On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I did some character design work for. This was a funny episode (directed by Tom Bancroft) with a lesson about the importance of inner beauty and character as opposed to vanity. One of the characters I was asked to design was a cheezy George Hamilton-type alien with his own line of...
"How important do you feel a blog is as a part of an overall business model for a freelance visual artist? Does it make good business sense, or do you think that only other artists read them, as opposed to potential or current clients?"This is an excellent question, one I've been thinking about a lot lately. My blog has been something of an experiment, and frankly I'm still undecided as to whether or not a blog is a worthwhile way to promote myself and my work. I started getting serious about my blog in July '07, posting five times a week and making efforts to publicize my blog on other websites. My readership has steadily grown; I currently average about 700-800 page views every weekday, and I'm very flattered that so many people are interested in what I have to say. I suspect most of my readers are other artists who will never hire me, but I know for a fact that at least a few are art directors or past clients who have a serious interest in me and my work. Nevertheless, from a purely financial standpoint my blog so far has been a bit of a disappointment. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But then again, I've only been working at it seriously for about eight months. Everything I've read about blogging describes it as a very slow and gradual build towards success. Blogging is not for the get-rich-quick crowd. So I'm planning to hang in there a while longer and see what happens. I've read about freelancers who started a blog and before they knew it job offers from readers were pouring in (this is more common among freelance writers than artists, which makes sense). While I'd love to say that I'm one of them, that has not been my experience. I can count on two fingers the number of job offers I've received in the last six months as a direct result of my blog. One fell through, the other was actually a writing gig for which I made decent money.
Between meeting deadlines and getting my taxes ready for my accountant (ugh!) I'm pretty busy at the moment. Too busy to write a full post. However, there's some great art blogs linked over to the left. I highly recommend giving them a looksee. Also, I thought I'd pass on a joke someone sent me the other day that really made me...
When I bill out a project, my experience has been that most clients prefer to pay me the old-fashioned way by mailing in a check. However, as the internet continues to make things more convenient some companies are beginning to embrace online options as a way to pay for outside services like freelancing. And more and more freelancers are beginning...
For a few years now I've had the privilege of being a member of DrawerGeeks, a fun website for artists. Each week a different character or topic is assigned and we each take a shot at illustrating it any way we'd like. This week's topic was "The Monster Under My Bed". Ninety percent of the time I'm too busy to take...
