#googlefu

OF COURSE. 

—Agent KillFee

In 30 minutes I had A LOT of info. My daughter’s BFF said, “Uhhh...yeah so remind me to never do anything bad around you. That was amazing...but kind of creepy.”

Look, I’m going to give you a tough love answer here, because no one is going to spoon-feed you a career. You have to go out there and build it. Research is the first step to doing that. Even if I wanted to spend a whole bunch of time making you a list of artists, there’s no way I can know what area of illustration you are even asking about. Editorial Illustration? Book Covers? Concept Art? Animation? Fashion?

You say you want to know what types of projects illustrators work on, then look around you. Anything you see art on was made by someone. And most things have credits on them, or can be looked up online. If you are into magazine illustration, go to a magazine stand and look at magazine illustrations and write down the names of the artists who keep showing up in the credits. If you are interested in book covers go to a bookstore and look at the back cover and copyright pages of books. Same for a comic shop. Advertising and Fashion you will probably have to research online because those credits don’t usually get printed on projects. There’s concept art credits at the end of every movie. Knowing what company makes your favorite video game will lead to studios who have lists of concept artists working for them.

Asking other people to do your research for you is not only not going to get you answers, it’s going to shortchange you. It’s the search that helps you define what you want. Now go out and look.

—Agent Negative Space

Yup, it is complicated. Because time and time again, when ADs do things like let their names be on lists of Art Directors that anyone can access then too many artists cut & paste and spam everyone on the list so much it gets actually hard to do our jobs. It sucks. We don’t want to be hard to find on purpose, but too many people abuse lists that come to them easily.Some things you CAN do:—talk to your peers in the same industry and see what emails they’ve collected and trade—join artists groups on Facebook where people are helping each other collect this info—listen to podcasts and read interviews with ADs, because they usually tell you exactly how it’s best to contact them—send them a message on social media asking if you can have their contact email to send promo to (iffy, but sometimes it works depending on the person, keep it short & sweet. do not send them your work ON social media, just ask for their contact)—go to events and meet them in person and get their contact info—watch for online events, live casts, classes, seminars, and AMAs where you can ask them virtually

Keep at it, I promise the info is out there.

—Agent KillFee

Nope.

Production deals with taking what an art department makes and getting it ready to go to the printer. Not the same thing. Go back to the drawing board.

(Hint: In comics there definitely are art directors, but the editors are often the ones that hire the artists.)

—Agent Negative Space

Go to a game store. Check out the games they have from smaller companies. Find some that are currently using art that feels like your style and your level of skill. Write the names of the companies down. Go to the interwebs and get your research on! Find those Art Director names & contacts (or at least the emails/mailing addresses of the main company).

Alternatively, check out ArtSourcing.org, a new project by Zoë Robinson (who has worked for Fantasy Flight, Blizzard, and USAopoly) that is all about connecting clients in gaming and publishing who are too small to have an art department with upcoming artists who fit their budgets. She’s always adding artists to her roster.

—Agent KillFee

Oh MAN do we get swamped with these very year. I suggest you send your teacher to this post and ask them to stop giving this assignment, it’s THE ABSOLUTE WORST. As the article says, a much better skill to teach students is to do internet research and develop their Google-Fu skills to find the information themselves. There’s so many podcasts out there where pros have been asked a ton of questions. Let me recommend the Drawn + Drafted ProjectCast and Sam Weber’s Your Dreams My Nightmares.

—Agent KillFee

Absolutely. Check out this great post on Muddy Colors that shows you exactly how: Reference Riddles and the Art of Google-Fu

—Agent KillFee