Art by Chris Akins
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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SHOW LINKS
The podcast starts off with Lee talking about a comment he read on one of their podcast videos (the episodes of the podcast can be found on YouTube if you’d rather watch them).
The comment stated “The content is the same whether you’re listening or watching but the only difference is on YouTube I get to watch Lee eat his lunch.”
This prompts a conversation about the weird things the guys have done while recording the podcast. Will jokes that he’s done his laundry while recording. Jake says that he used to draw during episodes but now he tries to pay more attention.
Jake wants us all to know that he’s watching a tv show called For All Mankind, and that he really loves it.
On a previous episode of the podcast, the guys talked about the dangers of getting sucked into a movie or video game you turned to for inspiration and how it can hamper productivity. The balance between work and play can be hard to find and this show has completely sucked Jake in.
The show is sci-fi revisionist history that asks the question of what if Russia had put more effort into their moon program and actually got a person up there, and if they did that how would the U.S react? So if that’s your cup of tea… go watch it.
Lee calls the show a docu-drama, a show which weaves real-life events into a narrative format for easy consumption, and brings up another example in the form of a movie called American Animals. It tells the story of a real-life rare book heist that took place at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Jake brought this topic up because illustrators are essentially storytellers. He loves that artists can take a story that we think we already know and add something more to it, something unexpected or contemporary that addresses more modern issues and is more relevant it’s new audience.
They talk about what they’ve been doing lately and, at least for Lee, the answer is not much. They’ve all been working to put together the huge children’s book course Children’s Book Pro.
Lee put his tarot deck on hold because this course has such a massive amount of content.
Will didn’t stop work during this though. He’s been juggling both because he’s doing less work on the course than the others.
Jake tells us that a big part of this course is that they have commissioned authors to write retellings of classic fairy tales with a word count to fit in an actual children’s book. In this course you get a manuscript that you can just start to illustrate and that they will help you with characters and background along the way. Finishing this course will help pad your portfolio with the type of drawings that an Art Director is looking for.
And don’t worry if you missed the first round, the course will be re-launched for another group (and it will have been workshopped from the feedback given by the first group).
Christy asks- My name is…? Using your name as your brand- Is it a good idea/ a necessary one? She doesn't want to use her whole name but feels that she needs to in order to look professional.
When the internet became popular people really freaked out about using their real names online. Jake’s solution to this was to become Agent44 online. This was his tag for most of his online presence but, when he decided he wanted to get a book deal he wondered if Agent44 was really something you could put on a book cover.
He made the switch from an internet tag to his name about 10-11 years ago and it has worked well for him.
Lee has a pen name (El Blanco) but he doesn't really use it. He says that you have to be careful about what name you use for things. He read an interview with Dave Grohl from Nirvana where he said that he regrets not calling the Foo Fighters something different- he didn’t like the name.
Will comments that he, Jake, and Lee have good names for branding. They’re short and easy to say and spell.
Part of Lee’s reason for doing Lee White Illustration is that when he was filling out his DBA (doing business as) and setting up a bank account for his art he kept running into bits of annoying red-tape, so he used Lee White Illustration to make the process easier.
Will was able to get willterry.com pretty early on and that made a huge difference in him using his name. But, either way, he recommends you go with something easy to easy to say and spell. Like Banksy- he’s super successful with a pseudonym.
Also, whatever you pick- you’ve got to commit to it.
Glin Dibley- an illustrator with a pseudonym
Obert Skye- an author with a pseudonym
Jake listens to a podcast called Scriptnotes and the host’s name is John August. August is not his birth name- he legally changed it when he moved to Hollywood because he was going to be living in a town and working a job that required him to go to a lot of meetings and he didn’t want every discussion he had to be about his last name.
If your name is long and to pronounce/spell you night want to think about changing it to something short and catchy- something that you want to be known as.
Dave Cooper is a pop-surrealist artist who published a children’s book under the name Hector Mumbly. He did this so that people won’t see his more explicit content when they search for the book.
Will says that the bottom line is to do what you want but to commit to it.
Jake brings up the fact that his business name is JP Creative. This causes Will to add that if you have different businesses that you should have different business names for each of them. This is so that if someone wants to come after you legally for breach of contract or something they can only attack the assets of that specific business. Doing all you business under one name is dangerous legally.
Lee White isn’t registered as an LLC (limited liability company) because when he started illustrating he didn’t have any assets to protect but now he does so he’s going to sign up.
Josh asks- Hey guys, My question is, should fanart not be included at all in one's portfolio?
I'm hoping to gear my portfolio more toward comics, and I've been told to include pieces in one's portfolio that are like the work you want to do. So if the big comic companies are the ones I want to work for, would including Spiderman/Batman covers be a bad idea, or a good way to show what you're able to do?
I really enjoy the 3PP and SVS! Keep it up!
Yes, Jake says, if that’s what you want to do- you need to have that style in your portfolio.
One of the best ways, he says, to get into comics is to draw comics. You’re going to need a lot of pages showing Batman doing Batman stuff in comic form.
Jobs at Disney or Cartoon Network are not really looking for fanart. Nickelodeon is not going to want to see SpongeBob unless it’s a very on model SpongeBob. Those companies want evidence that you can think creatively and that your style works well with the projects they’re doing.
It’s the same with video game companies. Fanart is not going to work for that portfolio but artwork that looks like it came from that company will.
Will says that the (maybe) exception to that would be that if you took a well established character like Batman and made him outlandishly your own- make him so ridiculous and Batman-y while still being definitively Batman that it shows your chops.
Lee asks what makes something fanart? When does something cross the line into fanart? Are the different covers of Harry Potter Fanart or just reimagined properties?
Jake thinks those are two words for the same thing but, Lee sees fanart as more a derivative take on a property.
Jake responds, that all reimagined properties are Fanart but not all Fanart is a reimagined property.
He says a good strategy for getting into book covers would be to submit fanart to a book. Book series community that has a large readership but little art.
BTW- if you don’t know who they're talking about when they mention Lee’s Lord of the Rings book cover and they talk about a man named Peter. Peter Jackson directed the Lord of the Rings Movies.
Julie asks- personnel- project’s vs. no-client anxiety. Do you feel uneasy when you don’t have any upcoming projects? What do you do to help that feeling?
Will tells a story, affirming the pressure to perform is a real thing. His family needed him to be working because he was their primary breadwinner. He wanted to prove to his dad that illustrating was a viable career choice. He can remember a time when he didn’t get a single new job from the last week of January all the way through February. During this time, he felt like he couldn’t share his unease with his wife because it would make her worry.
These times always ended but, until they did he would use the downtime to work on his portfolio and promote himself so that he could get more work.
He wishes he could go back and tell himself to work on other projects (books, his convention brand, teaching, etc.). He wishes he knew to embrace the downtime because it gives him the opportunity to work on other things.
Will’s answer to downtime anxiety is to satisfy it with work, to always be in motion. Lee agrees with this but, he points out that creating something for yourself is way more nerve wracking than doing it for a client.
When he launched his kickstarter, he felt for the first time that this thing will be a huge public failure if it doesn’t work. If a book he illustrated failed it wasn’t all on him but, this was.
The anxiety around personal projects is natural. The fear of a project flopping will always be there.
Jake feels that if he can work on something that will make him money in the long-run (evan if he ends up doing only a little bit of work) he’ll be ok.
Having things in place and doing something everyday helps with the anxiety.
Jake went to a Zoom meeting about the platform Wax. Wax is used to create blockchain NFT stuff. It’s energy consumption in comparison to BitCoin or Ethereum is so much less (think the electricity bill of 100 light bulbs burning for an 1 hour vs. 1 light bulb burning for an hour).
Wax’s model is what videogames base their NFT’s on.
Lee would like to remind the people who use the SVS courses to add the stars when you review a course or teacher. A review may be glowing but a 0 star review will still negatively affect their algorithm.
Will shares an experience he had with a student. The student didn’t know where to begin on an assignment so Will jumped on Zoom to show him, but even after that the student still wouldn’t start the assignment. Will thinks they were too paralyzed by the fear of failure to try.
Jake says that you learn more from making bad art than from making no art. You have to make something into existence first- you can polish it up later.
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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