Episode Details

Projects:
We’re still working on a lot of the same things, and so from now on we’ll probably just give updates once a month instead of every episode..

A Year’s Worth of Lessons

We want to each share a couple of lessons that we had from this past year.

Concept is King, Will

At the beginning of his career, like most people, Will focused a lot on craft. And as he has matured he has learned that craft is what gets you through the door but what moves you forward is artistry, or the concept behind your piece. That is the most important thing. Craft validates you, but your concepts is what moves you forward.

It is all about the subtle things, the things that add to the story, the things that are left out of the illustration.

WillTerry.com, check out Will’s comic con drawings, a lot of time goes into making sure the concept is solid.

You don’t really get to see anyone’s real initial reaction when they see your children’s book that you illustrated. However, at the comic conventions strangers don’t know that you are the artist, so Will gets to see their natural reaction to his work and his fan art concepts. He has been able to really see, by watching it in real time, that people are not drawn to the craft but they are really drawn to the concepts of his drawings. The drawings with stronger concepts attract more attention from customers.

Will is trying to go through his Bonneparte book and make sure the expressions and everything add to the story. That those little details are adding to the story and concept behind each illustration.

Technique, perspective, etc: it all serves the story. Not the other way around. You don’t make the story about the perspective or about the technique.

Lee really likes his work to look raw, and has really gravitated to that look over time. He oticed that when he tried to make things look really rendered and realistic people talked a lot at how realistic his work looked rather than the concept behind it. But when he changed his approach and focused a lot more on concept and developed more of a raw style then people also began to focus more on the emotion and the concept.

Jake used to be very tight with his drawings using a technical pen, but has grown to not focus so much on that and instead uses a brush pen and it has given his drawings a more organic, hand drawn feeling. It’s more about bringing the drawing to life than making sure every part and mechanical piece makes perfect sense.

Ask yourself: What is the concept, and what is the emotional response that I want to illicit in the person viewing it?

With all of that it is hard to get noticed if you have bad craft. Having bad craft, is often from laziness. Will struggled with drawing and resisted getting better at it, and his excuse was that he didn’t want to hurt his style, but it was really just an excuse for laziness. Putting some effort at building your craft will help you better pull off any concept you want to tackle.

You need to still learn craft so that you are able to take on whatever artistic challenge comes your way. You want to be malleable, and adaptable. You need to be able to adapt to the times and not be stuck doing just one style.

In short, good craft will get you through the door, but good concepts and ideas will help you move forward.

20:00
It’s All About Lifestyle, Lee
This has been a big year for Lee and his family! They moved from Oregon to Tennessee and have been able to really lower some of their expenses which has taken a lot of stress from Lee to have to make as much money and helped give him more time.
They have been working at this plan to reduce costs for 3-5