Art by Lee White
Is Fiverr a scam? What makes a pro different from an amateur? How do you deal with constant rejections? And how do you “choose your pain” as a professional illustrator? This week, Jake Parker and Lee White discuss these questions with special guest host David Hohn.
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SHOW LINKS
GRIT: THE POWER AND PASSION OF PERSEVERANCE
INTRO
Welcome to David Hohn, our guest host this week! Will couldn’t make it to the recording of this episode so we have David filling in — he is our first dedicated SVS teacher and will be making courses for us as well.
FIVERR
This one isn’t a specific question, but one we get a lot.
Should I do Fiverr?
It’s something we have mentioned on the pod before, but let’s dig deep and explore it a bit. Lee hired someone on Fiverr to design a logo for his gallery recently, just to see what the process was like. He still doesn’t overall recommend it but it was an interesting experience.
It’s not a judgment on quality — there are some fantastic designers on there. The designer Lee went with had a bunch of different options for prices and they were really low. It’s a race to the bottom with pricing, and it can really damage a client to make them think that this is the price for a logo.
When Lee got his logo, this was when the problems began. There was no interaction between Lee and the designer between the payment and the delivery of the logo. They delivered a final image instead of a rough. It looked nothing like Lee wanted. It felt like a tech company logo rather than a logo for a gallery. Lee tried to get specific and gave him three pages of logo ideas of what he really wanted. They didn’t really listen to the feedback and just made a hybrid of a bunch of the reference images. Lee didn’t use the logo in the end, but the experiment was fruitful.
The client interaction is the most important part of being a pro.
Jake got a new logo from a pro for his JP logo, and he found that the experience was overall really good. He was very involved with the process and even did sketches, a moodboard, and drawovers. The designer came back with almost 40 options. It was a great experience for everyone involved. Jake went with a great designer who was less experienced, and the results were really good.
Lee found that one of the biggest problems with Fiverr was the lack of sketches or roughs.
Fiverr might attract some bad clients. You might also not enjoy the sorts of things you produce as well. If you can just design a bunch of logos for stuff every day and create a huge library of premade logos, it might work, but it won’t be super fulfilling.
Bill Watterson quote:
You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.
We look at people who are successful and happy, and they are people who are less concerned with successes and failures and more concerned with the work that they are doing.
When Jake could choose to not worry about if something he made would succeed, and just made it because it brought him joy, it would ultimately lead to his success.
Lee had something he called “if only” thinking, where he would think that he would feel successful if only he had some accomplishment under his belt. But he would get the accomplishment but feel the same way. You just have to find happiness regardless.
Actors go out and audition all the time, and they get a lot of No’s in person. David set himself up to only get Yes’s, and avoided No’s, by making all of his pitches through postcards as opposed to in person. With social media, you get more rapid feedback that can really impact how you feel about your art. There are huge artists who have made great projects that get only a few likes on their work.
A lot of it is the algorithm. Jake has found that 10% of people who see a good piece of art will like it, and only 10% of the likes will comment. Look for smaller communities instead of huge social media platforms when you are starting out, because it can help you get good feedback and connect you with new friends.
David loves his work just after he has done it, and then goes on to hate it. There are other people who hate their work right as it’s done and then love it later.
It’s important to understand why you’re doing Fiverr. Are you making it because you just can’t do anything else? If you can’t do anything else, and you just don’t want to, then that pushes through and makes every other decision a lot easier.
GRIT: THE POWER AND PASSION OF PERSEVERANCE
Stick with something and do it for a while and you will see success!
PRO ILLUSTRATOR BLUES
From Zach:
Hey Guys, I love the podcast! I've read that in order to find work you will be successful at, you should look for what kind of pain you want to deal with. I was wondering if you guys could go through some of the day to day pains and/or downsides of being an illustrator(maybe even of the different avenues an illustrator can go.) Thanks for your time!
There’s a spectrum — on one end is the employee, on the other is the entrepreneur. The employee doesn’t like risk, they like stability and consistency. They are given an assignment and want to live within that narrow window of creativity. Companies love employees because they need them to survive. If you work for a company, you will get an assignment and will be told to do a specific thing and have a deadline.
The entrepreneur takes full responsibility for everything, never knows when the next paycheck will be, is okay with failure or success, never knows if they’ll be able to pay their mortgage or retirement, but has hope that what they will do will pay off big someday. Nobody is giving them an assignment, but they are giving themselves their own assignments by analyzing the market.
Find where you fit on the spectrum, and find the type of work that fills that need. You might not want to have a boss, or you might not want to deal with instability. It depends on your personality and what you want.
As a freelancer, there is never nothing to do. When you are on the clock, you can leave work and be free from everything, whereas freelancers are always needing to work and do stuff regardless of what time it is. Freelancers hate tax time! It’s super complicated and requires a lot of itemizations and deductibles and so forth.
Being an illustrator means that you are always confronted with the question — how much can you do right now? The full time option also takes up a lot of time and makes it hard for you to do freelance work.
Jake has built everything he does over time. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort over many years to put a lot of stuff together!
The first few years, Lee found it tricky to figure out how he could get paid consistently. How do you solve this? Jake developed as many passive income streams as he could possibly make. He started an online shop, and every time he posts on Instagram he makes a shop sale. SVSLearn also generates income for him because it fills the need for online illustration education. Inktober sponsorships also generate a little bit of money, and his affiliate Amazon links do pretty well for him as well. He makes about $200 a month from Amazon links. All of these things piled up can pay for his mortgage. Then he can work actively on top of this with projects to pay for other things.
David struggled when he first graduated and earned only enough money to get married. He aggressively saved and paid off his mortgage really early which helped a lot. Lee has done the same thing.
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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