#breakingin

I have seen many artists in your position. I have often been the AD who has said to artists “You’re doing everything right, when the right project comes up I’d love to work with you.” — And I never say that to people unless I mean it. Unfortunately the time between “ready to be hired” and “hired all over the place” is variable. I have seen it happen so many times: An artist develops their work and gets to a unique voice and a hirable skill level. They have all the right connections. Multiple ADs have their eye on the person. We all know they’re going to “break through” all at once and get hired a ton of places…but it’s just a matter of timing. Once they get that first job or two the momentum quickly picks up speed and their career is off and running. A year later no one even remembers that they were struggling to find work.

Unfortunately I don’t know what to say other than hold on. If you’re getting responses and people are saying they’re keeping you in mind then trust that and hold on. ADs don’t say that shit to be nice. I can’t tell you how long you have to hold on. It may take a while for the right manuscript or Magic card or magazine article, etc. to land on that AD’s desk that says YOU on it. You may need to get a side job or take non-art work to hold on but please hold on. You are pushed right up against the glass and you just need that one commission to break through the crust. Do a good job or two well, communicate well, hit your deadlines, and the gossip machine will click into effect and all those ADs who told you they were keeping you in mind will start seeing that job and hearing from the AD that hired you what a great job you did. Chances are, some of the other ADs will be jealous that they didn’t get to hire you first. We seriously do gossip about you artists all the time. And we root for you too. 

Just hang on. Keep making great work. Keep showing it around. Send out that newsletter quarterly. Keep networking. A year from now, you’ll go back and read this post and will be surprised you doubted this much.

Just.

Hang.

On.

—Agent KillFee

The great thing about art is it’s one of the few careers that you can break into that don’t require a degree or schooling of any kind. You can be entirely self-taught, but if your portfolio is rocking, then you’ll get hired.

If you’re starting at ground zero, I’d say start with the cheapest — but still the most impressive — art technology. A pencil. If you hone your skills and your craft so well even just with a pencil & paper, You can build a following, get noticed, and start earning money to save up for adobe programs and online classes in digital art.

A few ideas:

—Make great drawings and take pics of them and start an instagram or tumblr and start gaining followers and offer online commissions. 

—The best way to get into comics is to MAKE YOUR OWN COMIC. Scan it and put it on the web. So many comics artists launch their careers with their personal work as webcomics and cheap xerox printed comics. (Nimona being a great example. Noelle Stevenson launched her entire career by just posting a comic page once a week.)

—Go to the park on your off days, start sketching people for $20 and sell it to them.

—Put some work up in the restaurant for sale. Maybe they’d even let you sit in the corner and sketch customers, then sell them to the diners.

—If you get really good and really fast, you can get jobs doing storyboards for advertising agencies, or even concept art jobs freelance.

There are art jobs in every city in the world. There are plenty of startups and creative agencies and small game companies in Portland for sure. If you’re nowhere near a medium-to-big-size city then get creative. Look around your town. People need art for all kinds of things. Start drawing out in public. Start putting your work around bulletin boards in town. You’ll start getting hired for all kinds of little jobs that you can save up to get started digitally. Remember, you don’t HAVE TO start with Adobe programs. There are free clones of photoshop and illustrator online, just google them. Lynda.com is a great cheap resource to learn any computer program, and it’s only $25/month. There’s also a ton of free videos there. And literally anything you want to learn has a video on youtube.

Get creative. Use what you have, then upgrade as you go. If you really want this to work, then put the time in and people will notice.

—Agent KillFee

Congrats! You have a very specific goal! That’s great. Now you have to do some career stalking:

1—Make a list of the artists in the credits, and any sub-contracting companies they work for (for example, concept artists & FX artists can work for the main studio directly OR they can work for subcontracted companies like ILM, Weta, etc.)

2—Find the companies and the artists on their social media accounts and follow all of them. They will post about their work, as well as online interviews, podcasts, seminars, and events they’re going to attend.

3—Watch/read all those interviews - every one will talk about how the artist got to be where they are.

4—Follow as much of their advice as you can about what skills you need and what to put in your portfolio.

5—Then try to get to seminars and events they have in person. Ask politely for a portfolio review. Or just hang around after they give a speech and chat. Or find them in the hotel bar after and chat. Offer to buy them a drink if you can ask them some industry questions (but don’t be creepy about it, tell them you’d like to pick their brain for a few minutes so they don’t think you’re hitting on them).

6—On both social media and/or in person, ask intelligent questions (not just the ones they’ve answers 100x in interviews already that you’ve already watched/read in step 3).

By this point they’ll probably be recognizing your name/face/work from you following them and being a good fan of their work. And you probably will be already started on your career, bc you’ve been following their advice. This is how relationships start. Remember, they don’t OWE you anything for your following/being a fan, but good artists like to help people trying to break into the biz, so maybe they’ll remember you when they need to form a team for a project, or need to recommend someone.

Ta-Da! Easy right? Now go do it!

—Agent KillFee