The hard truth is that being a self-employed creative takes more than artistic talent. You also need at least a basic understanding of some fundamental business skills. Unfortunately that’s one thing they never seem to teach in art schools. I’ve been running my illustration studio for fifteen years now and I’ve had to learn an awful lot of things the hard way. Here’s a collection of some of the best resources that, over time, have helped me land better clients and boost my income:

The Creative Freelancer Conference
Every summer HOW Magazine invites designers, photographers, illustrators, and other creatives to come together and learn how to be better business people. I’ve attended the Creative Freelancer Conference for four years now and I can honestly say over that time my income has probably gone up almost 50% largely as a result of what I’ve learned there. If you don’t want to wait until summer, or just want to test the water, the audio from the 2009 conference can be purchased online for you to download and listen to at your leisure.

Business Blogs For Creatives
Two of my favorites:
Marketing-Mentor.com
FreelanceSwitch.com

Another site I’ve heard good things about (but haven’t had time to check out): DrawnBySuccess.com

Freelancing Tips For Your iPod
If you want some audio to listen to in the car or at the gym, there’s some really good webinars for creatives for sale at MyDesignShop.com.

Online Subscription Services
Here’s a few pay-per-month websites I use that have really helped me grow and manage my business. In the past few months they’ve become indispensable:

Agency Access (recently merged with Adbase) – for helping me track down the right people to offer my services to.

Highrise – for helping me keep track of who I’ve contacted, who I still need to contact, and who I need to keep in touch with after they’ve expressed interest.

Harvest – for tracking my time spent on projects. (I’ve also started tracking my non-billable hours to look for ways I could be making more efficient use of my time).

Goodies from Amazon.com
A while back I pulled together a bunch of recommended resources from Amazon.com, and I continue to update it periodically.  Full disclosure: If you click the link and then buy something, Amazon will toss a few coins into my piggy bank.

Pulling Out The Big Guns
A few months ago I took leap and hired a business coach. Marcia Hoeck is a former freelancer-turned-design firm owner who gave me a ton of great insider tips and advice. It cost a lot of money but what a great investment! I blogged about my experience with Marcia here.

Bonus – PDF Notes
Finally, last November I gave a presentation at the CTN Animation Expo in Los Angeles called “Be Your Own Boss: Freelancing Tips and Tricks”. I covered such topics as how to know if you are cut out for freelancing, how to promote yourself, how much you should charge, and how to talk to clients about money. If you contact me I’d be happy to send you a PDF of the notes from my talk.

Did I miss anything? If you’ve got a helpful resource to recommend please mention it in the comments.

Australian designer Jenica Smith publishes designmontage.com, a website which brings together an eclectic mix of creative goodies from all corners of the internet – design, illustration, photography, animation, and the like. She’s just posted a short interview with me about my illustration work and career. I encourage all my blog readers to take a poke around the site. There’s some really neat stuff, and I’m very flattered to be included.

One of our members is John Hambrock. His strip, “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee”, is relatively new (it debuted in 2006) and is syndicated by King Features. In 2009 the strip was nominated by the National Cartoonists Society for Best Comic Strip. John’s a terrific guy and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him.

Recently we swapped some cartoon-related items. For his part John sent me an original “Edison Lee” strip, and I definitely got the better part of the bargain. I’ve just framed it and very soon it will be hanging proudly in my studio. I couldn’t locate the final published strip online but if you click the photo you should be able to read the enlarged version. Hope it gives you a good chuckle.

If you still read a daily newspaper and if “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” doesn’t appear in yours, contact your local editor to request it. If you’d rather read your comics online you can follow “Edison Lee” by subscribing to King Features’ Daily Ink service. Or, you can read a collection of strips in book form by ordering “The Edison Files: Notes From The Lab”.

Yesterday I was sketching up some doodles as part of a new promotional campaign I’m working on. I liked how this bear turned out so I decided to clean it up and color it in Photoshop. If you’d like to purchase the rights to use this image please contact me.

A picture really is worth a thousand words.

Tonight I saw “The Artist”, a feature film getting a lot of buzz. It just won three Golden Globe including best film (musical or comedy) and some say it deserves an Oscar for Best Picture. I wouldn’t quite go that far but it is a very good film.

What’s makes “The Artist” especially remarkable is that it’s a black and white silent film. The soundtrack consists almost entirely of music and sound effects. On the rare occasion when characters do speak their dialogue is written out on old-timey title cards, just like a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton film. I know that sounds awful but trust me, it works. In a way the absence of dialogue actually improves the film because all of the other storytelling devices have to work harder to pick up the slack. The actions have to be clearer, the acting more expressive, the editing sharper, and being forced to say everything with pictures alone makes for some very creative and compelling visuals.

As an illustrator I found “The Artist” to be a powerful reminder that a tremendous amount can be said simply and elegantly with pictures alone. The right poses, expressions, and body language can communicate great depth and feeling without saying a single word. The movie really inspired me to think more deeply about the power of my drawings to communicate, entertain, and even to move people. The next time I sit down to draw the film will still be reverberating in my mind, challenging me to think harder about how I can say more with my drawings.

If, like me, you make your living drawing pictures then you absolutely must see this film. Study it. Replay it in your mind. Especially if you work in storyboards, comics, animation, or other storytelling mediums.

Here’s the official trailer:

Watch this video on YouTube.

A few weeks ago I won a prize giveaway of Stephen Silver’s new sketching app, Posebook. Today during my warm up I finally had a chance to give it a test run.

For those who haven’t heard, Posebook is a pair of new apps (Male and Female) for iPhone/iPad/Android/Kindle created to help artists develop their drawing skills. Each features a large collection of photos from professional costumed models in over 2,000 full-body poses for sketching, plus hands and close-up facial expressions. There’s also 6 instructional videos from app creator Stephen Silver, himself an award-winning character designer, as well as 25 sketches from other top character designers in the animation biz. That’s a lot of goodies for $9.99 each.

There are no nude models, although some of the costumes and poses in the Female Posebook fall into the “sexy cheesecake” category. Being a dad with daughters has made me more sensitive to issues of female modesty. Combine that with the warnings Jesus gave about the whole lust thing  (see Matthew 5:27-30) and it means as much as I’d like to unfortunately I can’t quite bring myself to recommend the Female version of Posebook. Which is too bad – otherwise it’s a terrific app. If only there was a way to delete some of those images, I’d be happy to give it the same big “thumbs up” that I give to the Male Posebook (iTunes link).

Both apps are wonderfully designed, full of many expressive poses that are well lit and full of character. In short, sketching from Posebook is just plain fun.

The International Consumer Electronics Show is currently underway and all sorts of new gadgets and gizmos are being unveiled. Today I stumbled upon a glowing review from MacWorld of a new iPad stylus that, as far as I know, is the first to offer true pressure sensitivity for iOS. If it lives up to the hype, the Jot Touch from Adonit could be a real breakthrough for digital artists.

Companies like Wacom have been making pressure-sensitive drawing equipment for years. I personally own two Wacom Cintiq’s (a large desktop model and a small portable one), and before that I used a Wacom tablet for many years. The technology exists, Apple just isn’t interested. Their iPhone/iPad touch screen technology is designed for chunky fingertips, not fine tipped pens, so up until now drawing on the iPad has been somewhat limited and frustrating (as I’ve written about before).

Several drawing apps have attempted to close the gap with clever workarounds, i.e. the faster you draw the stroke the thinner it gets, but none have been able to achieve true pressure sensitivity. It looks like Adonit has finally cracked the code by combining a sophisticated pen with a clever use of Bluetooth. According to the MacWorld review the results are impressive, which means it could even give Wacom a run for its money. It won’t be cheap – it will apparently ring up at just under $100 – but if it lives up to its hype it would be worth the investment.

If other rumors are to be believed (and that’s a big if), the iPad 3 will be unveiled later this year with a new super-HD screen. That, combined with a quality pressure-sensitive stylus, would be a killer combo.

It’s not very often I get to take a little extra time to add some polish and shading to a sketch, but the Christmas/New Year’s break allowed me to slow down and be a little more leisurely with my drawing. Here’s a study I worked up in Photoshop using my Cintiq. It’s based on this photo which I found using Google Image Search.

Toy Design

• I worked on a variety of toy design, packaging illustration, and presentation sketches for a major toy company to help relaunch one of their well-known brands. Unfortunately the confidentiality clause in my contract prohibits me from saying more, but it was a great deal of fun.
• I sketched up some toy concepts for several licensed properties, including three upcoming feature films, for DecoPac Inc. Can’t wait until I can show those too.
• Speaking of DecoPac, one of my toy designs for them won a silver award from the 2011 Play International Art Competition.
• I created almost 100 illustrations for a series of preschool puzzles for Patch Products.
• I designed a couple of educational toys for a manufacturer in China (another project I can’t show yet).

Advertising

• I created marker comps for advertising agency Olson-Denali to pitch to Best Buy.
• I assisted the uber-talented Sherwin Schwartzrock in a fun cartoon ad for Target and the Minnesota Twins.

Misc. Projects

• I created some animation costume and prop designs for an upcoming VeggieTales DVD.
• I was a courtroom sketch artist for two court cases, including the NFL/Players Union hearings. My sketches were shown nationally on MSNBC, ESPN, NNS, and the NFL Network.
• I did a little animation for Phil Vischer’s “What’s In The Bible” project.
• I launched the “March Is Sketchbook Month” blog (with a lot of help from my wife). Dozens of artists committed to creating sketches every weekday. Word spread and by the end of the month we received over 15,400 total page views.
• Behind-the-scenes I hired a business coach and finally launched a brand new website.

Travel

• Over the summer I traveled to Chicago for the Creative Freelancer Conference and to San Diego for Comic-Con.
• I stayed put for the annual chapter gathering of the National Cartoonists Society, which was held right here in Minneapolis.
• In November I flew to Los Angeles for the CTN Animation Expo where I gave a talk on freelancing.

 
On a personal note my wife became pregnant with our third child, yet another daughter due in March. I also joined a health club and we remodeled our kitchen—shaping up both house and body.

I’ve had an awful lot to be thankful for, and I’m eagerly looking forward to what 2012 has in store. Here’s wishing all my blog readers great success and joy in the coming year!

I’m not a graphic designer so the client hired another artist to design the label. Today I received a package containing the final product, “Leahy’s Chocolate Covered Leprechaun Ears”. Because of the word “leprechaun” instead of “elf”, and since we just wrapped up the Christmas season, I’m assuming this is the packaging that will be in stores for St. Patrick’s Day.

My family and I all agree, they’re delicious. The chocolate is smooth and rich, not dry or rubbery. It tastes like a quality product and I’m happy to recommend it.

So far the chocolate cashews are only available in one retail location, a Minneapolis specialty food store called Local D’Lish. If they become available elsewhere, either in stores or online, I’ll let you know.