Episode Details

Society of Visual Storytelling: Our show is sponsored by SVSLearn.com. It’s like Netflix for a high quality art classes. We love the guys down there at SVS. :) If you are interested in learning more, click here

Current Projects:

Will: Working on redoing a class for SVS, and originally the class was done live and so now he is giving it a facelift and making it more organized and coherent.

Lee: While waiting for a book project to start, has started working on a basic Digital Painting class for SVS. He has done 90 videos done so far. Also, took a week to dial in his studio, his process and needs have changed over time, so now he has taken some time to customize his studio and built things to streamline it. Fancy customization.

Jake: Just finished, Inktober! Yay! Finished all the Inktober posts, has been doing a ton of work on the Inktober posts, which is a ton of work. Did all of his personal Inktober drawings, plus another 20 or so to promote sponsors.
Cleaned the whole studio with his trusty assistants, Aaron and Tanner
Now is working on the Inktober book which is all about how to ink, how to do Inktober, and where do you fit in the world of Ink.

November Art Challenges:
Slowvember: taking time to slow down after the franticness of Inktober and just focus on making one thing beautiful.
Another popular art challenge is Huevember, combined with Sketchtember, and Inktober. People do sketches during the month of September, ink them during October, and then add color during Huevember.
Slowvember, all about creating an amazing
Last year Lee did 2 pieces during that month. 2 weeks a painting. In today’s world it seems like it is all about speed, so it’s so nice to slow down and work on a painting and give it 100% of what you’ve got.
It’s the last 20% that makes you a professional. Students can totally get to that 80% mark but they get stuck and don’t know what else to do. It’s that final 20% that is the hardest part and this challenge is a perfect way to work on getting past that.

We love this podcast! This is what are meetings used to dissolve to anyways, so we’re happy to share it now with you.

(time) Today’s topic is: How to Working with Art Directors.
The nuts and bolts of working with an art director is usually learned on the job and is not covered as much in school. So hopefully this will be helpful.
We have some questions that were submitted to us by a former art director who thought these would be helpful questions to discuss and consider.

How much creative freedom can I expect to have when illustrating a book?

For most children’s books that Jake has done he has been hired based off of a specific illustration he has already done. Some artists have only one distinct style and so if that’s the case the client most likely wants something in that style.
Usually Jake will email them and ask what type of style they want for their illustration. The freedom lies in how you can use that style to tell the story. You have to stay in that box of the style and work inside that box and all of the storytelling and design you do should fit in that box.

Usually Lee will ask the publisher why and for what reason they chose him. Then they will send some images that they like of his and start to describe the look and feel of the project.

Your creativity doesn’t change as much as your confidence does.
Lee feels that he has the same amount of creativity and capacity to have good ideas now as when he started, the difference, however, is his confidence and ability to pitch those things and more creative solutions to the art director or publisher.
We all need to overcome self imposed limitations of what we think the art director wants. There is a freedom to pitch things out