Kelley's Brutally Honest Art School Survey!

It's been almost a year since I graduated from the Academy of Art University, and I'm curious about whether my fellow illustrators feel that graduating from art school was beneficial for their careers. I put together a survey for art school graduates, and I plan to post the results on this blog, hopefully with pretty infographics.

For survey purposes, please only answer these questions if you graduated from a private art school or a four-year art program at a general school. Either graduate or undergraduate is fine. The answers are anonymous, so feel free to be brutally honest.

>>> Take the survey here! <<<

Please share this survey with your other art friends! The more participants, the more educational the data will be for all of us.

Storybird: A New Opportunity for Illustrators

A few weeks ago I stumbled onto a website called Storybird. Storybird users can make books for free by selecting illustrations from the site's library, then writing accompanying stories - kind of a reversal of the usual process of writing. The artwork is provided by professional illustrators who license Storybird to use their art for this purpose. If an author purchases an electronic copy or paper copy of the book they've made, the illustrators featured in the book get a cut of the profits - according to Storybird, as much as 35%-50%.

Storybird is popular among children and preteens, as well as teachers who use it as a writing tool for their students. When I searched for reviews of Storybird online, almost all the reviews were written from the perspective of teachers, nothing from illustrators. So here's my review of the website, based on what I've seen of it during three weeks of use:

Pros:

• In theory Storybird is a good way to make a secondary income off of your artwork. The website doesn't purchase your artwork, like a stock site, it just licenses them, so you still own all the rights to your work. In this way, Storybird has a very pro-artist attitude. Storybird also requires artists to apply for a store, so the website as a certain level of quality control.
• Storybird is also a great way to grow your online fanbase, especially if you're a children's book illustrator. Your artwork will get seen on Storybird - according to the site, my artwork has already been viewed over 18,000 times and I've received a lot of really sweet comments from users. Not just "I like your art" but things like "I've been waiting for an artist that does magic in modern day times. I now have so much inspiration, because of you and your art." Storybird encourages you to link to your website and Etsy store in your profile so that you can make additional income off of prints, etc.
• It's fun to see what kinds of stories people will come up with when they see your artwork. At this point my artwork has been used in over 70 books - although many of them are not very developed, (they are, after all, written by kids and preteens) some of them are quite charming. My favorite so far is the Dragon Glass by GaladrielSkywalker.

Another good one - DragonLights by WriteOn03

Cons:

• Storybird could be a good source of secondary income in theory - but right now I've made a total of $0.14 off of the site.  True, I've only been on the website for about three weeks, and Storybird recommends having at least 40 illustrations in your gallery to get more users and views. (I only have 18 illustrations posted at the moment.) Considering that Storybird claims that artists earn royalties of 35%-50% on sales, it seems like one would have to accrue a very large quantity of sales to make much money at all, or get lucky and have a lot of authors purchase pricey hardback copies of their books.
• Currently, authors are the only ones who can purchase copies of the books they write, not other users of the site. This really limits the amount of possible royalties for artists. Someone could write an amazing book using your artwork - but at most that book can only be purchased by them, not by you or anyone else. Storybird claims that they are "exploring a publishing program where we sell popular stories from member authors," so this could change in the future.
• The artist dashboard is severely lacking in information - there is no way to find who has used your art in their books other than just browsing through the site, or by emailing Storybird and asking them. Since seeing books inspired by your art is part of the site's appeal, it's frustrating that it's not easier to find this information. Additionally, the dashboard doesn't list where your royalties have come from, or when you earned them. They just mysteriously appear.

In conclusion, I think Storybird is an interesting system with some promising possibilities. At the moment it's not going to be much of a money maker for illustrators unless they have a very large back catalog of work they can post online. (And with the popularity of work-for-hire contracts these days, it's kind of difficult to have that much available artwork.) However, the staff at Storybird is very communicative and open to suggestions, and they are continually developing the site.

If you're interested in Storybird, Publishing Perspectives wrote an interesting article on them last year. Otherwise, why not browse around the site? I think illustrators should take a look at it.

Personal Work: Second Chance

I'm on a horse!

I'm currently working on a cover for a book about a girl and a horse. This was one of the rough ideas I delivered to the client.

The client liked it, but wanted to go in a softer, more nostalgic direction. So I decided to finish this as a personal piece - hence the title "Second Chance." I like to imagine that it's a middle-grade chapter novel about a racehorse who survives the sinking of the Titanic. But then he has PTSD and gets paralyzed around big crowds, so he is unable to race. Then he finds a 12-year-old girl who believes in him, who gives him a...wait for it...waaaait...a second chance. I know, I know, it's brilliant.

This was my first serious attempt at digitally painting a horse. You guys, horses are hard. They're so lean; all muscle and bone; their legs have at least thirty joints. They're not like bunnies that have a nice padding of fat and fur to soften all their edges. I looked at a LOT of horse photos, trying to get the anatomy correct without copying from one single photograph.

image source

I found this one image of a horse that appeared to have a heart shape on it's head. How cute is that?! What preteen girl wouldn't want a horse with a heart shape on his head? I immediately gave Second Chance a heart shape too.

As you can see I also changed the number on the horse's saddle from a 5 to a 2, because 2 made more sense with the title.

I've been wanting to get a horse illustration into my portfolio for a while now, so I'm happy that this turned out well. Here is the version with a blank banner:

Thoughts on Ender's Game and and Simple Design

This cover by Sam Weber for Ender's Game is one of my most favorite illustrations ever - which is really saying something considering I don't particularly like Ender's Game. However, I can still appreciate how perfectly this illustration depicts the overall emotional intensity and sci-fi setting of the book.

The composition is so simple - one character, squarely in the center, floating in a starry space. He is poised in a protective stance above the planet he is isolated from, a child with the grim expression of a much older soldier. THERE IS SO MUCH IS PACKED INTO THIS ILLUSTRATION. (You can read about the making of this cover at Tor.)

Also great is the unconventional design of the cover, designed by Jamie Stafford-Hill. Both the title and the author's name are in the center. The neon green text seems to float above the scene, emphasizing the three-dimensional space.

Now look at this poster for the movie version of Ender's Game.

It has everything. Six characters, a post-apocalyptic landscape, an alien planet landscape, a massive fleet of shiny, shiny spaceships. This poster tells us that we can expect an epic sfi-fi action movie with plenty of space battles.

It's not a bad poster - in fact I think the designer did a great job of making all those elements fit together as a cohesive whole. He or she was probably working under a lot of restrictions. But does the poster really say anything unique? Does it have any emotional appeal? The only thing that separates it from any other sci-fi action movie poster is the presence of the two kids in space suits - who are dwarfed by the giant heads of Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley. It's even orange and blue. There's even a lens flare.

It has more things but it's not better.

Why is the book cover, rather than the movie poster, so powerful? Because the team that worked on it chose simplicity and creativity.

Nezha Stirs Up the Sea

When I was very young, my aunt gave me a strange little picture book called "Nezha Stirs Up the Sea." The book is actually a collection of stills from a 1979 Chinese animation of the same name.

The story is about a magical boy named Nezha who goes around defending children from the evil Dragon King.

When Nezha kills the Dragon Prince, and the Dragon King demands Nezha's life in return. In order to spare his father from the duty of killing his only son, Nezha slits his own throat with a sword.

Yes, this is a children's book.

 Stay with me here.

Nezha is reincarnated as a "youth with three heads and six arms" and a skirt!!!!

He wreaks his holy vengeance on the evil Dragon King, who never returns to threaten humans again.

This book heavily influenced how I drew dragons. I really liked the twisting, ribbon-like forms of the Chinese dragons, and you can still see that in my artwork today.

Growing up in California, I had never seen anything else like this. I spent my childhood wondering about this obscure, bizarre little book. Then, a few years ago, it occurred to me that I was just a Google away from having all my questions answered. I found the original Nezha animation, watched a few seconds of it, then decided that actually I preferred my book, in all of its strange, unexplained glory.

Personal work: Busyness and Inspiration

I don't like talking about the meanings behind my artwork. I love it whenever people look at my drawings and start describing the story and what the characters are saying, and I don't want to get in the way of that. However, I also really like hearing about the meanings behind other people's artwork. Sometimes I'm not sure whether people would get more out of my artwork if I describe why I drew it or if it's best to let them imagine their own meanings.

I'm probably overthinking this.

I created this for a call for entries at the Land Gallery here in Portland. The theme is "work + play." I pondered this theme, and started thinking about the challenges of doing creative work as a career. The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is to keep the creative spark alive while also meeting deadlines. While struggling with less-than-awesome material. While waiting for that overdue paycheck to show up. While wondering if I'm going to have work next month. While viewing the work of other artists who are more successful and talented than I.

I wanted to illustrate that tension by representing inspiration as a fragile butterfly, and busyness as a cascade of everyday objects - things that represent time, money, distractions and responsibilities. (The Imogen Heap lyric "the many windswept yellow stickies of my mind" kept coming to mind.) Brightness and stillness in the center, darkness and movement in the outside. Magic sparkles for good measure.

I set up a light source and took some reference photos.

Inspiration has to be guarded and protected, so I wanted the composition and colors to have a womb-like feel to them. Why does the girl have pink hair?...I don't know. I like pink hair.

This is more conceptual than my usual stuff. I hope someone out there can relate to it.

You can buy prints of this illustration at my inprnt shop.