev., etc. (Probably easier to just go here: http://quietyell.com/resume/)

Current:
Going back to roots of illustration with the intent to re-enter the children’s media market (PB/MG/YA book/periodical, packaging, toy/stationary/other-product, game, etc.) with an illustration focus for myself. Working on developing industry relevant illustration portfolios while attempting to improve a variety of aspects in my work (drawing, painting/rendering, concept/narrative/story-telling, speed, etc.), as well as learning & “networking” as much as possible.

IanS

Hi all. I'm Ian and I live in Nottingham in the UK. If you've seen Dark Knight Rises I live a few streets away from Wayne Manor. I've been working as a freelance illustrator for 10 years with varying amounts of success. I manage to get by but I'm not satisfied with the work I'm getting or the quality of said work. I'm hoping to improve my skills via the SVS classes and in the process get a better idea of what type of illustration I like doing. Ultimately artistic fulfilment is the most important thing.

Dulcie

Hi @Brad! I live in south-west UK. I used to work in magazine publishing, but now I run my own company designing and manufacturing craft products, like papers, stamps and dies (I do the designing/illustrating, my husband does the organising), and that's what we both do for a living. Nevertheless I'd like to illustrate children's books one day, because I want to tell stories, not 'just' make art, even though that is fun too.

My current projects are:

making a new website for my personal art
making better pieces for my portfolio (I'm using the 3rd Thursday challenges for this)
very soon, I will have to start on a new round of product designing for early 2017 release.

@IanS Welcome to the SVS forums! Hope you like it here

Brad

@mikesikes Thanks for posting! I'd love to visit San Diego! (also a big Switchfoot fan)

Brad

@Chip-Valecek Thanks for the warm welcome! That sounds really great, keen to see your finished product!

Brad

@Lydia-M Sounds great! Thanks for the reply

Brad

@evilrobot Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to seeing more of your work

Brad

@smceccarelli Thanks for sharing! You have such great work up on here!
I'd like to ask - I'm considering a full time course in animation/ concept design (covering basics in maya, drawing, design etc) but there are so few colleges offering it where I am from, would you recommend any online courses other than SVS that could offer similar learning material as in your course?

Brad

@QuietYell Thank you so much for the kind words!
Great work in so many disciplines! Thank you for sharing

Brad

@IanS Thanks for sharing! That is pretty awesome that you live near the manor

Brad

@Dulcie Fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing!

smceccarelli

@Brad It depends in which direction you want to go...I mean, Maya alone takes about 2-3 years to master, and normally people who work in Maya are not focussing on drawing and design that much - they focus on modelling and/or rigging-animating designs from others (each of this items is a separate specialisation, by the way, if you want to do it at industry-level). You may want to check out Gnomon - a pretty renowned online school for VFX https://www.gnomon.edu
I learned ZBrush, which is a pretty intuitive modelling software, and I use it sometimes for illustration work. Again, if I wanted to do professional modelling, I would have to focus a lot more on that and stop drawing and painting that much
The SVS courses are really good overall, and there are really good courses on design principles here. I use Digital Tutors a lot - they have courses for Maya, ZBrush as well as Photoshop and a lot of other software - more on technical skills than design skills though. Schoolism.com has a varied offering too, that you may want to check out - but I feel it is a bit disjointed overall, and some of the courses are not that useful (but some, again, are awesome, like the ones run by Sam Nielson).
Hope it helps!

QuietYell

@smceccarelli yeah! I totally echo the ones by Sam Nielson! Great stuff!

evilrobot

And I'll be the third one to say Sam Nielson's classes are amazing. He really explains how light works and why it effects colors the way it does. But also I'll say I didn't get a lot out of many of the other classes on there. The money I spent for the full year subscription was worth what I got out of Sam's classes though. I'll also echo that Zbrush is pretty easy to learn. I took this gumroad tutorial and the next one after and was able to learn the program really well and make this image in around two weeks but it may have been a waste of money for me because I'm really more into illustrating..

Eric Castleman

Welcome, Brad!!!

My name is Eric, and I live in Southern California. I am currently a stay at home Dad, and am working towards getting into Children's literature as an illustrator. It has been my dream for a long time, and I finally decided to completely focus on getting as good as I can. I am currently working on September's 3rd Thursday, as well as working on a comic strip for a pest control company (I know, weird).

Brad

@Eric-Castleman Awesome! Thanks for posting and the welcome!