pantagruel

working with bad clients

This morning, I realized that I've been using Photoshop since version 2.5, when it didn't even have layers. 1993's when I first sat down and spent a month of afternoons going through the Classroom in a Book tutorials. It wasn't all that long ago that design was done by hand.

Perhaps it's that 16 years of hard work and experience with clients that makes me laugh until I cry when I watch these videos about working with clients.

Oh, yes. I have heard clients say these things. And yes, I've even managed to be professional. But let's not push our luck.

advertising, arg, art direction, design, work

pay the writer

Or in my particular case, pay the artist. I was going to rant about the expectation many people have that I should work for free, for them. Why? Ostensibly because I'm their friend; because I'm the friend of one of their friends; because I did them a favor once, and now I should apparently always do things for free; or because it's for their particular pet cause. Or because it will only take me a few minutes. Or because they're so horrible at design, or art, and I'm so good at it, and couldn't I just…?

No. I couldn't. And here's Harlan Ellison to explain why:

Look, I'm not interested in getting rich from overcharging my friends. It's more important to me that you give me something for my time and energy, than getting an exact dollar amount. Any of my past or current clients can tell you that I work for very reasonable rates, on a sliding scale that starts at 'coffee,' includes 'beer' and 'sushi,' and goes up to 'your firstborn child.' Somewhere in the middle is probably where your particular project falls. We can most likely work something out that makes both of us happy.

That said, there are, as in everything, exceptions.

At Comic-Con, I found myself at the booth of a man who was looking for an artist to draw his independent comic. Sounds good. Only this guy had run through two previous artists already, and he'd only managed to get one issue out. First red flag. I asked how much of the story he'd actually written, and he said he was still making changes to issue #2's script. Second red flag. The story was about a gay couple, set in an alternate Wild West. Fine. One of the couple was a werewolf, and the other looked suspiciously like a vampire. Still fine. The writer showed me the art from the first issue, and it verged on softcore porn. Hey, there are worse things to draw than naked good-looking men, right? And the writer likes to roleplay these characters with friends of his. Third red flag. But it was when the writer said, 'Well, I'm having this design contest for all the interested artists, where they draw the couple, and then send me the drawing, and whichever one I like best, I'll pick for the comic,' that I excused myself and said goodbye, and wished the writer luck.

Actually, that project would've fallen on the 'firstborn child' end of the payscale. If you want me to draw your own personal cowboy/werewolf/vampire gay porn, that will cost you a LOT. But what's even worse? Asking me to draw your own personal cowboy/werewolf/vampire gay porn FOR FREE, after which you can decide if you want to pay me. That's called working on spec, and it's a Bad Thing.

You wouldn't dream of asking your mechanic to fix your car for free. You'd be outraged if you were asked to do your job for no money. Why on earth would you ask an artist, designer, or writer to do just that? Clearly, you want to become the target of Mr. Ellison's wrath.

Preach it, Harlan!

artist, harlan ellison, smackdown, work, writer, writing

comic-con, or friends and zombies

This year, Studio 2nd Street had a booth at Comic-Con.

It was a quiet booth, living a quiet life, bothering no one, until the artists came.

The madness started shortly after that, as soon as the Mad Hatter (who is secretly my friend Danny) showed up, 10 minutes after the con opened.

The artists drew on Thursday. This artist discovered that painting friends-as-zombies is hard. And painting while hundreds of people walk by is extremely difficult. Not to mention hard on one's ego, when you usually can paint like this:

But the painting of friends-as-pimp&ho-zombies was tragically overdue, so it had to be done.

The artists drew and painted so much, that the booth couldn't hold them all, so they had to go upstairs for their panel. Upstairs, there were people waiting to see the artists paint and draw.

There are no pictures of the painting and drawing, as the artists were too busy painting and drawing to take photos of themselves. Also, that's a good way to cover your camera in oil paint, which cameras do not like. The panel was nervewracking, but went well. At least, that's what some of the audience said later.

This artist then left to go have beer, as there was sadly no beer in the booth. So she went to Stone Brewery, where her friend was reading, and also drinking beer.

The pole did not drink beer, in spite of many people's efforts to pour beer on it.

On Friday, this artist wore a different corset to paint in. Like you do. Especially when you're modeling corsets for Alter Ego.

This is a good way to be given a security escort to get back down to the exhibit hall on Friday, and pretend you're Important. Don't I look Important?

And then there was more unfinished painting.

  

And more friends I rarely see.

At the end of the day, and after the painting, there was more beer.

The booth did not miss us while we were out drinking beer. Not one bit. There were other booths, some with flashing lights, even.

And even though Ron strayed and painted the other booth with lights, we liked our booth the best in the end.

Other people came to the booth and gave us free paint.

So, of course, they had to be tested.

Jon Enge came by, pretending to be Johnny Breen, and proving that any Poxy Boggard is interchangeable, as I'd long suspected.

Some of the studio's models came by, wearing clothes, which made them almost unrecognizable.

Jen usually looks like this. That NASA jumpsuit is a good disguise.

On Saturday we left the booth and went to dinner with this guy, who drew Justin. Lucky, lucky bastard with his interesting mustache.

On Sunday, the booth watched me paint this in cat-herder extraordinare Ryan Graff's Sandman sketchbook. Started with this sketch, from last October:

Which became this:

Which became this:

Ryan promises he will send the hi-res scan over.

There was more drawing across the way at Allen Spiegel Fine Arts. This famous guy, working on this piece (final drawing here).

He did this of Vanessa.

My sketchbook now has this as its first page:

I have my orders.

Then the booth started complaining about having had all of the artists in it. Uppity, ungrateful thing.

So it had to die.

The booth swore it would come back next year, as a zombie.

Be ready.   

art, artist, comic-con, corsets, studio, zombies

Comic-con

As regular readers of my blog have guessed by the sudden decline in posts, it's that wonderful time of year known as Nerd Prom, aka San Diego Comic-Con.

Every year, I battle through a massive anxiety attack to get my work together enough to show and get feedback on. This year's anxiety is compounded by the stress of having had my day job at Saltmine U. be in peril. I have less staff, and slightly more work than I did last year. I've been so busy spending the last few months proving I was useful, that all my spare time (such as it is) was spoken for. That doesn't leave much for doing illustrations. Being an art director has had to be my primary focus; being a student came second; and any socializing, either online or in person, was rare. I worked Faire to fulfill a commitment I'd made to help two good friends, and while I don't regret it, it meant I spent two months with no days off at all.

Not surprisingly, my immune system pitched an armed revolt a month ago, and I succumbed to the plague that's been sweeping the West Side. Only in the last two weeks have I been able to get through an hour without coughing, or had anything resembling energy.

Which is all to say: I'm not as prepared as I'd prefer to be for the major industry event of the year. I've done a lot of good work, and I'm proud of it. I just wish I were further along with my current projects, so that I could show them. But hey, I'll bring them down to Comic-Con!

This year will be my very first as an exhibitor, and I'm beyond thrilled to have this chance. I'm going to be with the studio I'm at every Saturday: Studio 2nd Street. We're booth #5361. I'll be doing painting demos in the booth all four days, and will also be part of this panel:

Thursday, July 23
4:30-5:30 Drawing Upon Reference— Ron Lemen (ImagineFX magazine) and Studio 2nd Street Group will cover the subject of photo reference and how to use it when you have to use it. This lecture will briefly cover the do's and dont's of copying photos for your illustration work and some basic guidelines for drawing an effective image. Room 30CDE

Yeah, guess who's going to be showing you all how not to use photo reference.

As if that weren't enough, I'll also be modeling corsets for Alter Ego while I'm there. Hopefully that will generate a lot of business for Alter Ego. It'll be a challenge to not get upstaged by the corsets, but I think I can manage.

If you're going to be at Comic-Con, please come by and say hello!

the closing of tabs

For the first time ever in my life, I have more bookshelves than books.

I took this last week after friends dropped off the four new bookshelves. I've begun slowly filling them, but I might not accomplish this any time soon. I seem to be missing five boxes of books, though, which worries me. The missing boxes were most of my philosophy and religion books, and I'm not looking forward to having to replace them all. A sacrifice to the moving gods, maybe?

A graphic designer lightbulb joke, courtesy of Crazy Aunt Purl:

Q: How many graphic designers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: A lightbulb? Does it have to be a lightbulb? Can we go with a candle, maybe with a flickering light? Or a lantern? Why do we have to go with a lightbulb? I was thinking more along the lines of an open road, with clouds and a desertscape. Who came up with this crappy lightbulb idea? It was marketing, wasn't it?

Crazy Aunt Purl is also a divorced art director living in LA, who happens to knit and have family from the South. Now that's a narrow demographic.

My favorite lightbulb joke, though, is this rather insular one:

Q: How many Faire Folk does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Forty. One to change the lightbulb, and thirty-nine to stand around at Mullah's coffeehouse and talk about how much better the lightbulbs were at Agoura.

From Rands in Repose, a post on jargon-as-fashion, with this gem: "Future Proofing -- Architecting a product so that it accounts for things that don't yet exist and can't be predicted." I'm busy future-proofing a major project, and tomorrow I've got to present about it. Hurrah.

Lifehacker's got an article on how to make better coffee. I'm all about this.

Now, for more coffee as I prepare to organically align my solution.

In which our heroine has tonsilitis

I seem to have been flattened by last month's bout of tonsilitis returning. This time, it has a grudge.

At the moment, I'm not particularly entertaining, unless you perversely enjoy listening to hacking coughs. One thing i've discovered is that my sore throat pain is miraculously cured by beer, which has just enough alcohol to kill the pain, but not too much. This came to light after spending Sunday at a party; who knew?

To entertain you in my absence, I have photos taken over the last few weeks. Feel free to come up with your own story to link them all together, and post it in the
Comments.

Malaise of Meh

My goal for the last few weeks, and for the foreseeable future, is a simple one: Keep my head above water.

What I'm calling the Malaise of Meh has been going around my professional and personal circles. People are losing jobs or struggling to keep their jobs; relationships are dissolving; they're trying to find stable footing; looking for places to live; looking for hope.

It's ugly out there right now.

There are so many people and projects leaning on me, that I feel a literal weight on my shoulders that does not relent, even in sleep. Last week, I wrote to a friend, 'Dig deep. Hold on'; and now it's time to take my own advice. Or better yet, Gandalf's advice: "Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not."

The Details That Matter

Kevin Potts wrote a great article, 'The Details That Matter,' over at A List Apart. Here's the beginning:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, the graphic arts industry was populated by full-time illustrators, production assistants and compositors. With only composing sticks for laying out type, straight edges for defining grids, a human proofer to catch spelling mistakes and an arsenal of X-acto blades for making edits, these guys lived and breathed detail. Mistakes were costly. It was a trade position that required lengthy apprenticeship; job security depended on getting all of the little things right.

While many of the tactile skills needed for our new generation of PC-based web design and development are radically different, a critical eye for detail is as relevant as ever. In fact, because of the lower cost of entry and increasing commoditization of design, that eye for detail is not only necessary for staying afloat in the profession, but a requirement for success.

The functional details are different than the ones with which our forefathers wrestled. Most of us do not own goggles to prevent spray adhesive from getting in our eyes or loupes to gauge dot gain at a press check. We do, however, have to deal with the endearing idiosyncrasies of browsers; we all run into the same double margin bug and inconsistent JavaScript support. These are quantitative, documented issues. Good website builders like you and I avoid these altogether simply by writing better code. But the details that can kill a project faster than a fly against a windshield are more subversive: the ones that, in hindsight, should have been blindingly obvious.

Potts is spot-on -- it's the small details that can kill a project and ruin your reputation. You wouldn't think that clients have so little tolerance for error, but they do. Clients feel free to send you work rife with typos, poor grammar, and bad code, but you'll be expected to fix their mistakes; and may all the gods help you if you make new ones.

You also wouldn't think that an art director would be bad at details, but I am. I'm an abstract thinker. And when I say 'abstract,' I mean I naturally see patterns all the time, in everything. The big picture; the forest, not the trees. I'm such an abstract thinker that the human resources trainers who've put me through personality tests remark on it. Off the top of my head, I can give you an overview of… say, the Northern Renaissance, in which I cover the political, artistic, literary, philosophical, and religious movements. But if you asked me to tell you when the Hundred Years' War ended, no amount of torture could make my brain give up that date. I want to say sometime in the mid 1400s, but that's as far as I can go.

This has served me well in my career, because I can come up with an entire campaign easily. But it's also meant I have to fight extremely hard to proof my own work. Ye gods, that isn't easy for me. I'd rather jab myself with an X-Acto than proof my own work. And yet, if I didn't manage to do it, I'd be out of work, fast. So if you're also bad at proofing your work, and details elude you, here are some of the things I do to get around it:

• First, if at all possible, I pressgang someone else into proofing it for me. And bribe them if necessary.
• I initial every change a client's made to a proof, as I make it. This gives me a quick way to look back and see what I've done, especially when I get distracted and have to come back to the proof later.
• I turn the proof upside down, and look at it again. This is surprisingly good for catching typos.
• Pray to Titivillus, patron demon of printers. You laugh, but he's been around since monks were painstakingly writing on vellum, and blaming him for their mistakes.

Or, of course, there's always becoming an art director and making your minions do it. I like that one best. Be careful, though -- after enough typos, you'll lose your godlike status, as they see your clay feet.

I'm in love with this layout.

I'm in love with this grid layout system. I think I hear a choir of angels singing. Seriously. This answers so many of my current work problems, that it's literally the answer to my prayers. Granted, my prayers sounded like, 'That &$(ing @^&@! ^!@@$! Why won't you work?!' as I've never been a particularly reverent person. But still, it's good to know that Titivillus, patron demon of the design profession, answers impassioned pleas.

Chip Shop Awards

Nominees for the 2009 Chip Shop Awards are out. Man, I wish I could get away with doing advertising like this -- with a sense of humor. Specifically, British humor. Some of the categories:  

• Best Use of Shocking Copy
• Best Work for any Brand you Haven't a Hope of Winning
• Best Work for a Client You Have but Haven't a Hope of Running
• Best Reject - for ads that have been rejected by clients but you feel should have run
• Best Use of Plagiarism
• Best Work for a Relative or Friend

Some of the nominated ads are dreadful; others brilliantly shocking. I so need to come up with my own. It's refreshing to see that other people are in the same boat of political correctness killing off good ideas. Of course, you have to do what the client wants, but sometimes you get sick of that. That's what these awards are for.