3 Point Perspective: The Illustration Podcast (SVSlearn.com)

Most creatives feel a pressure to be active on social media and to be building a following around their work. In this episode we talk about how to determine which social media platforms are best for you, how to use hashtags wisely, and how to best leverage the strengths of Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, and E-mail.

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9: How Much Will You Make In Illustration?

How much will you make in illustration? [2:06]
This is a question every student has, and the frustrating part is that it is often not discussed openly, or is just glossed over in school. Which, honestly, is a bit crazy! Some reasons for this may be that those who are teaching are making too little and are embarrassed to share that, or it may be that they are making a lot of money and don’t want to share that, because they are afraid of coming across as bragging. In this episode, we hope to cut through the fog of uncertainty and shed some real light on what the market is like and how much you can expect to make in illustration, in different fields, and in different stages of your career.

Making a life in illustration [4:09]
When speaking of how much you make in illustration and of the various fields of illustration we are are ultimately talking about different lifestyles. A children’s book illustrator gets paid differently than a concept artist at an animation studio; the same can be said for a gallery painter or an editorial artist, etc. Each comes with its own unique type of payment system and accompanying lifestyle. There are many different career paths and combinations of career paths and it is wise to consider the environment and the financial situations that come with each.

Responsibility to talk about the business side too [6:44]
Schools are put into a tricky situation, because they need to recruit students and promise them a great career but the topic of money can be glossed over because the schools can’t guarantee jobs coming out of school. Will finds it necessary to have a talk with about finances with his students in each of his classes, and each time the students tell him: no one else has ever talked to us about this!

Comfortable to talk about how much you make [7:45]
Money is this weird thing that sometimes people hold so close to their chest. And sometimes people are super secretive about it. It can be frustrating

If you have artistic ability, the gamut of jobs available go from freelance out of your home to working full time at an animation studio and everything in between. Jake has taught at Brigham Young University (BYU), and feels as if the animation department there does a good job at helping students create connections with studios; they fly studios out to help conduct portfolio reviews and recruit. They try to get their students lined up with jobs and internships.

The hard thing about Illustration is that it doesn’t have a central source providing all illustration jobs, it’s everywhere! You school could fly and editor out to talk to talk about publishing work but they can’t offer 5 years of work like an animation studio can.

It can be a challenge to keep consistent work right out of school but there are things that you can do to prepare and gear yourself up to have consistent work; you can start trying to line up work, and start developing relationships to prepare.
It can be frustrating when you have no one to talk to about the financial side of illustration but it really only takes talking with a few people to start to get a pretty good idea of what it is like. Hopefully, this podcast will be a good start for you in answering your questions.

6 factors that affect your income as an illustrator [12:26]

It can be tricky to nail it all down, and don’t feel bad if you don’t fit into these categories. We are just going to ballpark some numbers and hopefully you can go from there!

We’ll divide it up into 2 different categories with 3 different sub categories.

Three different income bracket
Early pro
Mid level pro
Pro, seasoned veteran
Skill level
Exceptional skill
Average skill
Below average skill

It is important to know which you are talking about because if you use a seasoned pro like Chris Van Allsburg as a guide vs a student fresh out of school, you will get very different numbers.

People like Chris and David Wiesner have won multiple Caldecotts and are definitely anomalies.
You also need to distinguish your skill level with your career because there are students who are getting work in school and have an absolutely exceptional skill level, and these guys are super successful right out of the gate.

Chris Van Allsburg
David Wiesner
Dan Santat

We’ll try and focus a lot on average skill level, because people like those described above are outliers, and people with below average skill aren’t really going to be getting a lot of jobs.

What you can expect from book publishing [17:23]
Early pro $8,000-$10,000 for advances
Mid level pro $20,000- $24,000
Pro $28,000- and up

Educational publishers won’t be higher than $10,000

Small publishers offer less [19:27]
There are smaller publishers and they don’t offer as much. This means you should really think about whether or not it’s worth your time to work with them, consider these questions:

Questions to ask yourself before you accept work [20:13]
Does it pay well? [20:28]
Is it creative or challenging and taking you in the direction you want to go? [20:36]
Will the final finished work provide extraordinary exposure? [20:48]

Lee considers these three questions when taking publishing offers. Ideally the project will fulfill all 3 questions but if it fulfilled two out of the three Lee would consider accepting the work.

Senior level in book publishing [22:16]
As you begin to build traction and notoriety the figures start to increase. Book illustration and publishing are a long term investment. You can build a long term career with passive income.

A published book doesn’t necessarily lead to royalties [23:33]
Most childrens books don’t earn out. Consider that most books go out of print. Royalties are great when they do come but, a general rule of thumb you could adopt is to just assume that you won’t get any and seek for the best advance possible.

Quick book advance explanation [25:11]
Publisher gives you advances on royalties. So you don’t get any money on royalties until the royalties due to you cross the amount of your advance. The advance is really there to protect the artist and create incentives.
Publishers can estimate how much a book might make in royalties and they give that money up front.
It takes a lot of time to make a children’s book and you can look at this as high income short term rates and long term investments you need to think about this as a business.

What you can expect to make within entertainment and concept art [27:00]
There are so many options, such as: storyboarding, background art, background painting, concept art, etc.

Entertainment industry [28:29]
Main Industries
Animation
Video Games
TV
Live Action
Feature animation, and feature live action pay more but TV might last longer like ten years. Video games can fluctuate but depending on the studio they can have pay rates similar to feature animation.

Feature anything is considering those with top tear skill sets and you can anticipate $70,000 starting off but also consider the cost of living in the area where feature animation is i.e. California. Cost of living in California is very high and your income may not be able to sustain a life there.

One of the reasons schools don’t talk about money [32:12]
You need to understand the life that you are choosing because there is a lifespan to each project that you have. Movies are made within 3-4 years and the studios have the option to keep or not keep you.

You should treat each job like it is freelance and think of your options. The are highs and lows in the industry.

Benefits of working in the entertainment industry [34:35]
In the entertainment industry there are great perks to think about like benefits, bonuses, and retirement. You can work around peers that help you and push you to level up your craft. The exposure of working in the industry also opens up other doors. Working in a company there is lateral movement like storyboarding or production assistance.

Day rate for feature animation concept art [35:42]
There are also opportunities to do freelance for animation, video games, TV, advertising, etc.
The day rate is set by the studio or you can negotiate for it.
For animation, the max is about $500/day.

Think about your social needs [36:35]
Are you social? Do you need to, or do you prefer to work on a team with people or to work more solitary? This is a factor you should consider with different career paths, some are inherently more sociable and some are inherently more solitary.

Puppet Sanding to doing what you want to do [39:02]
Lee said there is this joke that when people started at Laika, they would have to “pay their dues” and started off just sanding puppets, because someone had to, and then, after paying their dues they would move onto doing more art and creative projects. Sometimes you will do something you didn’t anticipate, and you may have to spend some time “paying your dues.”

What you can expect to make at art fairs, comic cons, etc. [39:56]
The estimated rates in one comicon:
Early pro- $500-$1200
Mid pro $1200- $5000
Seasoned pro $6000-$30000

Will Terry Youtube, Comic Con

Will, Lee, and Jake say that they could make a living off of just comic cons and art fairs but it would be a lot of work, and stress, and isn’t the lifestyle they want.

By using different sources of income, you can create a sturdy “financial table”. Each leg is a different source of income that you have contributing to holding up the table of your finances; such as: art fairs, book publishing, freelance. If one leg “fall out” or is not producing income then you still have others to rely on. Whereas, if you only have one source of income, then if it falls, you will be in a lot more financial trouble. It’s great to have multiple legs to make sure your table is steady and strong.

Working in one area or multiple areas [45:03]
There are two types of artist.
One, the artist that has reached a pinnacle in his or her career and and focuses in on one thing
Or two, an artist that has to piece together different forms of income but still can make a living.

Steps to take if you want to get into Comic Cons and Art fairs [50:47]
Go to Comic Cons or art fairs
Do research and development
Understand setup and prints

You can go and talk to people running successful booths and ask them a question or two but don’t sit there and take all of their time. Also, as a rule of etiquette: never get in the way of a sale. Be polite, and you and they will have a great experience talking.

The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines [52:40]
This book talks about how to quote but most artist don’t love the guidelines. This could be the starting book. Helps to have a ballpark of where the price range might be.
Find peers that you can go to chat about pricing.

Will’s YouTube video: Pricing

Question: What’s the best route for making a living as an illustrator? [58:31]
Have a day job that pays the bills first then you can transition into illustration. Think about the need in the industry and how applicable is your talent in the industry. Understand your target market, budget, and rights. Have a day job.

Make great art and also understand how things are sold.

Piper Thibodeau worked a corporate job and did art on the side before she was able to make the jump and be an artist full time.
Piper Thibodeau

Question: What are some financial things freelancers forget to think about? [1:05:19]
Freelance artists need to understand that what you make is not what you get. Consider the amount amount your agent will take, taxes (30%), health insurance, investments, savings, etc.

Quicken Self Employed is a great tool for freelancers!

Quick overview Dollar Cost Averaging [1:06:25]
If you make 1 dollar what happens to that one dollar? How much to you pay for your agent? Studio space? Taxes? Then you can start to calculate based off of how many costs eat into 1 dollar, how much you will need to make to be financially comfortable.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Anthony Wheeler joins Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry to discuss live streaming, his journey into illustration, and his philosophy about sharing the creative process. Don’t miss it!

PATREON

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How many ways can you monetize one illustration? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry teach how to make art that keeps on giving, plus how to popularize your IP and more!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Illustrator Karen Schipper joins Lee White and Jake Parker to discuss her journey as an entrepreneur, breaking into the greeting card industry, the courage to start something new, and more!

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Should you follow art trends? What compositions do you keep using? And is it too late to start illustration as a career? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss the answers to these questions as well as offer a rant on the state of the American Cinema.

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… And that’s a wrap! In this episode, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry review the lessons, highlights, and industry headlines that made 2022. They also share their goals for 2023. Don’t miss it!

PATREON

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We celebrated 200 episodes of 3PP with a live Q&A! Tune in to hear Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share their biggest lessons from podcasting, the impact of their art on the world, breaking out of a drawing rut, and much more.

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Lee White, Will Terry, and Jake Parker discuss art mistakes, how you can make your art better, and how kidlit publishing is too expensive.

PATREON

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Should I quit my job to illustrate? How do you organize admin work? Can I take the stress out of taxes? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry cover the nitty-gritty of illustration business in this episode.

PATREON

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How can I start small as a professional illustrator, and how do I move up when I’m ready? How can I stay motivated during long, challenging projects? Hear Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry answer these questions and more in this episode!

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Kyle Webster discusses his transition from working as a freelance illustrator to working at Adobe, helping them improve the creative suite.

Full episode out next week!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Should I focus on my email list, portfolio, social media, or something else? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry teach what to prioritize as you grow your art business. 

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If you dream of writing or illustrating a children’s book, this episode is for you! Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss finding your best publishing method, how to hire (or become) an illustrator, and how the new Children’s Book Pro course can help you reach your illustration goals.

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Is your artistic voice discovered or created? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Anthony Wheeler share how to unlock a style that feels uniquely you.

Sign up for Lee White’s watercolor workshop in Spain

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It’s a self-publishing special! Join Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry for an inside look at the world of self-publishing: the pros and cons, marketing, and lessons from those who do it best.

PATREON

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From feeling inadequate to worrying about career viability, illustrators face many fears every day. Anthony Wheeler, Will Terry, and Lee White share their greatest career fears and how they face them (and you can too)!

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Writer and illustrator Benjamin Schipper joins Jake Parker and Will Terry for a thought-provoking interview on expanding what influences you, creating from empathy, fulfilling your artistic mission, and more.

PATREON

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Illustrator, author, podcaster, and musician Vesper Stamper joins Jake Parker and Lee White for real talk about the artist’s calling, being outsiders, educating the next generation, and so much more. Grab a notebook and dive deep into this riveting conversation!

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How did Lee excel in art school without a background in it? How can you avoid wasting time and procrastinating? And if you’re brand new to art, should you learn to draw first or launch into painting right away? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss these questions and give you their answers.

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Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry weigh the pros and cons of working with publishers, the effect of unions, and the benefits of creating multiple opportunities for your artwork.

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How do you pay taxes as a freelancer? Should you switch from a lucrative career to your dream art job? What do you do when you feel your art just sucks? And what do Editors require: traditional art, or digital files? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry do a deep dive on these questions as well as give an update on Lee’s NFT scheme.

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Is social media ruining my creative practice? Guest illustrator Samantha Cotterill joins Jake Parker and Lee White to discuss the pros and cons of social media, limiting distractions, adapting to physical challenges, and much more in this insightful episode.

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Inktober Promotion: FREE 30 Day Trial of SVSLearn, includes all of our inking courses, along with 80+ other art related courses. Perfect for leveling up and getting ready for Inktober.

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How to Be The Best Art Student

Will got a letter from a listener who shared that her favorite episode was the first episode, “My Art is Great, Why Won’t Anyone Hire Me?” She requested an episode where we focus again on that and expand more on that topic. She also said that “and by the way that is the best episode you guys have ever done thanks to Will Terry.” Will may have embellished the letter some!
She continued by saying something along the lines of, "The idea of self audits is great and I am taking to heart the idea of really honing my craft over the next year. I would like to know as an artist taking your classes the best method to take and absorb those classes since I only have a few hours in a day after work to learn and get better." So that’s what we want to talk about today.

We will split this episode into 2 parts:
Part 1: How to Be the Best Art Student
Part 2: How to Get the Most Out of Our Classes at SVSLearn.com and Online Learning

We did these things called 3rd Thursday’s and they were Webinars that we did live and then we would put the recording of it on Youtube. We put all of those webinars on SVSLearn.com. So we are taking some content from one of our Third Thursdays from a while back and presenting it in a more creative way.

Part 1: How to Be the Best Art Student, 5:35
Addressing Poor Mindsets:
“I’m going to art school to get a degree.”

First off, in all the years that Jake worked for studios and being apart of the process of looking at portfolios for people that they wanted to hire, never once did they ask if the applicant went to school. The portfolio always was first. They always would look at their portfolio to see if they could do the work and then they would ask what school they went to but wouldn’t check if they graduated or anything.
The degree, as far as the real world is concerned in concept art, in children’s books, etc. does not matter, what matters is that you can do the work.
It’s a meritocracy. It’s all based on ability. How well can you perform the task?

Would you say that people who have gotten far enough in a degree program should quit?
If it is your last semester and there isn't a job offer yet, then finish it out.
If there is a job opportunity that is available and it is what you are going for, it might not make sense to turn that job offer down just to finish out that last semester, and then if you are ever in a position to you can go back and finish that last semester. But we're pretty sure that once you are working in that field that you are wanting to work in and you are good, and already getting job offers as a student then you will keep progressing and odds are you’ll keep getting better and never look back. Unless you want to teach for a University at some point, if there still are Universities in 10 or 20 years.
Some job postings do require a degree. But really it all comes down to if you can do the work. If you have a great portfolio, and show you can do the work and especially if you already have some experience under your belt. There will be some companies that want you to get a degree. It's all about your portfolio and skill set.

You could have two people who graduate from school and they both graduate and get a degree, however one of them may have worked 2, even 4, even 10 times harder. That person will be so much more prepared for the job field.
If the prize was the degree then they will get killed in the job market. Maybe mom and dad will be happy about the degree, but it’s all about the learning. The mindset you should be trying to develop as a student is don’t have your eye set on the degree. The degree should be the byproduct of you trying to get the experience to get a job.
Looking at the college kids that Jake works with as assistants, everything they are doing to get that degree is totally going to help them get a job. But it is not about the degree, it is about the experiences they are getting as they work towards that degree. Your senior project or your final art show, that should be the thing that gets the employer’s eyes on your work and interested in you not the degree.

Will would give himself assignments or choose to do different assignments that he felt would get him closer to his goals in terms of portfolio. His classmates would sometimes get freaked out and ask him what he was doing and he would say that he was wanting to do freelance after graduating and that he was focused on preparing his portfolio.
There is a middle ground with ignoring what your teachers are asking you to do. Lee would ask for permission to adapt assignments and would shoehorn what the teacher said to what he wanted to do. He would do what worked best for him and his portfolio.
Jake had an assignment to draw himself as an animal and instead of doing a portrait, he did a landscape with animals in the background, because he wanted to do a piece that could become a part of his portfolio, and he ended up using the piece in his portfolio to get a concept art job.

What Animal?
We got into a random side note. What animal would we all be? Jake would be a horse, because that’s what he drew himself as in that animal self portrait assignment, plodding along in the distance. Lee would be a squirrel, like Scrat from Ice Age, he’s just scrappy like that and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Will would be a walrus, chill with cool facial hair.
Bonus, if you want to draw animal versions of us then share it with us, we’d love to see them.

“This homework should not take me more than 12 hours based on university guidelines for out of class, in class ratios.”
Some students are not willing to go beyond what the thing calls for. Some students are used to immediate rewards. Lee would have students come in saying, “I spent all night working on this!” And it turns out they had spent 3 or 4 hours, which is nothing. Lee’s average amount of time spent on a piece was 12 hours. Sometimes 9, sometimes 10 or 15 but the average was 12 hours from start to finish.
How long do you need? The answer is, as long as it takes.
Let’s say you spent 9 hours on a dud, and you budgeted 12, you have 3 hours to keep polishing that dud or you can start a new piece and sacrifice something else to have the time to finish it.

Another thing to be wary of is the ‘speed class taker’. They are trying to take as many classes as they can to try and graduate a bit earlier.
You should take fewer classes and allow yourself time to do the work, be able to mess it up and make mistakes and learn from them and do it again.

Jake did this drawing of animals flying and his friend, Scotty Young told him that it was good but nothing special. So Jake redid it and pushed it a lot further. He spent 2 or 3 times as long on the second iteration.

Jake’s first graphic novel was about 170 pages long and he timed it out the amount of time spent on each page was around 10-14 hour and that was around a year, while working a full time job. If you really want something you have to learn to get that thing done. Perhaps college is the best place to learn that, where you go from amateur to professional by one by one doing these assignments and after each one evaluate what you did well on it and what you can do better. How could you have spent more time on it, and better yet focused time. Until eventually you don’t even bat an eye if you have to redo something.

In a year: what is your percentage of illustrations that you feel are your best work and better than the rest, that you really love a lot more than your other stuff you did.
As a pro mostly everything you do should be at least okay, usually pretty acceptable. Then there are those ones that people really respond to and have that special quality to them, for Lee, he is stoked if he can get a couple really awesome pieces in a year.
Every year Jake does 1, 2, or 3 pieces where he feels he really leveled up and they act as a benchmark for the following years.
Even as professionals, the work created is still professional, but only a few pieces a year are seen as extraordinary compared to previous work. So if you are a student even if you are working very hard, not everything is going to be absolutely amazing.
So it becomes a game of numbers, if you want to get a some stellar pieces done you need to do a bunch of pieces and work.

Lee would review senior portfolios and he noticed that everything would look nice and cohesive but would usually come across one that was really over rendered. He learned that they came from the students rendering classes and they couldn’t give them up because they had spent so much time on them.

“This is how I make my art, it’s unique, the teachers need to help me with my vision.”
You can say that after you’ve learned the fundamentals; after you’ve learned composition, light and shadow, some color theory, some anatomy, perspective, proportion, and line quality.
Once you have figured those things out, then you have the freedom to say, “Now I want to do my style this way and this is how I draw.” Up until then that’s a crutch and you can use it as something to lean on.
Jake likes to compare art to music. You can’t just step up to a piano and pluck the keys with awful timing and make up your own stuff and expect it to be good.
You have to master the fundamentals. Once you can play the basics then you can start to mess around more.
“Don’t let your style be the byproduct of weakness.”
That is an out, it makes you feel good, but really it is a lie.
Mary Grandpre, you look at those and they are really well done, but perspective is not really all there. Some objects have dimension and there are objects that are more designy. She can draw that way if she wants to, but could draw them all “more correctly.” She does this deliberately and she can because she has earned it.

Student’s want the teacher to support their vision. How many students would enter a college level writing class, and argue that the teacher shouldn’t critique their work but support their vision. The teacher will surely point out bad sentence structure, bad grammar, too many main ideas in a paragraph, etc.
All art is the same, they all have a lot of similar principles.
You can’t get around it, you never will get mad because you have good draftsmanship and you learned to draw something well.

Even Jake is still learning. He has been working on relearning anatomy, he has leveled up a lot just since he started studying it more since a few months ago. He has already seen his drawings level up since he’s been studying this stuff.

If you think you’re done learning, you’re not. This is a lifelong pursuit, and you need to be committed to lifelong learning.

You need to have an open mind and be open to receiving feedback.

Will identified all of these problems that his students had.
Every year it’s the same: there are 3 or 5 that really get it and are doing really good, and then on the other hand there are a few who don’t get it at all and are not present, the rest are in between.
In 9 years teaching over there, he has only seen like 3 or 4 students who went from the lower or middle section to the high section.

He had one student who after school Will was really impressed with how her work had leveled up a lot, he asked her why she had gotten so good and she shared that, she looked around and she realized that her work wasn’t at the level as everyone else’s. So she decided to make a change.
Still doesn’t know why she was able to do that, while others really struggle.

Lee had a friend in school and they all shared their portfolios with each other that they used to get accepted to their program. His portfolio was not that great and it matched his classwork. He was pretty clumsy and not much of a stand out for those first couple of terms. And then around the 4th term he really started to stand out some more and started to have some pretty good pieces from time to time.
By the time that they left he was smoking, he was so good. He really did his very best with everything, every assignment, starting with the basics. And he just did it right, he really transformed as an artist.
It was not through talent, but due to sheer hard work and listening to feedback.

Will loves to see that transformation. Will went through that transformation himself and now he loves to see that transformation in his own students. The cool thing about teaching is that you can find teachers that really resonate with your learning style.

How to Know if You’re Good

5 Common Denominators that show you are getting good enough to start making a living at this:
People naturally gather around your work, without you having to point it out.
You’ll start to win things: contests, awards, etc.
You start getting unsolicited recommendations, “I want to introduce you to, so and so”, “You should consider applying to such and such.”
You start getting scholarships.
You start getting paid, you have people that start asking you to do things for money.

It’s the people who put their head down and just work. They don’t keep their head down and work in a vacuum but they learn from other people too.

Do Not’s
Will’s list of things you should avoid as a student (and as a professional).
Chronically late
Chronically unfinished work
Always talking and having side conversations during lectures
Always giving excuses and shifting the blame
Asking the teacher to change the assignment (if this is a norm, rather than an exception)
The last person set up to paint
Feel guilty because they haven’t made progress since the last time you were given a critique
Wearing headphones during class, half of your learning is going to happen from the people sitting around you. If you are not hearing side conversations or building friendships, you are missing out on a lot of learning.
Overly critical during critiques, but their work was unfinished or sloppy.
Packing up 15 minutes early.
Leaving class early.
Turning in scribble sketchbooks, if you don’t want to do it, just don’t do it.

The art director from Sony was giving a lecture on, “How to Make Me Hire You” and there was a student clickety clacking typing on their keyboard really loud and they weren’t taking notes.
Lee was furious and really got after his students after the lecture for being so disrespectful.

Pencil Mileage

Jake had this student that was just heads and shoulders above the rest of the class. Jake asked her why she was so good, and what her process was. She said that since the 7th grade she filled a sketchbook every month until now she was 22. So a lot of growth comes from pencil mileage.

Kim Jung Gi: he is the guy who can draw for hours creating a mural without any reference and draws with straight ink. We were talking about this and why he is so good and we decided that it probably came down to:
He just loves drawing, even more than those of us who really love it. He probably draws from morning till night everyday. He loves drawing to the point that his life is maybe not quite balanced.

Don’t drop the ball when people are counting on you. People who get hired are people who are fellow working student’s friends and people who did good on group assignments.
Don’t be a person who bombs it at a group assignment.

Part 2: How to Get the Most Out of Our Classes at SVS

Don’t treat it like Netflix and just have it playing in the background, instead watch the videos, do the assignments, get a sketchbook for notes, and take notes. Look at it as your school, and really take it seriously and treat it as your school. Look at your schedule and see what you can do daily and then try and have a day in the week where you can give 3 or 4 hours to apply what you are learning.

Really evaluate your goals. What do you really want to get out of it. A lot of people say that they want to work professionally. But do you really want to work professionally full time?
Maybe you just want to do some freelance on the side, maybe you are trying to get better to do a personal project, maybe it’s just a hobby. It’s important to take inventory on your goals so you can approach your education more wisely and strategically.
Attack classes appropriately.

Post and participate on the forum. Give and take. Take the classes that attack those different weaknesses that come up in critiques.

It’s not Netflix, there’s this weird phenomenon where when you are watching someone do something it seems so easy that you feel like you could do it too.
Lee would watch these tutorials, of Feng Zhu a concept artist on Star Wars, and feel that “Yeah i can do that!” Then when he would try and replicate it he would totally flounder.
You need to put the pen to paper and put some marks down to learn, you can’t learn just from watching it. Until your hand has done it, you haven’t learned it.

If you only have a couple hours a day, you shouldn’t put the pressure on yourself that someone who is in art school full time (9 hours a day of class). You should take one class at a time and really go through that class thoroughly. Sometimes people run through the classes and it doesn’t really show fully in their work.

We have talked about having illustration tests and that hopefully we would have enough staff at that time that we can give you a critique on your illustrations, like we do in our interactive classes.

Take it slow, when starting to post on the forum, and make sure you are looking at other people’s work and sharing comments and feedback. The atmosphere on the forum is extremely supportive. It’s a nice community
Sometimes it is hard to get an honest critique out of people, they might say, “Well, I’m not an instructor, but this is my opinion…” You don’t have to be an instructor to give valuable critique and feedback, your opinion is valuable.

You should go in there and read and engage and then people will be more willing and happy to give you a critique on your work.
Be specific about what you are looking for in a critique.

There are a lot of things that can be learned from this episode. If you are already a professional, you can look at it as how can I be the best professional that I can be?

Best of luck with being the best student and lifelong learner that you can be! We are all learning.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These p
odcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Brandt Woods joins Will Terry and Jake Parker to discuss his career as a muralist, how to land jobs, his approach to social media, and more. Don’t miss it!

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Can you make it as a comic artist in 2025? Is this a dying market? Shawn Crystal gives his take on the modern comic industry and shares his advice to anyone hoping to see their work in print. Join the conversation!

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Click here to learn more and sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Why do I feel jealous of other artists’ successes? Jake Parker, Anthony Wheeler, and Samantha Cotterill discuss turning comparison into inspiration, plus whether or not to become a full-time artist and more.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Click here to learn more and sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

What does it mean to be a successful artist? What should I work on next? Listen in as Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry examine these questions, plus making time for play and much more!

*FULL EPISODE AVAILABLE ON PATREON*

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Is AI driving illustrators to extinction? Jake Parker, David Hohn, and Samantha Cotterill explore the nuances of launching your art career amid modern technology. 

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How do you judge art you don’t like? Am I getting ripped off? Why is my client work so bad? Tune in to hear Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry answer these questions (and critique an illustration) in this episode.

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Will Terry's kickstarter: What They Don't Teach in Art School:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/willterry/what-they-dont-teach-in-art-school

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Listener Rich Murray joins Jake Parker, Will Terry, and Lee White to discuss his controversial views on AI, staying relevant, and telling stories in the modern age. 

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In this best-of episode, discover our top tips on finding, firing, and working with agents, featuring Jake Parker, Lee White, Will Terry, Anthony Wheeler, and Samantha Cotterill.

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When should I start selling my work? Lee White, Jake Parker, and Will Terry share insights on starting your career, enjoying the student phase, changing illustration markets, and more.

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In this episode, illustrators Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share their top advice for art school students. Tune in and discover how to get the most from your educational experience!

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3PP 19 Life Cycles of a Children's Book

Projects:

Will: Still working on the Painting Color and Light class. I’m gonna be working on it for a while. Loves working on classes, and loves having them. Loves it. It takes a long time but is very satisfying.
Lee: Going into the last week of his basic painting class, and it’s amazing the progress people have made between weeks 1 and 10.
Started a bunch of projects, and is working on a big series of book covers for his agent, he is trying to move into that genre, because children’s books take a long time, so he is trying to find things to do to supplement his children’s books.
Working on classic novels right now, and just did Lord of the Flies. His goal is to do 1 cover a week. Be willing to move without the ball. No one is paying Lee to work on this book cover project, but he is doing it because he feels that it will be good for him. Good things happen to those who take initiative.
Jake: Working on coloring his Inktober drawing. It’s a challenge, but it’s satisfying. Also is working on his Inktober book.

Life Cycle of a Children’s Book

Today we talk about where a book starts, what it does in its lifetime, how it ends, and all the hands that touch it.

There are two different branches to children’s books, and they are:
Author, illustrator combo.
Or an Author who is also the illustrator.

We’re going to focus on the first, and talk about how a book is made and published going through a publisher. Not self publishing.

The Manuscript

After a writer has gone through all of their ideas, and has a manuscript nailed down, they then submit that manuscript to their agent. The agent reads through the manuscript and decides if it’s something they think they can sell. Then the agent usually will give notes back to the author. If the agent is good, then they should know the market and what’s selling right now.

Once that stage is over, then the agent will take it to publishers and start shopping it around.

Should you chase what’s hot?
If you really believe in the story, then you can tell your agent to try and shop it around.
But maybe you aren’t super attached, and you don’t mind making the suggested changes.
Pick your battles. Usually Jake defers to people with more knowledge and experience than him. Often an agent’s suggestions are very valuable because that is their job and normally they have so much experience with this than you do.

The Agent Takes it to the Publishers

She takes it to publishers and gauges their interest. more often than not they will have a list of go to editors that they will show it to first. The publisher level might want to get on board too if it’s a really good idea. The editor takes it to the publisher and they bounce it around and see if it’s a book that this publisher wants to publish. They will talk to all sorts of people about schedule, etc. And if it all works out and is a good fit then they will come back with an offer.
There is a lot of work that goes into this and it’s something you may not see.

Victoria Jamieson, Roller Girl

She’s an author illustrator now, and she used to work in publishing. She had a wonderful slideshow that walked people through the process of how a book is made. There are like 100 people working on deciding if a book should be done or not. There are a lot of people that have to give their stamp of approval. It’s good to not know about all of the near misses because then you will be beating yourself up over them and spend way too much time worrying.

The money you are offered is a fraction of the money that will be spent making the book. There is printing, marketing, sales, etc. all involved. They all need to have a say to make sure it will work across all departments.

Would you trade this for a less free but more stable job?

Jake loved animation, but he is happier with the independence that his lifestyle offers now.
Will would get into lively discussions with his wife, because she was wanting him to have a “real” job. She was tired of gaps between checks and the uncertainty. But now she is grateful and is glad that Will stuck with being an independent artist.
Will has lived long enough to see people with regular jobs experience plenty of layoffs.

If there was a house style for picture books, it would take a lot of creativity out of the market.

The Publisher Strikes a Deal With the Illustrator.

Once the light is green. Once you get the green light, an offer is made, and you are in a good position if you are getting offers from multiple publishers. Then once the offer is made they will start looking for an illustrator. If you are an author then they will have a short list of

Then if you are an illustrator then you will get to look at the manuscript and decide if you want to take this project on.
Is this something I want to spend months on, will it align with my style and my brand. Is it enough money? Then if you choose to accept the book offer then they will give you a real offer.
They will give you a loose schedule and an offer.

You need to know your process inside and out. You really need to understand how long things take, comps, scanning ,etc.
At this point you should be thinking about your schedule. If everything feels good to you and looks good to you then you accept the offer.
Then your agent and the publisher will go back and forth about the money, royalties, do you have rights to the artwork, etc. Usually you want to retain rights to use it in your portfolio, and on your website. You want the rights in case the book takes off and they decide to make other products, like pajamas, mugs, posters, etc, so that you can get royalties.

Receiving Your Advance, and Getting to Work

Once all of this is squared away then you sign the contract and at that point you get an “advance”, this is upfront money. This protects you as an artist because you get money upfront to see you through the creative process.

This is how an advance works:
Let’s say you have a $20,000 advance.

There are two options:
⅓ signing, ⅓ delivering final files, ⅓ book is printed.
½ siginign, ½ delivering finals (more common).

The advance is against the royalties, so you would start making royalties after making the $20,000.
Then you get a check and it feels really good depositing it.

We like to be real in this podcast. And you don’t get the check immediately upon signing the contract. When you sign it, it still usually takes 1-2 months for you to actually receive the advance. Publishing is weird, horses still bring you your checks. This speaks to the idea that you need to be good with your money and learn to budget and plan ahead.

Also in the contract, it should outline the game plan for the actual production of the book. It is usually around a year or 2 years later. The reason is that once you have started creating some art, then they can use that artwork to start selling the book to bookstores, libraries, etc. This all happens well in advance. Stores and libraries all are projecting and trying to predict what will sell or what will not sell in the future.All of this starts to happen as you start sending them files.
Usually your production time is 6 months to a year.
It takes forever.
If you just sat down and just worked on the book and nothing else, you could get it done in maybe two months, but there is all sorts of back and forth, getting feedback, receiving notes, and making changes. Marketing people usually give lots of their feedback on the cover, they judge books by their cover.

Production Process

Process in a Nutshell
Send in initial rough sketches, get feedback.
Then do a final illustration and get that approved for the finished look of the book.
Receive approval.
Then once that is approved, final sketches.
Then do the rest of the final artwork.
Then turn it all in.
Then there are notes on the finished artwork.
Then make any necessary changes.
Then they get all of the work and they have a lot they need to do on their end with it.
It’s so simple, right?

It sounds complicated but they are directing it, and so all you need to do is meet your deadlines and respond to their emails.
You are working intensely with other people and so there are people skills. You work back and forth with a lot of different departments and people. You are apart of a team, and it’s not like you are just creating an image for a class.

Final Check on the Proofs

After all the art is in their hands, then they will go through and format it, they will format the type. They will prep everything for print.
At the same time, you will start bugging them and telling them that it is time for that second check.
You aren’t quite done yet. A few months later you will get proof back, usually you will get prints of the book, physically. And you will see what the book will look like in print. They are larger and are not cropped at all. You look through it and make sure that the color that they are printing is matching your screen. If it all looks good then you let them know or you can ask them
Lee will try and send in a couple of finished images and also color swatches of where the color should be. Lee sends a hard copy proof, and then they can match it as best they can. He sends them his intention for how it should be printed. Because if everyone is looking at screens, then they might all be getting something a little different, they are trying to hit a moving target.

After the proofs then you get the FNG’s, short for Folded and Gathered. These are the folded sheets, and it is what the book is really going to look like. This is where you can go through and double check everything. It’s probably too late to fix minor things but if there are major things then you can try and catch it before the book is printed.

True Story:
First time Will went to ALA, his publisher was sending him out there. His editor told him that he will see those “FNG’s”, and he couldn’t tell what was going on and if she was mad about something.

FNG’s. There is this lingo, and little terms that get thrown at you that you never learned in school.

Book Reviews

After the FNG’s are approved then you will receive some advanced copies. The finished book. Not just you but other people like librarians with a book review audience, book reviewers, other publishers and agents, all people who are connected to this book somehow will get the books so that they can start reviewing them and telling people what they should think of the book.

What you are looking for at this stage is for good reviews.
A starred review on Kirkus is usually a good sign. The reviews are usually heavily focused on the writing and is not as focused on the illustrations.

If you do not get a “starred review” not a 5 starred review, but a starred review, then people will look at the book as a miss, and it most likely won’t be a commercial success.

Reviews. A lot of reviews are kind of arbitrary because the people reviewing them aren’t artists and the reviews are being given by individuals.

Lee did a book and the review was saying that the book was quite poignant, and full of emotion, great. However, he drew a girl without a helmet, and got a bad review because on one page

Release Day

Book comes out, you are tweeting, and posting on Instagram about the book deal. There is some marketing that you need to do as author or illustrator and it all leads up to the launch of the book.
If they want to and if you can, then you may be sent on a book tour. This is quite rare though. Book tours are more reasonable when you are both the author and illustrator.

Publishers are hoping that at least one of the books they published will get an award. Every eighth or twelth book they publish is paying for all the others.

You go on a book tour, and then you go home, or your book goes onto a best-seller list. You usually find this out, a week or two after the book is published. These accolades are not essential but feel good.

Getting onto the The Best Seller Lists, sometimes it’s really easy to gain your way or you can sneak your way onto their lists.

Even more important than the Best Seller Lists for how your book is selling is the Amazon seller rank. If you are anywhere under 10,000 for best selling books on Amazon, then you are
Bonaparte Falls Apart is seasonal but it was in the 700’s.
David Hone’s Christmas book gets into the teens on Amazon’s seller ranking. Basically he is receiving off the charts royalties.

Periodically you will receive a royalty statement.
Gives you a break down of how many books sold in different areas.
It tells you how much you still need to pay off of your advance.
And if you have paid off your book’s advance, then you get a royalty check.

Death or Eternal Life for a Book

Then your book will either die and go out of print. Or it will continue to get royalties.
If it goes out of print, then you retain all of the rights and you can self publish it or you can find another publisher.
If it never goes out of print then you continue to receive royalty checks for it. You never know what’s gonna happen.

The publisher does a lot of work. They do a lot of heavy lifting. So you can look at it this way, you are getting paid to create and you are also receiving free advertising.

Big advance or big royalty?
Your sales record follows you around, if you have a big flop then it can hurt your future deals.
There is a balance between advances and royalties. If they can’t get a bigger advance, then you could ask for a bigger royalty.

School visits, Jerry Polada does a lot of school visits, the fact that he does school visits every week and that volume of visits and work he does can help him with getting books sold to publishers.
LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Can I use AI to inspire my art? What’s up with NFT scams? Should I start a newsletter? Catch the answers to these questions and more with Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry.

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Are contests a true measure of artistic ability? What are the most essential tools for starting your illustration career? And what’s the best way to archive old work? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share their perspectives.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

“Help! I’m feeling burned out!” In this live Q&A episode, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share how to protect your job from AI, overcome burnout, start illustrating late in life, and so much more.

*FULL EPISODE AVAILABLE ON PATREON*

PATREON

Sign up for SVSLearn's 14 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Can your relationship survive your illustration career? Jake Parker, Will Terry, and Lee White share how they’ve maintained healthy partnerships on the wild ride of artistic entrepreneurship. Listen and learn!

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Are you ready to fully commit to your craft? David Hohn, Anthony Wheeler, and Lee White discuss overcoming art block, the risks of art careers, and how to know when you’re ready to go big.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

WILL'S KICKSTARTER

Am I stealing images? How should I approach an agent? And what if I’m too tired to make art? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry answer these questions in this week’s episode.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Episode 10: Critiques

Critiques can be the wind beneath your wings that help you grow in incredible ways; or they can be the source of many tears, hurt feelings, and stomps out of classrooms. In this episode we will cover why you need critiques and critique groups, where to get them, how to prepare for a critique and what to avoid.

[00:00:49] What have you been working on?

We used to do this but got out of the habit and wanted to bring it back!
What projects are each of us working on?

Lee: Currently working on writing two books, and is trying to create a dummy book for both books, and trying to sell a two book deal, or at least have two options for publishers to choose from.

Will: Working with four other teachers to create classes for SVS, working on character designs for a board games and a sequel to Bonaparte Falls Apart.

Jake: Working on a figure drawing class for SVS that will be pulling the best from all of the figure drawing books to make the best class possible, on a sequel to “The Little Snowplow”, Jake and an author he worked with earlier wanted to do a sequel together and their agents were able to create a deal (stay tuned, we’re not able to announce it yet!). and sent the files for Skyheart
to the printer in China. Wahoo!

[00:06:10] Why art might not be right for your job?

We wanted to briefly touch on this subject because of a letter that we received from an artist named, Mike, in response to Episode 03: Ship Happens. Mike brought up the fact that maybe for a lot of artists out there, art is better as a hobby than a career. Mike went through all the steps and got his first art job… and he hated it. After he finished a couple of art jobs he was wondering why he didn’t want to apply for any other art jobs and didn’t know why he had such little drive and motivation. He realized that for him, and he imagines a lot of other artists making art their job isn’t the best option for them. He is does a weekly webcomic, does art for a board game company, and engages with his audience and is super happy with his art. He thought it would be nice to share with the followers of this podcast that to kill yourself to flounder in the shallow end of the professional artist career isn’t always going to pay off and doesn’t equate to success or happiness. Mike realized that he needed to have his own personal goals and stick to them. Also, that he wouldn’t be happy working on other people’s stuff. He realized that his dream was to have a stable income outside of the art industry and then have the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do with his art.

Mike brings up some good points, and essentially hit on the plight on an illustrator; that is, we spend a lot of time working for other people and helping them accomplish their dreams, while sometimes letting our own dreams stagnate.

Super successful illustrators do one or both of these things well:
Stop advertising for, stop looking for, or stop accepting work from clients that take them in the wrong direction.
Or they start doing their own projects, or a combination of the two.

To help see the perspective you can compare this to becoming a professional tennis player.
With each level of progression there are nuances and changes that need to be made, and it sometimes becomes less about the fun, sometimes you just have to practice because you need to improve.

You need to find art jobs that match who you are. Think about your skill level and what makes you happy.

That’s a side note that we wanted to hit, now time to jump into today’s episode!

[00:15:15] What are the benefits to a critique?
You need to see things from the perspective of another and that’s what critiques help us do.

Critiques are for students and professionals, alike. We all need feedback and critique. That’s how we grow. Jake was working on Skyheart and decided to redo the cover and when he posted it online he got a lot of feedback telling him that the original was better.

[00:17:17] Why you might not get an honest critique?
Sometimes we don’t get honest critiques because we don’t create the right atmosphere for the critiquer to feel comfortable giving us feedback. If they think that you want validation and not a real critique then often they’ll just tell you what you want to hear.

[00:18:29] How to find a good critique?

There are many people you can reach out to for good critiques such as previous teachers, professional artists, critique groups, small social media groups or pods, and artists at art conventional or art shows.
Art students have their previous teachers as a resource but this relationship needs to be set up when they were in school. Have you created a positive relationship for them to want to critique you later? Be a good student and be involved, it will pay dividends.

Like it or not we live in a transactional society. It helps if there is an exchange of time i.e. buying a print, helping to update their website, handle their social media posts, etc. Time is precious, see if there is something you can do for them.

Maybe you only have a critique group of your peers: be the person that gives critiques and set the foundation of a give and take relationship with your peers. On the SVS forum it is great to ask for a critique but people will be a lot more willing to give you a critique if you are also spending time to give others critiques.

You can also ask artists at conventions and art shows for feedback. Be courteous, and respectful of their time. It always helps to buy a print or something to compensate them for their time;)

[Society of
Children's Book Writers
and Illustrators] (https://www.scbwi.org/)

[00:28:22] Are you personally ready for a good critique?
How can you prepare for a good critique? You can approach critiques with a vision and a direction. Think about what your purpose for the piece is, and that will help your critiquer point you in the right direction. Provide a frame a references.

[00:30:31] Know what you need
Understand what you are asking for. Maybe you just want to be validated or maybe you really need to level up the piece you are working on. Know what you need and ask for it.

[00:31:15] Mel Milton's critique method

Mel Milton has a critique method where he only praises people when they ask for a critique, unless they really push him to give a critique and really ask for it. If they really want a critique then the flowery praise won’t be enough and they’ll push for more feedback. Showing that you really want feedback allows the critiquer to take you seriously and tell you what they really think.

Mel Milton

[00:32:30] You never know how people will react to your critique.

People sometimes cry, get angry or defensive and this is a sign that they are not ready for a critique.

[00:34:08] What not to do during a critique

Critique Repellent:
Talking too much: cutting off their comments or not letting the critiquer actually critique.
Getting upset
Being distracted and unplugged from the critiques
Arguing

[00:36:00] What to do before and during a critique
Know what you want the piece to accomplish- set a vision for where you want your piece to go
Be specific- you can ask them, “what did I nail?”, “what did I get wrong?”, etc.
Have more than one option open for critique- this helps provide a point of reference for critique and is extremely helpful
Set limitations: "What are three things I could do to improve this?" This really helps the critiquer feel open to give you three things you can improve.
Open the door for a total critique by saying “I’m willing to start this piece over”

In contrast to the “repellant” above, these things really create a positive atmosphere for receiving a critique.

[00:41:46] Break your critique into components
Lee liked to use a rubric to help provide specific critique to his students. Maybe they nailed it with the rendering and perspective but the concept was weak, or maybe they had a great concept but the values could use some work, etc.

Some fundamental things Jake looks at when giving a critique:
Gesture
Composition
Design
Volumes
Rendering

Understand your objective.

[00:46:11] How to prepare for a hard critique

When Jake worked at Blue Sky, his entire job was critiques. You would constantly draw and receive critiques. Sometimes character designs would have to go through 50 iterations before they ever settled on a final.

Come into the critique being malleable and bendable. It will free you from feeling too attached to your work.

Recognize that if you are making this a career there will be good drawings and bad drawings. Sometimes we are too invested in the time that we spent creating a single piece. Realize that one peace is a drop in the bucket of your lifetime of work. They say everyone has 10,000 bad drawings in them and so if you do a bad one, you’re like, “Sweet, I got one of those out of the way.” Then you can move onto the next drawing.

Don’t spend so much time worrying about the one brick rather than the entire wall. Go into it knowing that this isn’t the last thing you are going to create.

Don't rely on feedback from one single person, but if multiple people tell you the same thing, pay attention. You can start to understand the trends of your critique.

[00:53:23] How to participate in or find a critique group

Try to find in your area 3-5 people with the same goals as you do. As a group you will help each other achieve your goals. They could be in person or online and be composed of different creatives. Within your critique group find people who are at your level or higher, (preferably, you’re the least skilled in the group). Be accountable to this group.

Warning: if the group gets too big they become more of a cheerleading group and people will feel less impelled or comfortable to give honest critique.

Professionals need critique groups to level up and receive the feedback necessary to make work on that higher level. Try to find a local group with people who have similar goals.

[01:00:08] 5 Things to Avoid Doing In a Critique Group
Don’t show with work, but dish out critique
Take without giving
Being disrespectful
Being late: it shows selfishness
Not be overly negative

[01:03:47] Quick note about posting online

Your posts online can also be a source of critique. Based on what people commenting and also what is getting a lack of comments.
If your art doesn't get any responses that is a form of a critique. It means that you can keep at it and make something remarkable (worthy of remark).

[01:04:55] Giving a critique
Knowing your biases in your artistic tastes. For example, Lee doesn’t really love symmetrical work or anime, so he has to take that into account when he is giving a critique.

These things influence your critique and how objective it will be.

Also, reach out to certain people for different types of critique. Any critique from anyone is helpful, and a fellow artist can give you a good general critique. However, if you want a critique on your watercolor techniques then you should talk to someone else who does watercolors and they will be able to give you a more specific critique. You can get more general and more specific critiques, and both are valuable.

[01:08:17] Trust you gut.
Sometimes, you will get critiques that don’t sit right, and ultimately you need to trust your gut. Don’t change your whole style based on someone’s critique if it doesn’t feel right. However, if you want work from someone and they are asking you to change something then you probably should if you want work from that person.

Knowing what you want out of the critique will influence what you take away from it, and also the number of people giving you similar critiques.

Get critiques and be wise, what can we say more?

LINKS

svslearn.com

Jake Parker, http://mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44

Will Terry, http://willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt

Lee White, http://leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
forum.svslearn.com

Podcast production and editing by Aaron Dowd.

Show notes by Tanner Garlick.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Does your sense of self-worth come from the quality of your art? Jake Parker, Samantha Cotterill, and Anthony Wheeler discuss practicing a growth mindset and defining success in art and life.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Should I quit? Am I overpriced? What should I focus on now? Get some perspective on all this and more from illustrators Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 14 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Can you be an effective illustrator if you have attention challenges? Absolutely! Jake Parker, Samantha Cotterill, and Anthony Wheeler share their best tips to stay productive, maintain motivation, and meet deadlines (without losing your mind!)

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

How do you STAY in the illustration business after you start getting work? How can you tell if an art school is good? How long should a book dummy take, and are you slow or fast? And when is the best time to upgrade your Cintiq? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss the answers to these questions and give an update on Children’s Book Pro, the new course from SVSLearn.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Click here to learn more and sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

How can I succeed without illustrating children’s books? Any tips for entering the gaming industry? Why can’t I land a second book deal? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share their perspectives on these questions and more in this episode.

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

For the first of a series of interviews, illustrator Rebecca Green joins Jake Parker and Lee White to discuss comparison, making art on the move, Patreon, social media, and much more in this engaging episode.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Click here to learn more and sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

Check out the official 2020 Inktober Prompt List: 
https://inktober.com/rules

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Jake Parker, Will Terry, and Lee White discuss the keys to a six-hour workday, tax tips for illustrators, website advice, and more!

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Most people think that in order to be a great illustrator you need to just be a great artist and storyteller, that's true. However, there is a lot more that goes into being a stellar illustrator and a more well rounded person. In this episode we'll go over 10 important skills that we all need to be developing, and we'll go over some of the reasons why they are all so important, and share some techniques and tips for improving your skills. "Art directors only want illustrators with great skills!"

Just a reminder that this class is sponsored by SVSLearn.com with a library of over 80-90 classes.
Here are some recommendations:
Lee’s Favorite: Visual Storytelling Techniques, it gives a why for all of the marks that you are putting down.
Will’s Favorite: Draw 50 Things, it’s hard but once you learn to swing a golf club then you can go forward knowing how to create images.
Jake’s Favorite: How to Draw Everything, Really proud of this one, it’s an intro to drawing, and it’s also great for experienced artists. It’s always a great thing to make sure that you are doing it right. It corrects drawing problems, and you learn a process by which you can draw anything you want!

SVSLearn.com is Netflix for art school. If you want to own a movie, you go buy it. If you want to have access to a library of movies you do Netflix. That’s how SVSLearn.com is set up, you can buy the class and own it indefinitely or you can subscribe to our growing library of great content.

Project Updates:
Will: Sequel to Bonnepart, still working on it and is on the second round of sketches.
Lee: Working on a new book with Simon and Schuster, it’s a doozy, because it’s based on a song and the song doesn’t have a strong narrative, and so he is trying to create a story through the images.
Great ideas come early in the morning. That’s when great ideas come. Working in the morning and then chilling at night, or some people like to work till late at night and that can be great too.
When you get into a focus mode, whether it is late at night or early in the morning, nobody is there to interrupt you.
Jake: Delivered all of the interior drawings for Littlest Snow Plow 2, and it ended up being 40 pages. Next up, is working on the Inktober Book with Chronicle: how to do Inktober, and how to ink, and Jake’s process.

The 10 Skills that Every Illustrator Must Have

1. Love Creating
   You need to love creating art. Will has had students who he has determined don’t love art, people who would show up late, and talk to people, and take forever to get setup, and then they pack up and leave early. This is true for anything that you want to do. If you don’t love it then you won’t have the drive to push yourself and become great.
   Art is great, it’s what kids get excited about in pre school, and we are so blessed to be able to “play” for our job.
   Will had a friend who was admiring his iPad and asked about getting one, and then Will told his friend that he shouldn’t get one because he doesn’t love drawing. The friend hadn’t drawn really at all in the last decade, and was kind of offended at first, but then when Will explained why he said that, he understood that what Will said definitely had some truth to it. You’ve got to love it in order to excel.
   Jake has 5 kids and all of them who like to draw. One of them loves drawing and is older, and has a younger brother who likes drawing but and is way more naturally gifted. Sometimes his older son gets jealous, however, the older one is way more passionate, and in the long run he will have the drive to grow and become an amazing artist.
   You have to love it in order for it to be a career. It’s fine if it’s just a hobby and you only do it for a few hours a week, but if you are going to be creating for 40-50 hours a week, then you need to love it.

2. Unique Style
   Too often people settle and just copy someone else’s work and they don’t develop their own unique style.
   If you stick with it long enough, your style will emerge. You can be deliberate and coax your style out quicker with exercises such as collecting 5-10 illustrators that you really like, and then creating lists about the different things that make up their style.

If you want to get published you also need to develop a style that is relevant.
You need to be looking at what’s being published right now, and then you can push things, you need to be current. We’ll do an episode about this soon, because this is an episode in and of itself.

3. Communication
   You have to talk good.
   You have to be willing and bold enough to ask questions, and call your art director to clarify things. Back in the day everyone called people even when people didn’t see it coming. However, it makes sense that sometimes people are nervous and don’t want to look silly or incompetent to an art director, and therefore, are afraid to call and ask questions.
   People are willing to help you. If they want to work with you then that means they value you and your art. You can be honest, “Honestly, this is my first time doing a job like this, and so what do you think would be a fair price?”, etc, people will find you and your humble honesty endearing and be there to help you.

4. Power of Persuasion, People Skills
   Sometimes we look at persuasion as a negative term, as manipulative. But it’s not, and those things are different. It’s kind of like you get more bees with honey. Let’s say you’re a beginning illustrator, and the client asks if you can take on a project, you say, “let me check my schedule and get back to you.” When maybe your schedule is wide open.
   Sometimes it’s a little bit of a game, “What’s your rate?”, well, “What’s the budget?” That’s a vital question if you want to make illustration a career.
   You need to make your client comfortable, they’re nervous working with you if you haven’t worked with them before, do all you can to clarify and show excitement and interest, so that they feel comfortable and good about hiring you.

Will wanted to get a Yorkie, and there were 100 people who were wanting it.
Will wanted to try and get the owner to let him buy it, so he tried to reverse engineer the person’s perspective.
Ask yourself, “What would I want to hear, if I were them? What would I not want to hear, if I were her?”

Assess the situation and look for how it can benefit you and the person you are working with. Think win-win!

Show that you are excited, be human. Don’t be afraid to be excited and to show it!

5. The 33% Rule
   You have relationships that you need to maintain. There are executive relationships above you, peer relationships people who are next to you, and there are people who are “below you” (not in a condescending way) but they are maybe not as experienced at something.

Focusing on all of these relationships helps you see where you are at in your career and in your ability, acknowledge what you need to do to get better and enables you to help those who are further back on the path than you are.
As you help people who are further back, you learn and grow more. Your skills will increase as you have to teach people the process.
As you spend time with people ahead of you, they pull you up.

You’re the sum of the 5 people you spend most of your time with. That means you need to put people in your life who are better than you.
What to do if you are the best? If you are the rockstar of your group?
Jake was at an art studio, and eventually people above him had moved on and left, and one day he realized that he didn’t have anyone to look up to and to push him to be better, so immediately he started looking at higher up studios with artists light years ahead of him, and he ended up getting a job there and grew so much within just the first 6 months.

Healthy competition can help push you to be a better artist too.

6. Teach
   You don’t have to. But if you can do it, it’s so rewarding. You give so much to your students, and they give you even more. Your students build a great circle around you, and it increases your quality of life.
   Some people have different personality, and like being alone more.

Will’s case for why you should teach:
When you have to break something down, and have to explain something, then you are creating different pathways in your brain and you have epiphanies as you are teaching.
You are held to a higher standard: if you teach your students to do something then you are more accountable to try and apply what you teach in your own work.
Most of the most successful illustrators that he knows of, all have done something to teach and share their knowledge and experience.

As a rule of thumb, you should be out of school for 5 years before going back to teach, and those years of experience will validate you. You’ll be a better teacher and have the students respect. Students smell blood in the water and they can tell if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Your art will get better if you teach. Jake took a teaching job and right away his work got so much better.

7. Personal Projects
   Every successful illustrator that Jake knows of that has taken their career somewhere has done personal projects and more importantly finished them and put them out into the world.

Ship It. Check out our episode on this: Ship Happens

Not the continuous project on the side that never gets finished.
This is the only way to avoid burnout as a pro. Sometimes you just want to paint or draw something that’s just all entirely yours. Sometimes you do a personal project and it works its way into your professional work.
Personal projects and style are so interrelated. You can’t work on personal project without developing your style and artistic voice.

Sometimes they turn into bigger things.

Missile Mouse, a side project started in 9th grade, turned into graphic novel deals with Scholastic.
Little Bot and Sparrow, a 10 page story for a comic anthology became a children’s book.
Inktober was a personal improvement project, now it’s a world wide art challenge.
Will did Bonaparte Falls Apart, because Jake convinced him to do the fanart and his Little book style.

When you have a personal project you have to answer questions and solve problems that you don’t have to when working on a project for someone else.
From doing Kickstarters, having to work with printers, and having to prep files, it has helped Jake work better with clients.

8. Yearn to Constantly Improve

So many people get to a point where they wonder where else they need to go.
Simona Ceccarelli: a good example of continually learning. She made it a personal goal, that her portfolio would turn around and be a completely different portfolio by the next year.
“Eternal student.” She was a scientist for years, but she loved art and started studying it. Be an eternal student.
Will’s interview with her.

Will was impressed with one of his highly experienced teachers in school who would constantly take notes whenever a visiting artist came to campus. He was humble and always trying to learn. Take notes.

9. Have an Online Presence

You can have great art, but if no one can find it, then you won’t have any work.
Most illustrators that are doing really well have some sort of an online presence. You can find them easily, they have a website, they are present to one degree or another on social media.
Simona has gotten work from twitter and instagram. Not only can you find work but you can start to build your own personal fan base.
Personal projects can sustain you if you have an audience that wants to buy your work.

10. Think of Yourself as More Than an Illustrator.

When Will looks at some of the best illustrator many do more than just illustration.
Strive to combine an additional skill with your illustration: i.e. writing, programming for a game you’re making, maybe it’s a board game so you’re combining it with your creative ideas for making the game, etc.
Develop another skill that you combine with illustration. You combine things and can create something that is more than the sum of its parts.
Some artists transcend the idea of being a hired gun, or “just an illustrator.”
You’re never going to be paid as much as the creator rather than just the artist.
You have to stand out in some way, you have to be unique.
It’s important to create that mindset that you are a creator, even if it’s not illustration, even if it’s something completely different. Sometimes while working on other things you’ll receive insights and inspiration for your art.
It’s all about how you define yourself. “Illustration is one of the things that I do, but I’m able to do lots of things.” There is so much more to life than just illustration. Be more than just an illustrator.

Taking classes:
Jake reads books and learns from them, art and non art, Jake did a marketing class, and went to a conference. Lee has this spark and wants to take some art classes, onsite.
John Love watercolor workshop Lee did it.
Will would like to get into Plein Air painting, has never done it, but wants to get into it.

Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

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Will Terry's kickstarter: What They Don't Teach in Art School:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/willterry/what-they-dont-teach-in-art-school

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Every time we get an offer to do a book we feel super grateful and flattered that someone would want one of us to illustrate a book for them, but for many reasons we can’t say yes.

In this episode we get into the details of book publishing, including the economic, social, and career-building reasons we take on certain book projects, and why we say no to others.

Here are Will’s 10 Reasons for "Why I Can’t Illustrate Your Children’s Book.” Some of them deal more with submitting a book jointly with an author to a publisher, or self publishing a book; they are all things to consider and reasons for why you may want to second-guess saying yes to that person you sorta know who wants you to illustrate their self-published book.

1. Bad Protocol [5:40]

This question, about how to deal with people asking you to do their children’s book, is talked about often at SCBWI. The Most Asked Question: how do I find an illustrator?

Editors at publishing companies will tell writers, "You don’t need to find the illustrator, that’s our job." They take pride in this. One of the publisher’s major roles is to find the right illustrator and match them to the right manuscript. They have resources and lots of connections to find the best match.

Some people jump to conclusions and think that just because someone can draw and someone has a children’s book idea that they should be paired to work together, without doing research beforehand to see if they would be a good match. You wouldn’t go around prescribing medication to people before learning what their symptoms are and it's the same with writing and illustrating children’s books.

Publishers don’t want to be in an awkward situation where they love the manuscript but they hate the art, then they have to tell you and it can be something they just would rather avoid.

They have more art and manuscripts than they can publish.

They oftentimes will dismiss you, just because you are filing jointly, and the art is already done. As with everything, there are exceptions.

There are many other reasons as to why publishers prefer to pair the artists and illustrators. One marketing strategy they often use is to match a more veteran author or illustrator with a newer author or illustrator. A new author with a new illustrator, or vice versa, is too much of a financial gamble.

As you have more experience and become more well-known, you may have more power and influence over who you are paired up with.

Little Snowplow

2. Industry Perception [13:35]

Another reason Will would be hesitant to file jointly with an amateur or work on a self-published book is that it may affect publishers’ perception of him.

Even doing lots of projects on Kickstarter can look amateur. This is something that may be frowned upon merely because it’s a little more new. But sometimes books that started on Kickstarter can get picked up by publishers.

Even your online followers on social media has an influence on how much of an advance you are allotted.

One book that may be an exception to this :

Rick Walton Frankenstein book

They filed their book jointly and then 3 different publishers got into a bidding war over it. However, this is different, because they were two pros working together. So it’s not really an exception. We can’t think of an example of two amateurs who got a book published together that did super well.

3. I Don’t Know You [19:10]

When a publisher contacts an illustrator to do a book, the manuscript has already gone through a lot of rewrites. This is hard work and takes a thick skin.

However, if you contact Will to do your self-published book, he doesn’t know who you are and what you are like. Manuscripts always have rewrites and edits. It can take a very long time to complete the project. He doesn't know if you are in it for the long haul.

4. Award Submissions [22:32]

This is not super well known: Publishers, at their own cost, often submit books for awards, such as the Caldecott, the Dr. Suess award, state awards, etc.

It is a lot of work, they have to fill out all of the paper work and ship a couple hundred books to the right person at the right time.

Getting these awards is what helps the book take off. It gets more publicity, and starts to get bought and recommended by librarians. This is more for self publishing but is another reason that Will wouldn’t want to illustrate a book with an amateur.

Will has received 5-6 state awards. Jake has received a state reward. Lee received an ALA Award for a book: see link. And it made a huge difference.

I Lived On Butterfly Hill, Lee White

5. Reviews [27:06]
   Publishers have connections to get books reviewed. Which gets it on people’s radar.
   This is why I wouldn’t want to illustrate someone’s self published book. This doesn’t mean that a self published book can’t

6. Opportunity Cost [28:13]
   If you say yes to this children’s book is saying no to something else.
   It takes months to finish a children’s book and in the end there might not be much
   Average time to complete a children’s book: 6 Months. Jake, Lee, and Will can get a book done in less time but this is a good place to start.

If You’re Going to Partner or Work With Anyone, Be Clear About Who Owns the Rights to the Work. [33:16]

You need to go in with your eyes wide open.
Lee had an idea for a book that he brought an author on to help him write the story. He knew what the story was and was struggling with the words. So he brought this very very well known artist on. His assumption was that they would co-write the book and he would do the artwork. Her assumption, however, was that she was now the author and owned all the content, and that he was someone now illustrating her story. Long story short, It didn’t work out.

For any joint venture: have a clear expectation and maybe even a conference maybe even for a critique group. To protect yourself and them as well.

Ideas are not “copyright able.”

Be careful and go in with your eyes wide open.

7. Professional Production [38:24]

Honestly, if it’s the authors first time doing this, they don’t know what they are doing. And that can be another red flag as to why you shouldn’t do their children’s book.

Authors usually don’t know how to art direct and don’t have the skills to give art direction.

Lee’s Story:
Lee decided to help illustrate a self published book and he did some character sketches and showed them to the author. One of them was a anthropomorphic cow, and the lady said, “My mom would never wear that.” And then got into how the cow represented her mom and how it needed to look like her. Lee saw that there was all sorts of subtle things things like this and took it as a warning to get out of there and not do the book. Because it would be very hard to work with this author as an art director when they didn’t know what was important or how to art direct.

Then there are a whole bunch of things in the production side of things. Margins and type, etc.

Will will get these short emails from people telling him that they like his work and asking him if he will illustrate their book for them. And he wonders where their business proposal is.

8. Royalties [43:13]
   In creating all the art for the book, the author and illustrator are creating intellectual property (IP). And if the book takes off and becomes a big selling book, or a TV show, or a cartoon, or a movie, then the illustrator wants to go along for the ride and make money off of all of the things their IP is used for.

It’s hard to have a long career as an illustrator living off of just the advances received, you want to be getting royalties as well. You want to see books stick and generate royalties and income for the long term.

God Gave Us Christmas, David Hone

Lee was complaining about his small royalty check ($13), hoping to have company in misery. Then David Hone told him how much his check was (4-5 figures) and Lee was blown away by how much he had made.
Then there are the Brett Helquists who have funded their own retirement and their kids retirement off of all he royalties he’s made through Series of Unfortunate Events.

With self publishing there is a trust issue as to, how are you going to track sales and royalties. The publishers now have an online portal where you can login and monitor your book’s sales.

9. Distribution [46:53]
   This is a lot of work and for Will, Lee, and Jake something they have all dealt with doing their Kickstarters.
   Thousands of books take up space. They have had their basements and garages filled with books. Lee’s shipment of books was 2500 pounds, he literally had a ton of books. Now Lee and Jake have storage units to keep all their books. And 2-3 thousand books isn’t even a huge amount.

Jeff Smith, while self publishing “Bone”, ended up buying the house next door to house all of his book inventory.

Distribution is a ton of work! (no pun intended.)

Self Publishing authors are not distributors. They don’t have relationships with distributors. And so that’s one more downside.

One other side note:
Foreign rights. Lee has had books go into Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. Publishers know how to distribute in those markets.

10. Money [49:50]
    People may think, “oh it’s just $500,” and don’t realize how much an illustrator needs to make from illustrating a book.

Will asks Lee and Jake to name their price, to do a self published book with a terrible manuscript.

Lee often gets 30K+ advances, Will is a little under that, and Jake has gotten both under and higher than that.

An advance is money publishers pay you in advance against the royalties. So you get money when you sign the contract, and then when you turn in sketches, and then when you submit the final work (1/3, 1/3, 1/3; or 1/2, 1/2). Then you don’t get money on royalties until that amount is reached, on what you would have got?from royalties if there wasn’t an advance, then once you reach that point, you start to make money off of royalties.

And Lee said he would do a self published book for $50,000 (and that is if he liked he book). Lee would charge this much because of opportunity costs, where
If he didn’t like it, they would have to pay up in the 6-figures range.

This conversation could be misconstrued to be three ar

Part of the problem is perpetuated with the publisher. Because there are some books like “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” that are super successful with very simple drawings, and so people think that anyone could do something like that and it would be easy.

What about for a family friend?

Jake might help illustrate a book for a family friend, but it wouldn’t be as detailed or
Will and Lee are against illustrating for a family member or friend.
You should love the project, and really like it.
When you set up your agreement, because you will set up a contract of course, make sure you don’t
They probably won’t pay you a ton. Go ahead and set up a big royalty. Do

How to answer this question, “Can you recommend someone?” [1:00:06]

That’s a hard question because you might not know what they want, or what they

Lee has a new technique for saying no to these offers. And one of the things he has learned is that you don’t always have to respond to every email.
Maybe for a high school student it could work out.

Graduation Commencement Neil Gayman

He sees his goals and aspirations as a mountain in the distance, and as long as your going there then you are doing something good.
Make great art.
It might be different if you are in college or based on your circumstances.

Honestly, it comes down to: does it fit your needs, or does it point you in the right direction. Another thing is if you really feel that this will be something that will help someone, you can.

The reason creating art you don’t want to make is because your mind can’t escape it.

LINKS

svslearn.com

Jake Parker, http://mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44

Will Terry, http://willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt

Lee White, http://leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
forum.svslearn.com

Podcast production and editing by Aaron Dowd.

Show notes by Tanner Garlick.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Jake Parker shares his recent experience at LightBox Expo, and Lee White and Will Terry join in to discuss how to set yourself up for success at art shows and conventions.

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

What if you could make money off of artwork you did years ago? That’s what Gina Lee does. She has a class on SVS where you can learn about how you can take artwork that you have already done or how to create new artwork that can be used for licensing (i.e. paper plates, decorations, etc.) You can check out that class here.
This next week we will be releasing a Part 2, which will cover: Trend forecasting, developing your personal style so it’s more desirable to licensers, and how to create vision boards to help direct your work for what you want to do for licensing.

Jake is reading, Keep Going” by Austin Kleon. One section is all about “Create For the Sake of Creating” and Austin talks about how you can sometimes just create something and then toss it, shred it or burn it. Create just for the sake of creating. It makes the creation all focused on the joy that comes from creating, not the end product. Sometimes we get so focused on the end product, whether or not we can scan it, share it, etc, that we lose sight of the joy of creation. Oftentimes kids only care about the experience of creating, they aren’t so focused on making something perfect. Sometimes it’s nice to not be so focused on the end product.

Our topic today is: How to Convey a Message or Story With Your Art
The Kick in the Creatives podcast covered this topic and they are tagging other podcasts to cover the same topic; we were tagged by them to go over this topic and they are wanting us to tag another podcast to then talk about this. Out tag is:(“One Fantastic Week”)(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/one-fantastic-week/id949599706).

Storytelling

As illustrators here, we are going to focus on how to convey a story with your art.
Jake overheard this experience, when Will was teaching a class with Brian Ahjar about creating great backgrounds. Brian is really good at telling good stories with his art. Will and Brian were critiquing students work in their interactive class and the problem many of the students were having was that they were telling story fragments. Brian’s critique on a lot of the pieces was: “I don’t know what the story is.” Oft times the illustration can confuse the viewer more than it communicates something clearly.

Just because you’re drawing a picture doesn’t mean that you are saying anything. That’s a problem you see a lot of times with amateur illustration work they just draw a character or an environment with no story in mind and oftentimes people don’t know what’s going on or have any deeper questions that they want to know more about after seeing the illustration.

That’s what we want to go over: how to tell a story and why that’s so important as illustrators.

Longevity, if something is going to be interesting for a long period of time, then it needs a story. On the other hand, sometimes people run into the problem where they tell too much story and it doesn’t give the viewer any work to do or allow the viewer to participate at all; there is a good middle ground where people can come back to it again and again, and depending on where they are in life, they can maybe read the image in a different way.
Sometimes people paint a barn that has really no story to it, and unless it’s just amazing if it’s not telling a story then it’s not going to be as interesting.

If you aren’t telling a specific story, often what you draw asks questions rather than answers questions. Sometimes you are asking more questions and making things more confusing than you are answering. I.e. Will saw this student’s illustration where there was this happy woman in the foreground looking over her shoulder and a happy dog trailing behind her, and then in the background there is a girl that is upset, but there are not cues as to why the child is upset. You might imply that this woman is the child’s mom and that she was happy from just disciplining her daughter. It seems that she almost has glee that her kid is upset, which probably wasn’t the illustrator’s intent. That’s an example of asking more questions than you are answering.

You are asking more questions than you are answering, that is starting to move away from illustration and more towards fine art. Which can oftentimes be a lot more abstract and wanting the viewer to ask questions and think more.

David Dibble does these amazing barn paintings, with terrific color, light and shadow, but when doing that these are more of a gallery piece, a decoration for someone with a lot of money to hang on their wall. They are a decoration. The piece’s purpose isn’t so much to communicate a specific story.

Your job as an illustrator is to tell a story.

1. Every image spurs a question in your viewer.

2. Every image should elicit some sort of emotional response from the viewer

It should make them laugh, or make them interested in the story or in the character, make them want to turn the page to see what is going to happen next, make them angry, inspire them, give them awe, etc. Really cool concept art: creates a feeling of really wanting to see the movie and make the viewer want to see those characters in the movie.

Sometimes it is an action that is not resolved until the next page and it makes you want to flip the page to see what happens next.

For illustrators, generally the response you want to evoke should be the same for a broad audience. I.e. a scary illustration for a scary book, you want everyone to feel the same way, there is some intent behind it. While for fine art they desired response may be more open and it may be a lot more open to interpretation.

3. Always include a character or some sort of evidence of a character.

Don’t make your images merely decorative. Will was giving a portfolio review and the very first image was really nice but it wasn’t telling a story. Sometimes as an artist you will make these “pinnacle pieces” that are better than anything else you’ve done. If you are trying to build a portfolio to do children’s book work, you don’t want to lead with a piece that isn’t telling a story. What are you saying to a potential client?

Why the need for a character? Even if it’s a landscape it could be a castle in the distance, or a rusty car in the corner. It is almost like we are programmed to look for people and stories. If there is no character or evidence of a character it is hard to connect with the image, it just seems like a travel photograph. When there is a “character” like a rusty car it gets us to be involved in the story and it helps the viewer start to become involved with the story.

An image of a snowscape is one type of scene vs. a snowscape with footprints in the snow.

4. Use small details to add more depth to your images.

Use small details to add more storytelling depth to your images. If Jake is drawing a character he will try and give a character a quirky addition to their outfit, or they are riding something interesting, or if they are riding a horse they are carrying something behind them, etc.

Why do little details help to tell a story?

They add character depth. Those little details tell a lot about the character and become very character building. All details are an extension of the character.
If you look at a brand new neighborhood most of the houses look about the same and have very little character. They look like Monopoly pieces. However, if you look at that same neighborhood 50 years later you will have a very different experience. Fast forward 50 years, the houses will have all sorts of details that tell a story about the people who live there, the houses and all of their details have become extensions of the characters that live there. All of the details point to the character and tell a lot about them.

Beginners often are resistant to using reference. It is an acquired skill to spend more time preparing for an illustration. Doing research before diving in and cranking out an illustration. Will used to have that disease and would just sit down and bust out an illustration in a couple of hours.

I.e. Will saw a student’s illustration where there was this street corner, with a more contemporary car by a bus stop but it had a bench that was totally made up out of the student’s head. It didn’t look like any bench Will had seen before. It totally took Will out of the image and became a distraction.
If you are draw a bench in a park, you could look at different periods of time or places and draw a bench that would feel accurate with the story that you want to tell.
Lack of details can distract from the story.

You don’t have to be a slave to your reference and copy it exactly. But let it inform your work. If you are trying to develop your own style, then make sure that all of the parts of your image match and feel like they are in the same world. You don’t want everything to feel informed and then have this wonky bench that doesn’t seem to fit in.

You can’t make up an entire universe that has no reference point for the viewer.

Lee illustrated this book called, Arctic White and the whole book is in a more rural setting with animal pelts, dogs, and bobsleds etc. and it’s about this girl who gets sick of the greys of her world and wants to see more color. Lee feels like when he introduced the new colors in the story he used the wrong color pallette and it felt like it was from WalMart and the colors were too bright and saturated, he wishes he had used colors that felt a little more natural, like ground up pigments, and that would fit in that world better.

Look at the details in your piece and see if any of the details are detracting from the image or enhancing the image.

5. Avoid the climax.
   You never want to show the actual climax. Your illustration should be something happening right before the climax or something that is happening right afterwards.
   I.e. a kid running down the sidewalk and he falls and trips on a stick. Do you show the kid tripping and his knee scraping on the ground? Or the kid running about to hit the stick and you can imply what will happen? Or show a broken stick and the kid on the ground crying? Which has the most storytelling power?

Our April Art Contest is focused on that: “The moment before”

The sequel to a book Will illustrated, Bonaparte Falls Apart, is Bonaparte Plays Ball, and in this story there is a part where he hits a homerun. Do you want to show the ball hitting the bat or the ball having already been hit?
It’s actually boring to see the ball hitting the bat.
You want to show the before or after, “Is he going to hit a homerun?” Or “Oh! He hit a homerun!”

In terms of playing with the moment, Lee likes to think of the different sounds or level of activity that come with it. Whether something is quiet or loud. When you are thinking of pacing or if you are leading up to an action you can think of the different levels of “sound” that your images have. You can think about if you want your image to be loud or more quiet.

Right before an action there is a heightened sense of potential energy, but it is still more quiet. i.e. someone lighting a fuse of dynamite.
The actual explosion of the dynamite, is a loud moment.
The aftermath, it’s more quiet again.
You can think of the story and it’s pacing and what each moment need.
You want to have moments of quiet balanced with the louder moments.

You want to have the reader fill in the gaps.
What to leave out is just as important as what you leave in. i.e. The Road Runner cartoons: a lot of action is just implied and not shown. So much of animation is anticipation.
So much of what the Coyote does is just planning and scheming and building up the anticipation.
You can build up anticipation and make the viewer start to wonder what is going to happening? You want to leave some things to imagination.

6. Use composition and point of view.
   Think about worm’s eye view or bird’s eye view, they both have different emphasis, one makes things look large, the other makes things look small.

The worst point of view to use is the mushy middle. Not at eye level, not at birds eye view, etc. When we are floating 12 feet above the ground looking down on something and it doesn’t feel intentional.

You are the director, you get to decide where the camera is facing.

David Hohn and Lee give a teacup and teapot assignment where students have to create 50 different images all playing with the camera and point of view. After the first 20 the students have to start becoming creative and that’s when the best stuff comes out.

POV: Point of View.

Compositionally, you can create an image where there is a visual hierarchy. Maybe there is an image with an initial focal point but then after seeing that there is a second or third layer of the composition that you then can notice.
I.e. Illustration of a deserted island with volcano erupting (first read), and then after further looking at the image you see villagers escaping to boats, and all of these other details, building a wall to help slow down lava, etc.

7. Give your viewer something to explore.

Add details that your viewer will find the more they look at and explore the illustration. Add details or sometimes hidden things, where as they look at the image they want to explore it more.

In Bonaparte Falls Apart, the main character is a skeleton, and there are lots of other scary characters like Blacky Widow.
When they introduce Blacky Widow (she’s a black widow) Will tried to add spiderweb motifs to the furniture. And it gives the viewer something to look like other than the action.

Where’s Waldo: it’s completely designed for exploration. Don’t be afraid to add those types of details to your illustration.

Lee read this book, based off of A Christmas Carol but it’s all mice and everything is made out of things that mice would use, he read this to his son a few times, and it wasn’t until he had read it a few times that he noticed that the human version of the story was taking place in the background at the same time.

Sometimes the detail is just fun stuff, sometimes it’s essential stuff. One time details weren’t clear in the text so Lee had to try and add details in the illustration to help make the story more clear.

Little Critters books: there’s like a spider or some sort of bug in every illustration. Richard Scarry does it too, it’s the gold bug.

8. Use Lighting to tell the story.
   How can you use lighting to tell the story? Just by changing the time of day that totally changes the illustration. If someone is running through the forest during the middle of the day, it’s one thing but if you change it to them running through the forest during the middle of the night, it’s completely different.

Lee does a lot with time of day and seasonal cues but not so much with lighting or distinct light and shadow now.
Will did this illustration of an attic. But then he lit it as if there was a little beam of light coming through the window and just by adding a beam of light it hit 5 different objects and it told a different story because of the objects it was emphasizing.

The place with the highest contrast usually becomes the focal point, unless you have a spot of super saturated color that might stand out more.

The highest contrast point becomes the focal point.

9. Show something impossible that couldn’t happen becoming a reality.
   MC Escher’s crazy drawings.

Lee likes to do illogical solutions for logical problems.

Guy Billout: does something unexpected in each piece.

Always ask self, Why am I drawing this piece? How can I make this interesting? If it’s not interesting draw more thumbnails until it is. There needs to be interest to it or some sort of storytelling.

Lee tries to do something that is unexpected in each piece. There has to be some sort of hook to it, whether it is in the environment, etc.

In Summary
How to tell a story with your art:
Every image spurs a question in your viewer.
Every image should elicit an emotional response in the viewer.
Always include a character or some evidence of a character.
Use small details to add more depth to your images.
Don’t show the climax, focus on the before or the after.
Use composition and point of view
Give the viewer something to explore
Tell the story using lighting.
Show something impossible becoming a reality.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here to find the links for this episode and to see this episode's illustration.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Jake Parker and Will Terry are joined by illustrator Cam Kendell to talk shop and discuss Cam’s story, his secret for project management, and how to enjoy a balanced life as a creative entrepreneur.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

How to Become A Better Children’s Book Artist

We want to go over some questions that Will has been emailed about that all revolve around the general topic of: How to become a better children’s book artist.

As a children’s book artist, do you have to speak and if so to what capacity?

Will got this email from a student who got a literary agent last summer and who was wondering if publishers require illustrators to do school visits and publishing conferences. Essentially they are afraid of speaking and were wondering: As an illustrator, do you have to speak?

Will used to be petrified of speaking, it probably doesn’t seem like that now because he has a Youtube channel, and speaks at conferences, and now it’s no big deal to him. However, before his heart would pound like crazy just thinking of an upcoming speaking engagement, if he had to speak or teach at church or in school. Maybe some of you also feel that way.

Do you really have to speak and if so to what capacity?
Jake has done 15 or so books through publishers and he has done school visits for 1 book in particular and it was completely optional. They asked if he would be willing to do it. He went to 6 different schools and didn’t know how much it actually helped his book sales? Ultimately, he doesn’t know how effective it is. You shouldn’t worry about it or let it hinder you from pursuing a career in children’s books.

Maybe if it’s apart of your business plan and you are visiting 50 schools a year and you have a line of books to offer for sale, then it might be much more effective. There are some people who do this and they make a lot of money from it. If you go out of state and visit 5 or 6 schools and line them all up and coordinate it so it works out then you can stack a bunch of schools next to each other. Some people will finish a book and then spend the whole next year doing school visits.

Once they were trying to get an illustrator to come and do a video with SVS, and he said no and the reason he said no was really really smart, and Lee thinks about this all of the time now. The reason he said no was “because he would come film a 2 to 3 hour video, but it would take a month or two to get ready for it, with rehearsing it, practicing it, writing the course, it takes so much time to prep it and he has learned that he doesn’t have the capacity to do that sort of stuff. Now Lee tends to fall along that line now when he is asked to speak at a SCBWI Conference etc. it’s exhausting and it zaps all of his creative energy out of him. So for Lee, it’s a mixed bag for him.

If you take 2 months to prepare a presentation and you can give that same presentation 50 or 100 times then it really pays off and is worth it. But if it’s for a one time or two time presentation it may not be worth it.

David Biedrzycki and Jerry Palada do school visits all of the time.
So maybe we’re not directly answering the question but these are all different ways to consider speaking and the benefits of it.
Average payment for a day is about $1500 and so if you do a few days in a row it can really add up pretty quickly.
For David, his wife does all of his booking, hotels, and airfare. And he is now going back to some schools that he went to a few years ago. Publishers like it and want to work with someone like that. It takes away almost all of the risk because if they are doing so many trips, the publisher should be able to at least sell the amount to break even. These guys make a lot of money.

How about speaking at bookstores?

You have to decide who you are. Some people love to travel and know how to work while they are out and they can keep their routine. It seems like a really lopsided investment and you don’t get much out of it.

Lee, works on a book and then it comes out six months later and he is already on to the next thing and he doesn’t want to stop all of that. The thing is book stores typically don’t pay, but schools do. So you’re paying to go and sign books and it’s not very profitable.
It’s really hard to make them worth the time. You might sell 10 books in 2 hours and with your royalty of 50 or 75 cents a book, you might make $7. Book signings work for the famous but not so much for the up and coming person.

Why You Should Learn To Speak Publically

If you do this job and you start to get work, at some point you will be asked to speak publically. So should you? Yes you should, at least learn to be comfortable speaking. Take classes or do a workshop to learn to speak publically. You will be asked to speak publically, or you’ll be asked to teach, or you’ll be asked to present, we get those offers all the time.

How to get good at it? Start saying yes to every opportunity where you can. Will used to be that guy that hated it. Will could barely speak when he was chosen as illustrator of the year for the California Teachers Association, and he had to go around giving speeches and he gave a speech in front of 1000 people in a ballroom and that was 10 years ago and he was so nervous beforehand but now today he has spoken so much since then that it doesn’t even phase him anymore.

One nice thing about this profession is you can use visuals and you don’t have to worry so much about people staring at you while you are talking.
The best advice is the advice that makes you a better person in the end, it’s what makes you more experienced and more capable.
So if public speaking is not your strong point, then do whatever you need to do to learn how to feel comfortable with it.
Believe in your work and take jobs that there is a passion there for. You see these people who are terrified of speaking but they are passionate about the work they do and so they push themselves to share that with others.
Maybe you aren’t passionate about puppy dogs and you did a book about puppy dogs, but maybe you are passionate about creativity and how a kid could grow up to become a creative artist. A lot of kids have roadblocks of parents or teachers saying that art isn’t a real job, and you speaking to them can become a driving force to help you overcome those fears.
Being a creative person, being someone who can draw for a living is such a rare privilege and is unlike any other job.

You Create and You Share

Part of that is to promote yourself and promote your work, your style, and your stories.
Somebody needs to hear your message.
Nobody is gonna hear it if you don’t start sharing yourself.
There is a person in you who is good at public speaking. You need to have faith in yourself.

Really good book:
Perennial Seller: The Art of Making Work That Lasts
1st half of the book: How to make a book that stands the test of time, that isn’t dated in 10 years, how to create something that is interesting now and in 30 years.
2nd half is about how to market the book and get it into the hands of the people who want to read it.

Jake read the book last year and marked it all up, and flipping through it right now there are a lot of great things.The book applies to anyone who creates work, it’s not focused on children’s books but there is so much that still applies.

If you get invited to speak, have some sort of takeaway that you want the audience to leave with.
Lee had a graduate school program and they had tons of artists come and speak but it doesn’t mean it was all effective.Some would just show art and have pretty meaningless commentary to go with it.
Have a specific topic or point you want to make and then have a series of images to show that topic and teach about it.
Tell stories about yourself, as humans we are interested in learning more about each other and we love hearing personal stories.
Will’s best talk he ever gave was speaking to almost 300 librarians, and he was told 9 months in advance about the presentation, and he kept a Google doc and he didn’t panic or anything but instead anytime an idea came to his head he would jump on his phone and jot it down on the Google doc. This helped him get all of his ideas down leading up to the speaking engagement.

His speech was all about “I was that kid”, he showed how he wasn’t the best student and how we shouldn’t write off these kids that are problems, because some of them are really creative and some of them are being forced into the school system. He spoke for an hour. Will sold a ton of books.

Don’t be afraid of speaking, if you do it a lot, you’ll get good at it. Anything you do a lot you can get good at it.

How to Draw Women Respectfully

Another email Will got was in response to a “3rd Thursday” a while back which was the precursor to this podcast. In it, Shannon shared how she was thinking about the issue that you they brought up that men struggle to draw females because they don’t want to sexualize them and they don’t want to over emphasize typical female features.

There is a big problem with the way that women are depicted. There are so many people doing “sexy” versions of classic characters. And the thing is those people get famous from it.
There was this artist who draws really sexualized characters and got chewed out online for it.
There is this endless appetite for it from consumers and artists and we can’t stand it.

Jake’s approach: he has a mom, sisters, a wife, and daughters, He doesn’t want to ever disrespect them. His test is, if I would be okay with any of these people wearing the outfit that I’m drawing then I’m okay to draw it.
Don’t shy away from the female figure, there isn’t just one female figure there are 100 different female figures. He will approach it from, “Who is this character?” What does she need to accomplish? What about her image will backup and support her personality and her role in the story? He will start with the personality and then will work from the inside out.

How do you draw a female character and make her look feminine without making her look sexualized?
For drawing children it’s super easy, he just beefs up the eyelashes a little more and then he draws her wearing clothes that look female, when he drops off his children at school he looks at what kids are wearing and thinks of what outfits look feminine and more masculine and then he will dress his characters accordingly.
If it’s an older women she will have hips, and a chest, not as broad of shoulders, any genetic thing that shows that this is a female and not a male he will try and put that into his designs.

Lee had a great figure drawing class where they would have both a male and a female model take the same pose and instead of focusing on the obvious differences in anatomy, they focused on the more nuanced differences in their gestures. The more subtle things.
I.e. A man in a neutral pose, arms will typically round to the outside. A women standing in that same position, typically her elbows will go in and her lower arms will go out. It is a distinctly different silhouette just based on what their arms were doing. In every pose there was always a subtle difference or separation in how males or females carry weight and balance and all of that stuff. So if you can lean on those other things then it helps it become a lot more believable.

Before puberty we all have pretty similar body types. There are some tricks that you can use to add to either the femininity or masculinity of your children characters. Will adds thicker lashes when drawing his female characters. He also sometimes uses a little bit more round or soft shapes for his female characters and uses some more boxy or square shapes for his male characters.

This is a political topic. As illustrators we are faced with drawing all sorts of characters. Male characters, female characters, young and old characters, animals etc. When you are going down the street you notice what makes someone look more feminine or masculine.
If it’s a female character then you need to make her look like a female character. If you’re drawing a male character you need to make him look like a male character.
There is a lot of crossover, there are some female characters that have some features that would traditionally be considered more masculine, and vise versa.
You really need to be really respectful of that particular character and portraying that character the very best you can.

Jake did this ABC book about apples and there was a lot of grey area in the story. He wanted to avoid the whole issue of making sure that there was enough girls and boys, and that there was the right level of diversity among characters and he just made all of the characters animals. It took away a lot of stress and helped him develop the story and push his designs more and he was able to get some great portfolio pieces from it.
One of the through lines was that the pig got to eat whatever he wanted and the bear was on a diet. It was a lot more fun, interesting, playful, and kid friendly.
It is a proven technique, drawing animals can help you not have to worry so much about some of those other sensitive topics.

How to Create Emotional Images

The third question we’d like to address came from another message Will got which was about, “What makes an image emotional?” Sometimes we over focus on rendering and miss the emotion.

Will just finished a class with Brian Aijar, and one of the things that struck him was that the students did great work but one of the things that they were weak on was coming up with a strong story for their piece. Instead sometimes it was a story fragment. They might say,” The idea for this one is that the person is looking off to the side… that’s the story.” But, why?
Another issue was that sometimes they would have things in the illustration that were confusing or distracted from the story. We would be giving critiques but didn’t know what the illustrator was trying to say.

Have a Complete Story Idea

The way to start to convey emotion in your piece is to have a complete story idea. Sometimes you can still overdo that and try to tell too much story with your image.

It needs to be a clear illustration. Here’s an example of a good story: Someone’s walking down the stairs and they are holding a huge birthday cake and you see at the bottom of the stairs child’s blocks, roller skates, or a ball, something they are about to step on. That is a complete story idea. You could show that story at beginning or middle or end. You could show them about to step on the ball, you could show them slipping and the cake going up in the air, or you could show the aftermath with the skate next to them and looking at it you could completely figure out what the illustration is is all about.

So in order to convey a human emotion or make your piece feel emotional and have someone to relate to it, you have to tell a story that everyone has experienced. But we have a hard time relating to a story fragment, like someone looking over their shoulder. With a story fragment you are asking more questions than you are answering.

Intent

David Hohn and Lee are teaching an illustration class right now. One of the big things they push is that students include keywords with their sketches. They want to know the intent of the piece. Too often, if students haven’t trained this way or just draw without thinking then there is no intent.

We frame it all on if they are hitting those keywords/their intent, or not.
I.e. You say you want this to be scary, but it doesn’t look scary and now let’s go over why, and we will go over the design of the piece, the gestures, the characters, etc. But without knowing that intent then there is no driving force.

Learn How to Tell a Joke

Learn how to tell a joke. Not just creating jokes out of thin air, but go find jokes and learn how to tell them. Learn the setup, learn the meat of the joke, learn the payoff. So much is going on there, jokes are just mini stories. The more you do that the more it translates over into your work and you aren’t satisfied drawing a character just looking to the left, but you want to know what drives that character.
The main thing is, a joke teaches you to establish a character, establish a problem, establish a situation, establish an environment that that character is in, and then how that problem is solved in a clever or funny way. All of the elements are there in a short joke that apply to illustrating, comic books, even public speaking, all of that applies.

The reason for illustration, what separates it from just art or just drawings: illustration tells stories, everything you draw should be one of these parts of the story: it should be the setup, the meat, or the payoff. You want to leave the person looking at it asking, “What next?” or “What just happened?”

Will also has his students write a sentence or two to describe their intent for their illustrations.
Here’s an example that he had from one of his classes: “Two girls gossiping about another girl.” This is a great start! And the story was working well in the drawing. It’s hard to put a definition on how far you need to take something.
However we wanted to know why they were gossiping about the other girl and as soon as we added a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of the girl’s shoe, it became a much clearer idea and story.

Basically, we just helped Will answer his emails.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

What’s the best way to tell my story? How do I submit a book dummy to a publisher? Are print-on-demand services worth the hype? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss these questions and more in this episode.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 14 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

How to Make and Impact in the World With Your Art.

What work have you done, that has had the most impact in the world?

Meaningful Lessons

Will doesn’t write the children’s books that he has illustrated but he feels like he really is able to bring a lot to the table with his art and is able to make the stories more clear. One of those books is Bonaparte Falls Apart, and he is working on the sequel right now and it has an anti bullying theme that is not overt, in that the story holds up on its own. He loves and enjoys working on them and because the Bonaparte books have sold really well, even though the second hasn’t come out yet, the publisher has hinted that there may be a third book.

Pretty much every kid experiences bullying and even the kids who are bullies probably get bullied at home. It’s really an important message to help kids become empowered and overcome and deal with those emotions in a positive way and overcome. The Frances books have a kid who is a bully in them.

Will had an epiphany reading those books because he used to tease his sisters and sometimes he was a bully; in one of the Frances books he remembers that the sister goes off and is crying because of her brother’s bullying and it really tugged at his heartstrings and must have been pretty impactful because he can still remember that experience now over 50 years later. He realized that he was the bad guy in the story and it really changed him. It was a children’s book that taught him that lesson. I don’t think that you can quantify the impact of your art.

Sometimes it’s hard for us to remember where we have shared things and if we have shared stories before, so we apologize if we keep sharing some of the same things.

Gentle Reminders

Lee feels that where he has made the most difference, it was probably not with his books, instead he feels like it is the connection that he has been able to make with his one off images. Sometimes it’s a momentary thing and he strikes some inspiration and creates a fun print, and then he goes to art fairs to sell them.
One time, Lee was getting ready to close at an art fair when there was this woman who came to his booth and one of Lee’s prints caught her eye and she was holding it up looking at it. Lee was waiting for her to leave so that he could tear down his booth but he noticed that she had tears running down her face, she was crying, he wondered what he had done or what he should do. She was looking at this picture of this girl swinging really high on a swing hanging down from a tree. She shared that her sister had died when she was young and that she liked to swing just like that. Lee gave her a hug and she was just bawling and he gave her a print. It was just such a personal connection and one of the most powerful moments of his career. That’s just one experience.
On a more consistent basis, when doing art fairs, older people will come to his booth and they will stop and look around, and have this starry look in their eyes. One time this lady said, “I remember this”, not speaking of one piece in particular, they were talking about the feeling of being young. It wasn’t just one image or just one book, but the overall impression of Lee’s work.
Lee gets these ideas and likes to make images and are fun, whimsical, and capture a moment. He has seen that happen a lot, with older people coming to his booth and it gives them this shot of something they may have forgot and they leave smiling.

Unanticipated Impact

One of the things that Jake did that inadvertently had an impact on the world was start an art challenge called Inktober.
He didn’t set out trying to make an impact on the world but he gave himself this challenge to try and get better at his craft. He easily could have said, “I’m just going to do this challenge in ink and you guys can follow along.” However, instead he decided to make it a challenge and he invited other people to participate if they wanted to and he made some parameters or rules for the challenge: you draw an ink drawing every day for the month of October and share it online. What started out as a single person doing a self improvement art challenge turned into thousands and thousands of people.
He gets so many emails every year from people sharing how it has helped their creativity; it gets people drawing for themselves again, a lot of professionals share that they draw so much for work and Inktober helped them draw for themselves and remember the fun in drawing; people show how they improved so much from doing this and got better as an artist; others share how they got all of these new followers because they showed up and posted consistently on Instagram.
Jake had no idea what he was starting. He is trying to actively promote it more and participate more and try to make it more accessible for others.
He’s done childrens books, graphic novels, worked on animated films, but everyone views him as the Inktober guy. At first, he thought, “No, i’m so much more.” But now he accepts it and if that is his legacy or how he is known, then that’s great.

What work have you done that has had the most impact on one other person, not the world, but one other person?
13:00
Success leads to Success

Will: We have all been very fortunate. You have one success, and it leads to more success. Pareto Distribution A small amount of people setting out to do the thing that they set out to do and they experience success. It’s not from talent, its from getting little successes along the way and building off of those.

Will got started with editorial but now that market has dried up a lot. He would tell his students, “You can’t follow the path I was on, the water washed away the path.”
We’ve probably had a lot of situations where we have helped someone and had someone come up and share a testimonial of how we have helped him.
The one that has been especially meaningful to him is that a handful of times he has been at a comic convention and had someone come up and say, “I have a booth over there.” They would continue to share how the reason they have a booth is because they watched Will’s youtube series on doing comic conventions. Will’s Youtube Channel Will shared his experience with his first comic convention along with all of the failures, finances, disappointments, and successes he experienced when breaking into the con scene. He really documented his experience, both his failures and successes.
It is so rewarding to hear, “You changed my life, I’m here because of you.” It’s so rewarding, and the internet magnifies our ability to have a positive impact in the lives of others.

Doing what we do as teachers, we get a lot of emails sharing successes. Fairly frequently we get emails saying, “I got an agent”, “I got my first book deal”, it is so nice to hear of these successes and please keep sending us those emails and keeping us updated. We also get an email once a week or every other week talking about this podcast.

Success begets success. It makes it easier to be successful when you have successes along the way. What separates us from other artists just beginning their career is just the time that we’ve been doing this. I really do feel like anyone that sets their mind to anything, almost anything, can accomplish that thing. I mean you can’t grow and become an NBA player if you’re short. (however, that didn’t stop Spud Webb) But there are so many things that you do have control over. I think that the thing people are battling today more than anything, if you are listening and wondering if you really can make an impact in the world with your art, the answer is that you can and you will, but you have to be willing to make sacrifices. Especially early those sacrifices are painful but later on they aren’t as bad and you are able to have more of a work life balance.

Keep Working At It

For Lee and his books, he likes the books that he has done, but he hasn’t had the impact that he wants to on his audience yet. He feels he hasn’t done the book he was born to do yet, that is what drives him to write, and he is turning down a lot of offers, and he feels guilty doing so but he hasn’t done the book that he really wants to offer to the world yet.
That’s his “First world problem” Why you don’t want to do the thing that you have set up your life to do.
Over time your career becomes more and more specific. Early on in your career: someone could ask you to paint a window, work on editorial, or on books, but now, for Lee, it has become so much more specific. You might not set out to be that specific but it’s where your career takes you.

What work have you done that has had the most impact on you, personally?

For Will working on fanart has been a game changer. It changed the style that he does even in his children’s books, the book series he is doing right now is based off of the style he developed from working on fan art.

Will before fan art: Over illustrated. This has been an evolution/maturing process, before his priorities were misplaced. Lee could add a lot more detail and rendering but he chooses not to. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Will would have editors tell him his color stuff was cool but did he have anything else, they were basically telling him that he was putting too many colors in, and was emphasizing things that didn’t need to be emphasized. It made him really reevaluate. He went to comic con and realized that that’s what every artist does they try to really hit you over the head with a lot of color, and he didn’t want to fit in. He wanted to stand out, and so he thought of a style that would stand out, and it gave him a style he could use for children’s books.

Lee was really frustrated in school and right out of school. He had some successes, but he hadn’t found his medium: he tried acrylics, pastel, oil color, and then one day he tried watercolor. Then it was off to the races, and it really started to happen and he didn’t feel like he had to force it. It didn’t happen in one piece but it was a process. It was about discovering the right medium that fit his sensibilities. It was night and day from that point on.

Adding Good to the World
Jake’s answer to the most impact on one person question:
Jake came up with Missile Mouse, the graphic novel, and he put it out into the world. He was hoping it would be a great success, maybe become a New York Times Best Seller, Pixar love it and it would be made into movies and... It sold fine, but it didn’t have the impact he had wanted it to.
One day about a year later he got an email from a woman whose son was really sick and was hospitalized with some illness that you never want a kid to have to go through, she said that the one thing that gave her son pleasure and made him happy was reading the Missile Mouse comic and just wanted to thank Jake for making it and putting it out into the world.
That really stopped Jake in his tracks and he realized he was so dumb. It doesn’t matter how worldly successful Missile Mouse or any project you put out there is, so long as it makes someone happy or improves someone’s life to some degree, just one person, that right there can make it successful and worth it. That is one of his stories.
Another thing is his Youtube channel. He’ll get emails sharing how they have really helped people.

One of the things that Jake created that had the most impact on him?
The first real perspective drawing that he did in 7th grade. That was him learning a new technique or principle of art and then sitting down and trying to make this thing the best that he could make it. When he finished the piece he really felt like it was quite stellar, he was amazed that he could create something like that and his art teacher really appreciated it and gave him good marks. He saw that piece going through an old box a few years ago and thought, “Oh my gosh, I was proud of this?” There was nothing special to it.
But what it taught him was, he could learn to do art. Art wasn’t just a hobby, this is something you can learn to do and get good at and devote your life to. That piece had a huge impact on Jake.

Create Something

The reason we have gone over these three questions:

1.What work have you done, that has had the most impact in the world?
2.What work have you done that has had the most impact on one other person, not the world, but one other person?
3. What work have you done that has had the most impact on you, personally?

And the reason we shared them in that order is because there is a common thread between them. The main thing is, and the way that you will ever make an impact is you have to actually make something. You have to create something. It doesn’t have to be awesome, it doesn’t have to be good. Jake’s perspective drawing wasn’t awesome or good, it was okay.
It wouldn’t have gotten any likes on Instagram, (maybe a support like from his sister.)

The impact can only happen if you create something, if you make something and put it out into the world. Nowadays we have so many resources and ways to share things with the world.

The key is:
Learn your craft, and share it.
Create something, do something, or make something, and share it.
Teach people how to do the thing that you’ve learned.
Always be engaging with people, asking questions, answering questions, and be apart of the community that you want to be apart of.

What you create doesn’t have to be a full graphic novel, It can be a flat piece of artwork like the prints that Will and Lee would sell at art fairs and comic conventions.
You can create something that shares a message that you believe in. It can be a story that you want to pass on to people, it can be any sort of medium that you love and want to be apart of.

Lee’s Pet Peeve

The discount share: “here’s something I made, it’s not that good...”
The self deprecating share, where you are putting it down before others have the chance to put it down. It’s not putting your work on the line.
It’s the social media disease. So many Youtube videos start with: “This is how I would do it, but you don’t have to do it this way, you might think the way I do it is dumb, it’s just the way that I do it..” It’s all about acting like it doesn’t matter or you just flipped it out and so it doesn’t matter.

Instead, say, “here’s the sketch, here’s why I am putting it out there.” The sketch or the painting doesn’t have to be great. You just want to be authentic. We want it to feel authentic, and that you care about what you are sharing, how you feel about what you are sharing and your intent behind sharing it is a lot more important than if it’s awesome.

How do you avoid the terrible feeling that comes when someone comments and says it’s bad or not good. The one in a thousand voice. There is a sea of encouragement and that one negative voice can really hurt and stand out from the crowd.

Set a goal to be rejected. Lee set a goal to be rejected 50 times by publishers when he was getting started, and it made it not a big deal. “Alright, that’s number 7, on to the next one:)” Maybe set a goal to get 100 negative comments.

When starting SVS, we were introduced to Chatbooks which wasn’t an overnight success. Their original concept was you take the best pictures from your phone and you would get scrapbooks made of your best photos sent to you monthly or semi monthly. Basically people take pictures but they only see them online, and the owner was was trying to solve that problem. This guy developed the first generation of chatbooks and people said that it was a great idea and then no one showed up and it flopped, generation 2 came and he got the feedback that it there was too much work involved then generation 3 was him trying to make it as easy as possible. So they automatically print your pictures from your instagram. You have already curated the best photos and periodically they can send you a photo album of your best and favorite photos. It failed twice before they were able to get it right.
We have all done things that have failed and it’s the person who keeps going, they are the people who are going to succeed.
People criticize everything. It can be the most perfect thing ever, and someone would still say something. For evidence of this, find something you love and read the Amazon reviews for that thing.

Even our perfect podcast got a one star review a little bit ago. “For people who talk about being so organized, these guys aren’t organized at all.” It’s actually so true.

We all like the media and we consume different things. Some people may look at a show you like and say they hate it but for you and for others it’s perfect. That’s the same for our podcast. If we tried to make it so that everyone liked it it would fail, because we’d be trying to cover too many bases.
Our podcast is for people who want to listen in on a conversation between 3 people who love to draw and paint.

Failure: Jake was doing Inktober for 3 or 4 years before it actually took off. It was just Jake showing up year after year trying to stick with it and keep going and because of that, along with the timing and the rise of social media and artists starting to use Instagram, it helped Inktober become pretty big.

Do you make images to change the world?

The best way to not change the world is to make an image to change the world.
Lee was apprehensive about this topic, because he doesn’t think about how the rest of the world will be changed by the art, he is just thinking about the art!
Will’s author friend, the late Rick Walton, said something along the lines of: “If you set out to teach a moral in your story, you’ll almost always fail. You should set out to tell a really fun or interesting story, and if it teaches a moral then thats a benefit and you can use that moral to market it, but if you set out to teach a moral, almost always your story structure will fail.”
It makes it too didactic and predictable. It will feel like you
If you start out with a question, or statement, or proposition to get your story started then that’s fine. I.e. I just want to talk about money is the root of all evil, then that can inform your story but that doesn’t mean that it is your story.

Some Practical Tips for Getting Started

What do you need to do as a creator to make impact?
Don’t set out to make an impact. Just by creating, by sharing who you are, your stories, your experience you will make an impact.
Here’s a list of things that you can do:
Work towards being able to do an art fair or a comic con. You learn so much from doing this. So much work is shared online, and there is this digital wall separating you from your viewers. But when you are face to face with people you get a lot more genuine response to your work, and you will really learn how people respond to your work.
Start your own personal art challenge. Not with the idea of it taking over the world, but just to improve and learn yourself. You could even invite another friend to also take on the challenge and then you’ve already benefited another person. Maybe you try and do a drawing a day for a month, or a drawing every week/52 drawings for the year, or maybe you try and do a painting every day for 30 days, it could be a portrait challenge, etc. Start some sort of personal art challenge and share that with other people.
If you learn something about art, actually set up an appointment or get together. You could invite friends to come and you’ll teach them how to draw perspective.
Art Drop Day, one day out of the year, the first Tuesday in September. You create something and leave it somewhere with a note telling the finder that they have found your art and it’s theirs to keep. It’s a fun way to engage anonymously with the community around you. If you want to make some sort of impact, then do a little Art Drop, and leave it in your favorite book at the library or tape it onto the window of your favorite restaurant. And share some goodness with your community. It’s going to brighten someone’s day.

Final Note

If you reverse engineer someone who is super successful and is changing the world. Keep in mind that they had to start by learning their craft and doing the mundane stuff that wasn’t changing the world. Think about doing the the basics and fundamentals as your preparation for doing something that will change the world.

Now go and start creating and make an impact in the world with your art.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Take a journey with us through the best interviews, advice, and mind-altering moments of the year.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

What’s better than a fancy degree? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss what it takes to succeed in illustration, how to balance your workload, and more in this episode.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 14 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

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 years and it has really payed off, no pun intended.
Now Lee has a lot more time, and a lot less stress that allows him to be more creativity. Essentially, control your costs to enhance creativity.

There is a big relationship between what you want to do and the stress of making money. The more pressed you are for money the more likely you will accept work that you would prefer to avoid. The more financial freedom you have the more you can say no to those projects and work on the work that you want to.

Will was alive way back when not everyone had personal computers. He didn’t want to spend the money on one and kept putting it off but once he got a personal computer, that was a game changer for him.
If you need a particular tool to do the work that you need to do, that you want to do. Then get a job and work to save money for that tool.
If you are more wise with your eating expenses and your other flexible expenses, soon you could save enough money to afford an iPad or those tools that will help move you forward.

There are some practical things that you can do to help move you forward financially:
Don’t Live in San Francisco or another place with high cost of living; it will be difficult to move forward, starting off your career paying $2300 a month for an apartment.
Go through and try and take 20% off of your major bills: groceries, rent, etc.

Back in the 70’s you had to live in one of those big cities, but nowadays with the internet you can stay connected.

27:31
The Inbox Zero Method, Jake

Back in 2017, Jake had over 500 emails in his inbox, and he declared Email Bankruptcy, he took all of those emails and stuck them in a “Bankruptcy” folder.
This is his new Inbox Zero Method that he used in 2018:

Make a folder in your inbox called the “action folder”
Create different folders for different projects/categories.
Set aside time each day or every couple days to go through your action folder. I.e. send someone that file, or write that thank you response.
Any email that takes less than 2 minutes to respond to, just do that right away, if it takes longer then put it in your action folder.

Previously Jake would sometimes check his email 5 times an hour and then it fragmented his time and he wasn’t able to accomplish as much. The best work happened when he had 2 or 3 hours to get in the zone and focus on deep work.

Don’t live in a state of constant distraction. Don’t let the email control you, you control your email.

Lee has this program called Self Control and it allows you to choose the sites that are distractions for you: i.e. News sites, email, etc, and you can plug those sites into the app and create limits for accessing those sites. I.e. You can’t access any of those sites for the next 4 hours.

Lee’s Distraction Websites:
Instagram
Gmail
Facebook
Some news source
Craig’s List

So anywho, when he clicks the button on Self Control it removes those distractions.

Be Careful, Will

Story: One of his best friends runs the comic con side of his business and does all the scheduling, taxes, going to shows, etc. And then pays Will his portion.
Will and his business partner sent this person to run a booth for them in different parts of the country and this person had helped them $700 dollars. They sent him to another show and Will had a Facebook friend that tabling next to the man, and that friend emailed Will telling him that the person working for him was always showing up late to the show, and would leave the booth for hours at a time.
So when the guy running those shows came back Will and his business partner, Wane, talked to him about that email they received and he admitted that it was all true.

You really need to know the person that you are taking a chance on, and when necessary make sure there are checks and balances in place.

Storytelling differences:

Lee tells the point he wants to make and then gives the supporting details.
Will tells the story and and supporting details and then he gives the lesson or takeaway.
Jake likes to create orderly lists and bullet points.

Truly be a Content Creator, Lee

Being a content creator is where all of the fun and all of the income truly happens.

Lee is in the process of making patterns, and books to pitch and he is having so much fun.
He is making so much content that isn’t even being asked for, and then is going to see where it will go.
He’s having a great time and he hasn’t ever had this much freedom before.
Your ideas and your ability to come up with things will be rewarded.

Those who not only illustrate but also write their books have a better chance of being picked up by a publisher. Those who take the bull by the horns and go above and beyond just being an illustrator can do really well.
You feel like you are more in control of your future when you go the extra mile.

The best thing that Lee likes about having being a content creator nowadays, is that there is now a Plan B. Before you would have to just shop your work around to different companies and publishers, but now there is Kickstarter.
Worst case scenario: nobody wants it, then you can kickstarter it and make it yourself.

Jake disagrees that being a content creator over executing someone else’s vision this is the only way to be successful. More and more today people want visuals and good images to go with their company, and there is work for people who have craft. With that said though, don’t let your side projects die.

We aren’t saying that there is no more work for people who don’t create their own content and write their own children’s books, instead, we are saying that there are more opportunities for those that do.

You can become entrepreneurial. Will was not entrepreneurial, and now he is.

To do any personal project and have it be successful takes a lot more than just art. Each project is almost like it’s own business. A Kickstarter project involves logistics, marketing, etc.
You should learn some business skills to help out with the other side of things.

Be a content creator, it’s not entirely about getting work and being successful, it’s about reaching your full potential. Don’t just be a hired gun all the time, take time to do your own work too. There is something special about creating for your own project.

Not everyone has that itch to do personal projects and be entrepreneurial, some people love working at a studio or just having a real job. And for them that is all of the creative fulfillment that they need.

Making your own things, finishing things, and doing those personal projects gives you confidence that you can take with you into other endeavors.

Take Time to Just Draw For Fun, Jake

We all can get so caught up with deadlines, and drawing for specific projects that we forget to draw just for fun.

There is value in drawing for fun and you never know what may come from it.

Just take time to scribble and draw just for fun. Just like a kid, draw not for anything, just draw for fun. You never know what is going to happen.

Jake drew this robot and colored it and because of the colors he chose it ended up looking like an avocado robot. So he drew a bunch of other “food bots”, and they were all just for fun. Someone took his Hamburger Bot and made a 3D sculpt from it, and then with his permission made some real 3D printed statues from his design, and they have even been made into stickers for Art Drop Club . All of that just from Jake choosing to draw for fun.

2018 Remorses:
Jake wishes he had drawn all of Skyheart before the Kickstarter, instead of after. Jake feels like he could have been using all of that creation time of Skyheart as a build up to the Kickstarter. It would have been a better final product, and it would have saved him from a lot of stress. The great thing is that we can learn from our mistakes!

In the past, Kickstarter may have been more about helping to fund something that never would have been done. Now it feels like it has shifted to becoming more of a pre-order and the money is just needed to fund the production of it.

That’s it for today, we hope that some of the things we learned last year will be helpful to you with achieving your personal and artistic goals this year. Happy New Year, everybody!

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Why is my book getting rejected? Why can’t I get work? And what makes a great joke? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share their perspectives on all this and more in this episode.

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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How can I find an illustrator for my project? Will Terry, Lee White, and Anthony Wheeler discuss pitching projects, self-publishing, and retaining a love for art while building your business.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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From building worlds to launching Kickstarters, illustrator Larry MacDougall is a treasure trove of imagination, artistic mastery, and down-to-earth practicality. Join Jake Parker and Will Terry to learn the keys to his success in this insightful episode.

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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How good of an illustrator are you and why does it matter? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share how to measure your skills and continue to grow with the new SVSLearn online community!

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Does Fanart belong in a portfolio? Yes, but also no. And should you change your professional name when it’s already established, or are you stuck with the screen name you came up with when you were 14 years old? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry dissect these questions and also talk about new TV shows and projects they’re working on.

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Do you want to make 2025 a year you’ll never forget? In this episode, Jake Parker explains the Japanese misogi challenge and how it applies to your creativity. 

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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Do you struggle with the hours of sitting still and repetition that accompany artmaking? Illustrator Samantha Cotterill shares how to change that.

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Can I learn illustration from online courses? How do I keep my creative fire? How do I start making author visits to schools? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry share the answers in this live episode of Three Point Perspective!

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In this episode, Jake Paker, Lee White, and Will Terry share their goals for 2024. They also debate the importance of niching down and the trajectory of AI art.

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Join Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry for their first-ever live Q&A! From agent relationships to sketches to passive income, the guys answer your illustration questions on the spot!

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Many people wonder, is it too late? Or, am I too old to start?

Will, Lee, and Jake talk about this age old question and discuss how it isn’t too late. There are many successful creatives that didn’t start until they were older. Lee shares his story and how he didn’t start art until later on in life.

We talk about ways you can amp up and make the most of your early years if you are starting for the first time, or looking to accelerate your growth later in life. We discuss some of the benefits of age and the need for sacrifice and prioritizing to create a thriving career in art.

Links:

Svslearn.com, schoolism, CGMA

Sang Jun, https://www.sangjunart.com/

Lee White, https://www.leewhiteillustration.com/

Zombies video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc

Jon Klassen, http://jonklassen.tumblr.com/

Craig Mullins, http://www.goodbrush.com/

Design 100 Somethings, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxa01j9Ns7o

Uncovering Your Style, SVS, https://courses.svslearn.com/courses/uncovering-your-style

Yuko Shimizu, http://yukoart.com/

Jake Parker, http://mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44

Will Terry, http://willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt

Lee White, http://leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo

http://forum.svslearn.com

Podcast production and editing by Aaron Dowd.

Show notes by Tanner Garlick.

Am I Too Old to Get Started?

Am I too old to shift careers? Am I too old to start as an artist? Am I too old to start this big project I’ve always wanted to start working on?

What’s the average age to start working? If you grew up with an interest in art, drew all the time, and went to art school then most people start their art career maybe in their mid-twenties. Often people who get to art a little later in the game wonder, “Am I too old to do this?” Young people think, “When am I going to get that job?”

Regardless of your age, you are probably comparing yourself to people older and younger than you, and wishing you had done something different when you were younger or feeling like you are so far behind.

Examples of Successful Late Starters

Sang Jun. https://www.sangjunart.com/

Didn’t start drawing until he was well into his twenties. Realized he loved drawing, and started practicing, went to art school, ended up getting a job at Lucas Film doing character design for Episode 3, and then became a lead character designer at Blue Sky. You don’t have to start in your late teens to make it.

Lee White. https://www.leewhiteillustration.com/

Didn’t draw in twenties, or teens. Wasn’t interested until he was in his thirties and started drawing. Applied to Art Center of Design and got accepted with a scholarship, moved to LA, and graduated when he was 33. Then started getting his first books when he was in his mid-thirties, and that’s not the end, it’s just an on going thing.

Miyazaki, the Walt Disney of Japan, in animation all throughout career until 40. That’s when he decided to start his own animation studio. He did a graphic novel at age 40 for Nausica that he wanted to make into a feature film, all of his great movies were done in his post 40’s.

At age 40, you still have 25 years till most people retire, that’s a long time!

You really don’t ever have to retire.

Art isn’t like playing football, it’s not hard on your bones.

Zombies video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc

As You Mature, Your Art Matures

Greg Manchess was winning awards and competitions for years, and he came out to do a lecture, he had just done the cover for “Above the Timberline.“ Speaking of that painting he said, “10 years ago I could not have painted this” even though 10 years ago he was winning awards for the Society of Illustrators, etc.

If you really are serious about being an artist and creating the best art you are capable of creating, you have to make it a lifelong goal. It’s not a sprint.

You need a schedule for yourself. You need to have an actual goal, something to look forward to. Without it, nothing happens.

Don’t judge results by if you are right on target.

Say, you’re 35. 5 years will pass whether you like it or not. You’re gonna be 40 at some point. Wouldn’t you rather have done something interesting with those 5 years between 35 and 40, or and tried to do this thing? If time passes anyways, you might as well do it.

If you are starting later, you won’t be creating the same work that you would if you had started younger. You have had so many life experiences: losing jobs, family, work, etc.

Beauty of age, experience, which leads to more informed art.

If you’re older, you’ve figured out how to work and developed a good work ethic. You don’t quit until the job is done. Broader perspective, more interested in learning than instant gratification.

Gina Jane was a student going back to school. She turned in some of the best projects in the class, she had done a lot of graphic design stuff but hadn’t been drawing for a while. However, she had the work ethic, and she worked so hard at applying what she was being taught. She easily turned in some of the best pieces in the class.

You can accelerate your learning with your experiences. Older students are more okay learning something without instant gratification.

i.e. learning perspective, having a more broad perspective and being more willing to learn.

Battle Plan

For someone starting at, let’s say, 35-36..

Phase 1 or Year 1: Get good at it

• Draw for 2 hours a day. Enroll in an online school, SVSlearn,
  schoolism, CGMA.

• Learn the Fundamentals: Perspective,  Light and Shadow, Figure Drawing, Composition, Color, how to use Line/shape/tone

• Fill 6-7 100 page sketchbooks, during your 2 hours a day. Work on hands, head, the figure, landscape, perspective, shading, this is your your sandbox for practicing and applying what you are learning.

• Pick 5 of your favorite artist, do 20 copies from
  each of these 5 artists.
  Each copy, you will learn so much from
  trying to deconstruct what these artists have done. You want to learn
  how that artist did it. You’re gonna fail with some of them, but you
  try and learn from the masters by copying their work.
  Depending on what your goal is, it might change your approach.
  Jon Klassen. Does a lot more simple graphic design type work.
  http://jonklassen.tumblr.com/
  Craig Mullins. Studied industrial design. He didn’t like the industrial design look. Then he went back
  to school and did illustration. http://www.goodbrush.com/

• Seek advice
  from a professional: "these are my goals, what should I do?" Sometimes students want to become a children’s book illustrator but
  don’t really know any illustrators.
  During this first year, you need
  to educate yourself on this field.
  If it’s children’s books, every
  week maybe read 5 a week.
  If it’s comics, know what’s in comics, not
  just 20 years ago, but what is happening now.

• Fill your creative bank
  account with what people in the industry are doing.

• State your goal
  publicly: and then share your progress on the social media platform.

That’s your Phase 1/ Year 1, it might take 2-3 years.

Phase 2: Build Your Portfolio

• Draw 4 hours a day

• Intermediate classes, these online schools, and svs have more advanced classes. More one on one with teachers.

• 4 sketchbooks this year, not studies, concept art for portfolio.
  Illustrator: ideas for illustrations or childrens books
  Comic artist: ideas for characters, your take on Wolverine, etc.

• Complete the Draw 100 Somethings Challenge: boats, trees, flowers, gummy robots, dinosaurs, robots, etc. Teaches you to not be satisfied with first 2-3, or 20 designs. Teaches you that true creativity comes after you have drained all the low hanging fruit. Jake did 200. Just to prove that there is no end to the ideas you can do.

• 100 Somethings, Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxa01j9Ns7o

• Continue Studying. If you’re aspiring to do childrens books- keep studying children’s books. concept artist or animator-reading every word in the “Art Of” books. Comics, keep studying comic books.

• Social Media- post your 100 somethings. Post your sketchbook studies. Can start growing a following, cause you aren’t just practicing but sharing your own unique ideas and what you are bringing to this field you are entering.

• Choose your heroes. Educate yourself on what you want to do. i.e. children’s books, comics, animation.

• Post regularly, share your work, journal chart progress, share what you’re learning.

• Keep Studying

• Start to pay attention to stories. At the end of the day this is what will separate you. See what the story is about, not just the details, separate that.
  Eventually everyone will be able to draw and paint, and story is what will separate you.
  Ultimately, Star Wars is all about a family. It’s a family drama, that’s what it is about. Be able to see the broader view, what’s the story about, and how did they tell that story. You can really get some great insights to storytelling, story building, and how to tell your own stories.
  You don’t want to just be a vapid artist who isn’t saying anything.

Key: Ultimately, it is your stories that you tell that will separate you from the others.  Be observant of stories in your life and all around you. What the story is all about, what is the broader view? How did they tell the story. Look at it separate from the details.

They’re not saying anything, or they’re saying the same thing that has always been said.

• Be conscious of the style that you are developing.
  See "Uncovering your Style", https://courses.svslearn.com/courses/uncovering-your-style

Phase 3: Make a Product.

• Kickstart and Create your comic, illustrate your book, concept out your idea. Create something that works for you.

Reasons:

Teaches you to Start and Finish a project.An actual product, suggests a finality to the project. Not just a project. Finished not perfect.

Learn Marketing

Learn Production

Learn Salesmanship.

Learn who prints things, and how to get things printed.

Learn about how when things get screwed up how to fix it?

You’ll be more educated and understand what’s happening behind the scenes.

Year 3 is all about taking everything you are learning and create something with it.

• Enter contests, put yourself out there, step up to the plate, try it, and get work out there. This is the best that I have got, this is what I have to share. Helps propel you to a new step. Do your best, and then move forward.

• You need moments of finality and stair stepping, then you can ask, “Where to go next?”

• Keep finishing things, then you go on to the next thing, and keep doing your best, then you can decide where to go next.
  Don’t just keep a bunch of unfinished things in the drawer.

• Ultimately, we want you to teach yourself how to finish and present something.

• This will also help you flesh out a network. If you want to be successful, you need to build a network. People above, next to, and below you.You’d be surprised at what jobs and opportunities will come.

Someone above may like your work and throw you a bone.

Someone next to you may recommend you for a job. 

Someone below you has opportunities too.

Start building that network by building things and putting them out into the world.

Get into the network/world that you hope to enter.

Project creates a connection with people in that world, starts a network.

• Study a film a week, a graphic novel a week, etc.

Will used to have though that “If I look at other people’s work I would be copying.” Originality comes from taking and combining, and studying. Will wishes someone would have grabbed him and told him that. Keep feeding yourself.

All creativity is, is connecting dots. Connecting dots that other people wouldn’t haven’t thought to connect. In order to connect dots, you have to have dots in the first place if you’re not filling your brain, then you have no creative capital to work with, you have no thoughts.

How Can I do This?

You have 4 hours in a day. You work for 9-10 hours. You have 14 hours. Maybe you shave off an hour of sleep, maybe you stop watching a TV series.

It really comes down to what you want to sacrifice. You shouldn’t sacrifice family, or your job. But there are some things you need to sacrifice to go down this path.

Need to discuss this with your spouse or significant other.  I.e. “This is something I feel really passionate about, let’s work out a plan, maybe Thursday Friday nights are spent doing this, and you get me Saturday and Sunday.”

Maybe it’s not 4 hours a day, and it’s 2. You can get a lot done in 2 hours. If you don’t prioritize it, it will never happen.

Come up with a schedule. Maybe it is Thursday or Saturday.

Early to Rise.

Jake gets up at 4am to work on Skyheart.

Lee wakes up at 5, works from 5:30-9:30 or 10AM.

During that grouping of hours, stuff happens.

You can get a ton of work done in that group of time.

Pursuit of Happiness. The main character would drink less water, so that he didn’t have to use the restroom as often and could therefore make more calls.

You’ve got to ask yourself, how bad do you want something? It comes down to that.

I really want to play the guitar, but I didn’t sacrifice for it, I didn’t prioritize it. I said that I really wanted to play the guitar, but if you don’t sacrifice and prioritize it, then you don’t really want it.

You can’t have good things without some sort of sacrifice or some sort of skin in the game.

Yuko Shimizu, http://yukoart.com/

She had a full time corporate job, and kept her job until eventually she hit the tipping point and she quit her corporate job, and now is an incredible illustrator.

Current Projects

Jake: Skyheart, 60 Pages left to color, it’s coming along well!

Lee: Working on illustrating some different subject matter.

Do rough sketches, then Find 3 key beats or difficult passages, and does an illustration of those passages, cause that will set tone for the rest of the book. Not just page 1, 2, etc. and does those pages and then it influences all the rest of the pages.

Will: Wrapping up Texture Painting class, Finished up the Alice in Wonderland series for Comic Con, and just finished a children’s book.

http://svslearn.com

Jake Parker, http://mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44

Will Terry, http://willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt

Lee White, http://leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
forum.svslearn.com

Podcast production and editing by Aaron Dowd.

Show notes by Tanner Garlick.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Illustrator Benji Davies joins Jake Parker and Lee White to discuss story building, childhood influences, and his solo show at Gallery Nucleus.

PATREON

Sign up for SVSLearn's 14 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

The Caldecott is the most prestigious award a children’s book illustrator can receive, and it’s an award that, once received, changes each recipient’s life. We will discuss what the award is, how it is chosen, some patterns with books that have received this honor, and some tips on what you can do to try and become a more Caldecott-worthy illustrator.

What are you working on? [01:17]
Will Terry: Bonnaparte Falls Apart Part 2, and a new board game in his digital painting style. Not the best pay, but he has complete creative freedom and so it’s worth it.

Lee White: Just moved to Nashville, Tennessee from Portland Oregon. Still working on two books, one that he is writing and illustrating himself, and still working out the deal for illustrating someone else's story.

“Cain’t never could do nothing.”- Southern Saying

We might be doing a live workshop later on in Nashville, but don’t quote us on that, all 3 of us would be there. Keep your ears peeled.

Jake Parker: Has been crazy busy and gone a lot. He did a Comic Con in Denver, a workshop up in Boise, and a workshop here in Provo, and did a bunch of work for Snowplow 2; and, Skyheart is at the printer in China! There has been some translation issues that have slowed the process down, so we’ll see if the books get here in color or black and white!

Today, we want to dive in and see if what sort of a role awards play in the life of an illustrator or comic book artist, and does it play a role in developing your art.

If you are an illustrator, new or old, we hope that we can shed light on some of the illustration awards and what impact receiving different awards can have on a creatives life..

What are the Awards? [11:00]
There are specific awards that we want to dive into on this podcast.

The Caldecott Award, conceived in 1937 by Robert Caldecott.
The Newbery Award, given to Young Adult Fiction, it’s an award for writers.
The Eisner, given for creative achievement in comic books.

Eisner Award: the Academy Awards of Comic. Given to different categories, i.e. Best Publication, Best Writing, Best Art, Best Short Story, etc. It’s an award and the publishers love it because they get to put the special award sticker, and whoever won the award has a prestigious bargaining chips for future projects.

It’s important to understand the audience for each of these awards and oddly enough the for the Caldecott, they are librarians.

Will hated school growing up and the last place he would imagine being is a library convention. But as fate would have it, he ended up going to one, and he has now been to three of them.
American Library Association (ALA) hosts a conference where illustrators and librarians collide.
Librarians matter because they are the ones who will be recommending your books!

The Caldecott [15:00]
The Caldecott is the biggest most prestigious award for children’s books. The Caldecott is determined by a committee of 15 people and 8 of those people are appointed by the ALA. These people are composed of librarians and school teachers.

They are supposed to primarily focus on the artwork, but there aren’t any poor stories that win the Caldecott. Art is a component but other components like story are a factor that enhance the children's book.

Look for patterns. Think about the patterns of the wards winners. Lee likes to look for systems and commonalities to help inform success. There is often strategy to most things we do. Even when playing Monopoly!

Since 2000, only 4 Caldecott winners have different writer and illustrator. It means that more Caldecott winners not only illustrate but also write their book. Is this a coincidence?

Committee members like to promote and celebrate 1 person. If you win this award you are the “Miss America” of illustration for the next year.

Can winning one of these awards change your life? [22:06]
There are over 200 children’s books awards but they are not life changing like the Caldecott. Almost every state has one award and they are sometimes narrow and specific. Will won the North Carolina book award one year. In Utah there is an award for Best Mormon Illustrator. Any award is great to receive but are not on the level of receiving a Caldecott.

These awards are great but the Caldecott is different. You will be known and introduced as a Caldecott award winner, and the book will be in print for the rest of their life, which translates to a lot of money.

There are over 200,000 libraries across the US and stock Caldecott winners. Sometimes one library could buy 10 copies of 1 Caldecott winners book, and restock every year. There are also people that collect Caldecotts. It is a fail safe for the libraries and bookstores because these books have a stamp of approval and popularity built into them.

There are Caldecott honorable mentions that also reap the reward of this honor and Lee has a friend that recieve $75,000 in royalties.

Jon Klassen is an illustrator/writer that has been raking in the Caldecott.

(Jon Klassen)[http://jonklassen.tumblr.com/]
(This Is Not My Hat)[https://www.amazon.com/This-Not-Hat-Jon-Klassen/dp/0763655996]

If you were to win a Caldecott, publishers try to lock you into your next book deal. You become known for this award and it makes you a distinguished illustrator.

There are Caldecott terms to book deals that stipulate how payment changes if you were to win a Caldecott.

Should you change your art to win? [31:40]
Will feels as if you need to change your art style to win a Caldecott but Lee sees that Caldecott winners of the past have very different styles and are really all over the place. There are books that are Caldecott material and there are other books that aren’t but are still wildly successful.

Why is I Want My Hat Back distinguished and Fancy Nancy not? Fancy nancy is extremely commercial and sells well but not as literary.

(Fancy Nancy)[https://www.amazon.com/Fancy-Nancy-Jane-OConnor/dp/0060542098]

There are books that have a balance of the two like Olivia. Olivia won a Caldecott and also became very commercial.

(Olivia)[https://www.amazon.com/Olivia-Caldecott-Honor-Book-Falconer/product-reviews/B0018SYWI4]

There are many things that precede winning a Caldecott. There is networking and knowing someone that can get you in the right circles and in the right places. Being connected and known is very important.

Dan Santat is a great example of a person that has been around the block before winning the Caldecott. He spoke at conferences for years and was really well known along with producing great work.

(The Adventures of Beekle)[https://www.amazon.com/Caldecott-Medal-Dan-Santat/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A6288856011%2Cp_lbr_one_browse-bin%3ADan%20Santat]

It’s true that winning a Caldecott seems as likely as being hit by lightning.
Step One: Write your own stuff
Step Two: Be Jon Klassen
Step Three: Speak at SCWI

Actionable item [41:29]
Here are some actionable things that might not get you a Caldecott but moves you in the right direction. Believe in your work and keep moving forward with it. Think about what is the type of creator you want to be and what best fits your personality. You don’t need to be award winning to be successful. If you are just trying to mimic other people you will always be a few years behind, of course you can learn from others but really do what you love and develop your own unique style and voice. Do the thing that you love to do and that you are good at and eventually the world will catch up.

Nuances of a Caldecott [50:04]
There are so many books that are great and when it comes down to choosing a winner the committee starts considering the nitty gritty. They start to think what doesn’t work about the books- does the book’s cover have room for the sticker, what is the paper quality like, what is the font, what is in the end paper etc.

Things to consider [53: 56]
Be like Jon Klassen in the sense that he was trying to be himself. If you are trying to copy someone that has won you will be always be behind. Create the thing that only you can create.

Also consider that design matters and having a good sense of graphic design is important for the whole package. Chris Van Allsburg is a great example of this. He combines his art with design to create a great book. His pieces are beautiful and leave room for type. Great artists have a great graphic design sense and some create their own fonts for their books, i.e. Jon Klassen.

The Caldecott can be a motivator, and can push yourself to create on a higher level. You can ask yourself, “Is this Caldecott worthy?”

Chris Van Allsburg

Summary [01:07:00]
Consider writing
Be unique
Consider the details
Drive yourself to create something good and worthwhile!

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews.
If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

How do I pick a niche? What should I remove from my portfolio? How do I conquer perfectionism? Join the conversation with illustrators Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry. 

PATREON

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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

• What comes first, characters, or story?
• What do I do with a finished Children’s Book, who do I give it to?
• Is it worth being an author/illustrator instead of just an illustrator?
• And how do you market a book, now that COVID is winding down? 

This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss these questions and also outline an important petition against McGraw Hill.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

What does Tom Cruise getting stuck in a time loop have to do with becoming a great artist? More than you’d expect! Learn how to iterate, how to avoid generic character designs (EVERYTHING has been done before, no exceptions!), and how you can supercharge your art skills with an online education for WAY cheaper than a traditional art school. Only on 3PP!

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Should I give up on my book? Is social media essential? What’s the best way to make a master copy? Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry answer these questions and more in this episode.

Sign up for SVSLearn's 30 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/30-days-free

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

How do I beat a saturated market, win over art directors, and inspire my students? Lee White, Will Terry, and Anthony Wheeler share the keys to these questions and more in this episode.

PATREON

Sign up for SVSLearn’s 14 Day Trial:  https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and shownotes.

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Join Jake Parker, Will Terry, and Anthony Wheeler for a laid-back chat about their latest projects, perspectives on risk and failure, business ideas, and more!

3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

Click here for this episode’s links and show notes.

Today we are going to answer these questions:
What are the tools, the programs, and the apps that we use to create the art that we do?
What is not essential, what is nice to have, and what is essential?

Traditional Tools:
Jake: The last book he did was ALL digital. However, that is not the norm, usually he uses traditional at some point in the process. The sketchbook is where a lot of the traditional work happens for him but, a lot of times in the process he will go back and forth from digital to traditional at some point.

Jake’s Traditional Toolset:
Sketchbook, pencil, and a pen.
The reason these tools are so important is that they don’t have to be charged or plugged in. You can carry them wherever you go. You can use them to jot down ideas, to work on a character design or a composition that you are trying to figure out. A sketchbook is absolutely essential. If you don’t have one, this is something you should reconsider.

Jake used to work on loose sheets of paper, and that’s fine and all, however, sometimes he would lose an illustration or a drawing, or it was always hard to organize them by date. But now all of his sketchbooks are dated and kept in a drawer and are organized in order. Keeping a sketchbook makes it easy to organize your drawings.

The Moleskines Cahier Sketchbook
What type of sketchbook should you use? It all comes down to what type of paper you like to use. Jake has used a lot of different sketchbooks but his favorite is the Moleskine Cahier extra large plain journal, they are flimsy, and the paper is just good enough to keep his pencil, ink, and marker markings in place, they don’t smudge too much. It’s nice because with this particular sketchbook it doesn’t feel too precious, it feels like a good workbook where it doesn’t feel like every drawing has to be pretty but you can do nicer drawings in there if you want to.

PrismaColor Col-Erase Pencils
For a sketching pencil Jake wants something that works well with ink and doesn’t smudge with his hand, and the Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils are perfect. He takes an exacto knife with him in his tool bag for sharpening them, or a pencil sharpener in the studio. He likes the orange or vermillions, or the reds, they are nice because the ink stands out in contrast to the pencil while you can highlight things with the red or you can draw lightly and the ink will really stand out.

Pens:
Some sort of technical pen is essential. They are great for taking notes, a 0.3-0.8, maybe a 0.5 is good for jotting things down or doing quick loose sketches. Copic Multiliner 0.5 Pen.
Brush pens are great for going from thin to thick in one stroke, they are a tool that you can use to bust out a really nice drawing or illustration very fast. Jake’s favorite right now is the Copic Gasenfude.

Will’s Traditional Toolset: nothing is essential. Only the traditional aesthetic is.

Lee’s Traditional Toolset:
Sketchbook/portable workbook.
Mechanical pencil. There is nothing worse than trying to draw with a dull pencil. It’s a visceral experience, almost like scraping nails on a chalkboard.
Loves drawing on cold pressed watercolor paper. If you don’t sharpen your pencil it hurts your nice line quality. The mechanical pencil gets rid of that. Lee likes to use the .05 basic size.

Moleskine Cover Sketch Album, Plain
It’s a new experience when you have a horizontal sketchbook rather than a more narrow workspace. The wide one is awesome too.

There is another sketchbook that Lee likes.

Nice to Have: Lee likes to make a sketchbook with the paper he will use in the studio. Then when you work on your final piece it is just a one to one translation and you know already how i the paper feels because you’re using the same paper. In watercolor the paper is everything, you can use cheap brushes or paint but the paper dictates everything.

M Graham Watercolor Paints Great for use in the sketchbook and in the studio. The reason is because it is really easy to reuse the paint, if he just sprays some water on it with a spritzer it comes back like he just poured it out. This is great for when you are traveling.

Winsor and Newton are great but they don’t rewet very well. This is the brand typically everyone buys when getting started and then when they try and make a portable sketchbook it doesn’t really work because the paint doesn’t rewet or come back

Watercolor Pencils
Watercolor pencils are great, and Lee uses them a lot mixed with the watercolor. The difference between that and a regular pencil is that once the surface is wet a lot of color is released, you can even draw on wet paper. He’ll paint and draw right into the wet and it’s great.

Lee’s Favorite Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils: Tuskan Red or Indigo. Feels that other colors are too saturated.

Beat up Dip Pen
Reason for beat up is there is some oil on the nib from the factory., wash them with vinegar and water, or dish soap. Don’t use a lighter, it will ruin your pen. Dip pens are like guitars, there is something special about them when they are older.

Chip Brush
The worst, low quality bristle brush from Michaels, or at Home Depot.
Lee buys them for 59 cents, 79 cents, then he runs them over with his car or scrapes them on the sidewalk, you can get strokes with them that you can’t get any other way. They can make beautiful strokes like Chinese calligraphy or smooth washes. You don’t need a $100, $200 brush, people buy these expensive brushes for watercolor but they are unnecessary.

Lee uses the same things for studio painting but then has a couple more essential things:

The Incredible Art Board. That plasticy board that you can staple into. Lee has no patience for prep work, he wants to be painting, not sanding something. With watercolor, you have to tape it down to the board and wet it. He just puts the paper down on the board and then just staples it, the board can take staples over and over again. He has had the same board for 7 years. He’ll put the drawing down, wet it, and then staple it, and then just start painting it right there. From the time he had the idea to the time he can be painting is only 5 minutes, so very fast.

Liquitex White Acrylic Ink In combination with the dip pen. It’s great because it’s fully opaque and it’s great to get that full opaque white. If you’re a purist you’re probably cringing but Lee’s not a purist and mixes everything in there. You can get things back to white and you can paint watercolors on top of it because it’s an acrylic base.

Gouache Paints: Lee doesn’t love gouache, but uses it to add little opaque details back on top of the watercolor.

Gesso, also uses this to paint on top of the painting to get it back to white and then paints on top of it.

Paper
Canson Montval: Cheap student grade paper, has a medium to a lot of sizing which means the water color doesn’t go into the paper too much, so you can do some cool effects with it. But it can be hard to work with, it depends on your style.

Yeah, and that’s it! Haha, it sounds like a lot, but it is really only 10-11 things. Lee uses all of these in his studio and he has a more condensed list for travel. He can create almost any painting using these materials.

A Word About Quality

Will doesn’t work traditionally right now. But when he was teaching at the university, he had students who were using materials that could barely be called a brush or paper.
There are times where you can cut corners and there are times that you can’t.
With oil and acrylics paint there is Winsor and Newton: The Galleria Brand which like a lot of other paints is “student grade.” It’s watered down and doesn’t have as much pigment in it, so if you want to create thick impasto textures you just can’t do it. The same goes with brushes, if you want to make a graceful line, some brushes just can’t do it because they just are not the right brush.
Higher end synthetic brushes are what Will would use a lot.
In terms of paper there were students who would use low weight paper instead of heavy weight paper because it was cheaper. If the cheaper paper gives you the results you are looking for that is great. But if spending a little bit more on the nicer paper would make a difference in the quality of your work, in those cases it’s worth it to do that.
Sometimes students would tell Will, “I just can’t do what you are doing.” Will would reply, “I couldn’t do it either if I was using your equipment, so you have to forego a latte or something..”

A really good teacher can help you know what supplies you actually need. With traditional mediums you are dealing with physical properties. Going into an art store can be overwhelming because there are so many options. A good teacher can simplify that and help you know what you should get.

For example quinacridone magenta and alizarin crimson look the same. When you mix them with white or any other color they don’t mix the same. The quinacridone becomes really vibrant, and the alizarin, on the other hand, becomes quite dull.

Jake had a friend at Blue Sky who said that as an artist you have to budget as if you are poor, except with art supplies you need to switch mindsets and act like you’re a millionaire to get good tools. Maybe you need to make sacrifices to get the tools that you need.

Traditional Non-Essentials:
Millions of paints: all designed to separate you from your money. You only need a few and you can mix them to get the colors you need. Here are some of our color pallets that we use:
Will’s Color Pallette List: It’s on the intro page for his Smooth Blends with Acrylics- Dry Brush Technique Class.

Lee’s mom was taking a watercolor class and he was 3,000 miles away and couldn’t help, but she came home after the first day with a list of 21 different paints the teacher wanted her to get. Lee doesn’t know what he would do with 21 paints, let alone a beginner.
With just a dash of a color you can make almost any of those colors.
Using a small number of paints is great because when you make a body of work, and you used the same 5-7 pigments for all of them it will give all of your work a harmony because they are all made of the same pigments.

Electronic drawing desk: a sweet addition to Lee’s studio. Can raise or lower it to meet his needs. If he is using a big canvas he can lower it to be at hand level instead of having to flip it upside down like he used to. He got his for $350-$375 on Craig’s list, but it’s a couple thousand dollar table at retail.

Pencil Sharpener: Jake uses the Panasonic Autostop KP77N. It looks like it’s from an 80’s office, because it was. It sharpens pencils at such an angle that it is sharper than anything more modern. The engine is industrial strength.

Full Set of Copic Markers. Anything from 50-150, usually there are colors you can’t get with watercolors, really nice bright sharp colors, you can lay them in quick and you don’t have to let them dry.

Compact Watercolor Set with a Watercolor Pen. When traveling and want to get a full range of color.
It’s the equivalent of 50 markers in the size of a large wallet. It has these watercolor biscuits. The pen has water in the handle so you can flush color out when you want a new one and you can mix colors in the tray.
Pair this with a brush pen or pen that is waterproof.
6 pack carrier of your favorite soft drink, use that to carry around your markers, has a handle and everything!

Digital Tools

What’s the most essential tool?
A Computer, with a cintiq monitor hooked up to it, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Photoshop, and Procreate.

Will loves the iPad Pro. It changed everything. You can work anywhere on this thing. But he feels that it works as well for taking things all the way to finish like a Cintiq can. He likes the Wacom Cintiq, but doesn’t like drawing on a tablet where your image and where you are drawing are different places. The hand eye coordination is tricky.

However there are some artists, like Jed Henry and Jim Madsen who prefer the tablets.

But if he had to pick one between the Cintiq or the iPad, he would choose the Cintiq and Photoshop. There are other ones but that’s what Will likes to use. With the Cintiq you are tethered to the office. The reason Will loves the iPad is because you can be at home and Procreate has new tools like Liquify.

However, If you are a student don’t go to digital right away. If you are a beginner, or an up and coming artist. Then start with traditional and learn from your mistakes more. Digital, with all of the editing tools, can make it hard to develop your process. Unless you go into it purposefully choose to limit your tools.The problem that most students have is that when they start a drawing or painting digitally they might come out with something that they like but they can’t reproduce because the amount of tools and steps that went into it was so vast. Then when they try and do anything traditionally they flounder.

Procreate is great and made for the iPad.
Will does all of his initial thumbnails, sketches, and finished sketches in Procreate. He starts the process for getting them ready to paint. If he is going to do his color style then he will export it and paint it with Photoshop and the Cintiq. If he does his pencil crosshatch style then he will export it and do some quick color in Photoshop.

Will has the luxury of having both.
Lee uses the same things as will, but uses Astopad which turns his iPad into another monitor when hooked to his computer, and he can use photoshop on his iPad.

Jake finally got an iPad as his end of the year gift to himself. Now he has done more drawing at home than he has in a couple years, it’s so nice to be able to sit on the couch and do a nice finished piece. Was up until midnight drawing without even knowing it.
Can’t recommend this new version of the iPad enough.

Essentials for Jake: Photoshop on some sort of computer. He prefers Mac’s. He spent a lot of time for a couple of years on the phone trying to fix his old Windows computer. Now with his Mac he hasn’t had to worry about that.
A Cintiq paired with a computer is so essential.

There is this designer that Jake follows, and he had to save up enough money to get a computer. And so he went up to Alaska and worked at a resort scrubbing dishes and saved all he could to get the computer setup that he needed and that is what got him started.

Nice to Have: the iPad.

Essential: Epson Scanner. If you want to work traditionally and bring things into Photoshop.
Nice to Have: Good studio printer. The printer is something both Lee and Jake use quite a bit for professional work, making prints, and Lee uses it for taking sketches from his sketchbook and then he lowers the opacity and then blows it up and prints it on watercolor paper. It is so important to take the magic of the sketch into the final.

You can buy things used! People usually take good care of these things. Lee’s laptop was used, Will’s Wacom was used and he’s had it for 9 years with no problems. Wacom is having this problem where they made their products so good that they aren’t breaking fast enough.

Jake: iPad pro or Cintiq computer combo? The latter, the Cintiq computer combo. That’s where all of his professional work happens. It needs to be able to save and store all of those files.
An iPad is designed to last 3-4 years and the computer Cintiq combo should last a long time.

The Cintiq, Photoshop, computer combo is the standard. This is the grouping that will serve the most people the best. Will did a review on a cheaper non Wacom drawing pad and it felt like a first car vs a sports car when compared to the quality of a Cintiq.

With all of that said, you should be able to draw and create with anything. For a costume design class Lee brought in his son’s 64 pack of Crayola’s and did demos using those. You don’t want to be tied down to your magic pen. These essential things are nice to have but the important part is the art.
We use all of this technology but it is all about the image and the art. It’s what’s in your head.

It’s not the tools but then again it is the tools. There are nuances that you can only achieve with certain tools.

LINKS
Svslearn.com
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Tanner Garlick:
tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick
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3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!

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